True West Blog

The Curse of Ancestry

True West begins by showing the curse of family. I think Austin is the one cursed with taking care of his family. Austin tried to escape his family by moving up North, but he ends up back to take care of his mother’s house while she is away. While there, he is cursed by trying to take care of his bother Lee.  Lee is the failure: the thief, the drifter, the outcast. Austin is well manicured and proper, whereas Lee is a slovenly mess. Austin seems at first to be the one who got away, the brother who has survived the devastation of his family and somehow moved on to a sense of prosperity and release. Lee is at first the mirror image of his father, a drunk without a home, a man without direction. He is the aimless hero of Western myth: an outlaw who lives by his own code of morality. Towards the end of the play Austin begins to turn into his brother Lee. He can’t get away from the family curse.

Toaster scene

This play reminds me of the movie Holes both have the curse of ancestry in them. In the movie Holes Stanley’s family have bad luck and always blame it on their no good dirty rotten pig stealing great-great-grandfather.

 Also the movie is like the play because it is based out in the desert. The curse of the family is well represented in True West and in the movie Holes. Each person is born into a family and as such takes on the burdens of the generations preceding him or her, and you can’t help the family you are born into.