The play True West depicts the relationship between two brothers - Austin, an educated screenwriter living a domestic life, and Lee, a nomadic drifter. Over the course of the play, they exchange identities and lifestyles - Austin becomes more like Lee by turning to theft, while Lee takes up screenwriting. This reflects how capitalist society can reduce people to objects and commodities, driving a wedge between the civilized and wild sides of the American identity and experience.

1. Presentation by Sami ul Haq
LAHORE LEADS UNIVERSIT

2. In sociology, anthropology
and linguistics,
structuralism is the theory
that elements of human
culture must be understood
in terms of their relationship
to a larger, overarching
system or structure. It works
to uncover the structures
that underlie all the things
that humans do, think,
perceive, and feel

3. How the surface meaning and the deep
meaning are reflected are when the play
True West is read with a structuralistic
approach. On the surface the story is of the
transformation of two sons into their father,
in the deep however, man himself
transformed into an object by capitalism to
suppress others to reduce them into objects
is reflected

4. For Structuralistic’s the object is to explain
every thing.
Sign is arbitrary and according to social
context.

5. “I wanted to write a play about double nature
, one that would not be symbolic or
metaphorical, or any of that stuff, I wanted to
give just a taste of what it feels like to be two
sided. It’s a real thing double nature. I think
we are split in a much more devastating way
than psychology can ever reveal. Its not so
cute, not some little thing we can get over,
its something we’ve got to live with.”

6.  AUSTIN: early thirties,
light blue sports shirt,
light tan cardigan
sweater, clean blue
jeans, white tennis
shoes
 Austin is clean and he
wore good and tidy
dress.

7.  LEE: his older brother,
early forties, filthy white t-
shirt, tattered brown
overcoat covered with
dust, dark blue baggy suit
pants from the Salvation
Army, pink suede belt,
pointed black forties dress
shoes scuffed up, holes in
the soles, no socks, no
hat, long pronounced
sideburns, "Gene Vincent"
hairdo, two days' growth
of beard, bad teeth
 Old West
 Old and shabby dress
 Holes in shoes and
without socks.

8.  Night. Sound of crickets
in dark. Candlelight
appears in alcove,
illuminating AUSTIN,
seated at glass table
hunched over a writing
notebook, pen in hand,
cigarette burning in
ashtray, cup of coffee,
typewriter on table,
stacks of paper, candle
burning on table.
 Austin: Candle light

9.  Soft moonlight fills
kitchen illuminating
LEE, beer in hand,
six-pack on counter
behind him. He's
leaning against the
sink, mildly drunk,
takes a slug of beer.
 Lee: Moon light

10.  Two brothers Austin
writer who is small.
University education
has seen. Lives with
his wife and children
in the city. Television,
house, car, "American
Lifestyle" has the
object

11.  LEE: (to phone) Hang on a second, operator.
 (LEE lets the phone drop then starts pulling all the
drawers in the kitchen out on the floor and
 dumping the contents, searching for a pencil, AUSTIN
watches him casually)
 LEE: (crashing through drawers, throwing contents
around kitchen) This is the last time I try to live with
people, boy! I can't believe it. Here I am! Here I am
again in a desperate situation! This would never
happen out on the desert. I would never be in this
kinda' situation out on the desert. Isn't there a pen or a
pencil in this house! Who lives in this house anyway!
 AUSTIN: Our mother.

12.  LEE: How come she don't have a pen or a
pencil! She's a social person isn't she?
Doesn't she
 have to make shopping lists? She's gotta'
have a pencil. (finds a pencil) Aaha! (he
rushes back to
 phone, picks up receiver) All right operator.
Operator? Hey! Operator! Goddamnit!
 (LEE rips the phone off the wall and throws it
down, goes back to chair and falls into it,
drinks,
 long pause)

13.  AUSTIN: Lee, why
don't you just try
another
neighborhood, all
right?
LEE: (laughs) What'sa'
matter with this
neighborhood? This is a
great neighborhood.
Lush. Good class a'
people. Not many dogs

14. SAUL: I am absolutely convinced we can get
this thing off the ground. I mean we'll have to
make a sale to television and that means
getting a major star. Somebody bankable.
But I think we can do it. I really do.

15. SAUL: Uh--I have in the past. Produced
some T.V. Specials. Network stuff. But it's
mainly features now.
LEE: That's where the big money is, huh?

16. LEE: Nah. I think there's easier money.
Lotsa' places I could pick up thousands.
Maybe millions.I don't need this shit. I
could go up to Sacramento Valley and
steal me a diesel. Ten thousand a week
dismantling one a' those suckers. Ten
thousand a week!

