THE THEATER OF A LIBERAL IRONIST: THE AMERICAN WEST AND THE FEMALE SELF IN SHEPARD’S A LIE OF MIND

Abstract

The formation and the establishment of the United States firmly adheres to two beliefs of the American dream and the American west. Though the American dream was part of American culture from its beginning, the other one became the driving force of American culture in the second part of the twentieth century when Sam Shepard began his career as a playwright. During this time, American theater emerged into a main arena for the presentation of the American west. Nevertheless, Shepard attempted to avoid playing with the duality of reality and illusion in his presentation of the American west when he put forward his characters to face and experience the world to then discover their selves. At the pinnacle of his success, he wrote A Lie of the Mind, a play that is filled with heroines who would leave the violent world of men to change their destinies. As such, Shepard endeavored to free their selves and flow them to experience a new world. Likewise, Shepard’s contemporary American philosopher, Richard Rorty, believed in the importance of self and the necessity of its redescription to create his ideal society. However, hopeless to find a philosophy model, he lends to literature to find his liberal ironist. On this account, the following study is not only to provide Sam Shepard as a liberal ironist in Rorty’s term but also to reveal certain puzzling features in Shepard’s A Lie of Mind, not least of which is the reason why his female characters blow the world of the American west to search for a new world.