In the following essay excerpt, the authors discuss a variety of common interfamilial themes in Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class.
Shepard captures the promise and failures of a family, the humor, beauty and bleakness that characterize a group of people trying to live together. His plays are not solely comments on family desolation, but on the family spirit that continues to assert itself to survive.
The Tate family is losing its cohesiveness. It is "starving" for emotional connectedness and a sense of identity and purpose. The family members barely operate as a group except for a place to sleep and eat—and even those most primary and elemental functions of the family can no longer be counted on. Sleeping occurs in a disorganized fashion (in the car, on the table), and eating occurs with no predictable.....
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