17.  AUSTIN: 'Course you could. You know what a screenplay sells
for these days?
 LEE: No. What's it sell for?
 AUSTIN: A lot. A whole lot of money.
 LEE: Thousands?
 AUSTIN: Yeah. Thousands.
 True West
 LEE: Millions?
 AUSTIN: Well--
 LEE: We could get the old man outa' hock then.
 AUSTIN: Maybe.
 LEE: Maybe? Whadya' mean, maybe?
 AUSTIN: I mean it might take more than money.
 LEE: You were just tellin' me it'd change my whole life around.
Why wouldn't it change his?

18. LEE: You probably think that I'm not fully
able to comprehend somethin' like that,
huh?
AUSTIN: Like what?
LEE: That stuff yer doin'. That art. You
know. Whatever you call it.
AUSTIN: It's just a little research.

19. LEE: Yeah. Contemporary Western. Based
on a true story. 'Course I'm not a writer like
my brother here. I'm not a man of the pen.

20. LEE: I mean plenty a' guys have stories
don't they? True-life stories. Musta' been a
lota' movies
made from real life.

21. AUSTIN: After you break into people's
houses and take their televisions?
LEE: They don't need their televisions! I'm
doin' them a service.

22.  AUSTIN: Who said anything about killing?
 LEE: Family people. Brothers. Brothers-in-
law. Cousins. Real American-type people.
They kill each other in the heat mostly. In the
Smog-Alerts. In the Brush Fire Season. Right
about this time a' year.
 AUSTIN: This isn't the same.
 LEE: Oh no? What makes it different? True
West 26
 AUSTIN: We're not insane. We're not driven
to acts of violence like that. Not over a dumb

23. Analysis of the Game
Wild West, two brothers, two people, is a
game that compare the two lifestyles. Two
Screens and consists of nine stage, but also
the nine scenes "space" passes.

24. Hero needs a villain in order to be hero.
Ferdinand de Saussure concentrates on
sign which itself is divided into two parts:
signifier and signified, that is to say each
word signifier ,written or spoken,carries a
meaning (signified ). It is a system of distinct
signs corresponding to distinct ideas”

25.  True West
 True West
 “Civilized urban life”
 Candle light
 Younger
 Educated
 Screen writer
 False West
 Wild West
 “Desert life”
 Moon light
 Older
 Less or Uneducated
 Nomadic Desert
drifter

26.  Civilized
 Family life
 Thief
 Mother
 Artificial
 Wife
 Uncivilized
 Desert life
 Screen writer
 Father
 Natural
 Prostitute

27.  IF A=B
 THEN
 C=D
And if we know A,B,and
C, then we can predict
‘D’
 In True West nuclear
family is shattered.
 Father is in desert ,
Mother in Alaska, Lee
at Mojave Desert and
Austin in the North.

28. In True West by Sam Shepard, we see two
characters at the beginning of the play,
Austin as a writer and man of letters and
Lee as a loafer and thief. But at the end of
the play, they change their places without
any linear reason. The writer, Austin,
becomes a thief and the thief, and Lee,
becomes a writer. In the same manner
Austin and Lee have their own True West

29.  MOM: Picasso. (pause)
Picasso's in town. Isn't
that incredible? Right
now. (pause)
 AUSTIN: Picasso's dead,
Mom.
 MOM: No, he's not dead.
He's visiting the museum.
I read it on the bus. We
have to go down there
and see him.
 Cubism
 In Cubist artwork, objects
are analyzed, broken up
and reassembled in an
abstracted form—instead
of depicting objects from
one viewpoint, the artist
depicts the subject from a
multitude of viewpoints to
represent the subject in a
greater context

30. AUSTIN: Yeah well don't tell me I can't kill
him because I can. I can just twist. I can
just keep twisting. (AUSTIN twists the cord
tighter, LEE wakens, his breathing
changes to a short rasp)
MOM: Austin!

31.  (LEE is motionless,
AUSTIN very slowly
begins to stand, still
keeping a tenuous hold
on the cord and his
eyes riveted to LEE for
any sign of movement,
AUSTIN slowly drops
the cord and stands, he
stares down at LEE
who appears to be
dead)
 AUSTIN: (whispers)
Lee?
 Capitalist system turned
them into objects, they
are quarreling for
money.

32. Lee was a nomadic drifter, he was rigid in
dealing, wild longing for call girl
Austin was living a family life, wife,
children, house, car, an American style of
living.
Old man was living in desert, all he need
was money ,so that he may drink with it.
Was unaware of his wife and sons.

33. Mother She was living alone, she went to
Alaska for seeing Iceland and igloos. She
returned for Picasso and house plants.
Saul Kimmer was selling scripts to
Hollywood so as he may earn money.
All binaries reflect two sides of American
life, this is two sided play showing both
shades of True West.