Studies in Literature and Language
Existential Subjective Violence in A Lie of the Mind
Abstract
A Lie of the Mind (1985) is the last play of family quintet written by Sam Shepard (1943-2017), a contemporary American playwright. Human beings’ existential problem has been revealed through the theme of violence and psychological mechanism of characters’ subjective violence in this modern tragedy. Through the representation of subjective violence, which is epitomized by Jake, Mike and Baylor, Shepard points out modern people’s existential despair, an impossibility and impotence of self-affirmation, the futility of finding the meaning of existence. While providing women’s paradigm of reasonable means of reaction towards violence in locating one’s selfhood, Shepard brings out the possibility of love, courage and freedom as a way of asserting one’s existence.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Bloom, H. (2005). Dramatists and Drama. Chelsea House.
Bratić, V. (2016). An Apologia Pro Opera Sua: Sam Shepard vs The Feminine. Logos et Littera: Journal of Interdisciplinary Approaches, (Mar), 77-89.
Hart, L. (1998). Sam Shepard’s Pornographic Visions: Depictions of Women in his Plays. Studies in the Literary Imagination, 21(2), 69-82.
Lee, E. A. (2003). The Other side of Love: Sam Shepard’s Gothic Family Plays. The University of Tennessee.
May, R. (1972). Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence. Dell.
Nainamohamed, A. (2012). An Analysis of Illusion and Violence in Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind. Literary Insight, 3, 120-123.
Roudane, M. (2002). Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard. Cambridge University Press.
Shepard, S. (1986). A Lie of the Mind. Dramatists Play Service.
Žižek, S. (2008). Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. Picador.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/13063
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2023 Studies in Literature and Language
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Share us to: 
Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard
Reminder
How to do online submission to another Journal?
If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; sll@cscanada.net; sll@cscanada.org
Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail: office@cscanada.net; office@cscanada.org; caooc@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 
