In the following essay excerpt, the author discusses Shepard's merging of archetypal familial relationship paradigms with the realism associated with his style.
Curse of the Starving Class displays its schematic organisation by dividing up most of its text among four principal family member/speakers in a artificially symmetrical scheme—Weston/Wesley; Ella/ Emma. This contrived conflation of names suggests, early in the play, that the text relates the younger figures to the older; and, as the play progresses, we see certain ways in which the children replicate or substitute for their parents. In general, Curse voices and reiterates a process in which self-identification takes the form of assuming aspects of the identity of another. The text also voices resistance to that process. The language suggests that the assimilation of the physical traits or behaviour of the older by the.....
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