Ages The Moon Analysis

Sam Shepard is the most prolific contemporary American playwright who has portrayed the true picture of American family in his plays. He has written about fifty plays and in all his plays American family is the central subject. The play Ages of the Moon is one act play. The play is not a direct representation of American family but it depicts postmodern family in America through the prism of how the lack of a traditional family tells upon the psyche of the people through the characters of Ames and Byron. The tragic events that are being unfolded in the play by making lives of both the characters monotonous and tragic have root causes in family matters. Both characters in the play don’t have any traditional family links which makes their lives …show more content…
The play depicts postmodern family in America through the prism of how the lack of a traditional family tells upon the psyche of the people. Though most of the scholars have not considered it as a family play, the tragic events that are being unfolded in the play by making lives of both the characters monotonous and tragic have root causes in family matters. Ames and Byron experience a void in their lives because of the rejection or the death of their wives. Apart from some references to their wives who are not actively present in the play, there are no other characters who come lively on the stage. So both the characters are thrown into isolation to search the meaning of their lives. Ames and Byron are friends who meet after decades of separation and come to know that both have suffered loss and have been unable to bridge that gap in their lives. Both have become very fragile now and get easily offended by a slightest remark that is not intended to offend. Both are in a way victim of postmodern autonomy to individuals in which sticking to family and its values is considered as obstacles in the way of the progress of an individual. Postmodern liberal individualistic framework believes in maximizing the autonomy of an individual which comes at the expanse of breaking social fabric based on love to an alternative model of living based on mercenary interests. The …show more content…
They don’t have any aim and feel hopeless as a result of broken family relationships. Although they are in the late sixties their life is not stable and they behave like children. They often fight each other, abuse each other and get reunited out of frustration. They talk about women, sex and other vulgar things and at the same time having alcohol throughout the play. This shows their sense of alienation and broken relation with the past:
People who have a profound hunger for anything – the hunger for drugs, the hunger for sex – this hunger is a direct response to a profound sense of emptiness and aloneness, maybe, or disconnectiveness. (qtd. in Bigsby