True West Themes

Take away the smashed typewriters, the beer bath, the burning pages, and those yapping coyotes, and you have a pretty straightforward family drama when it comes to True West. This is the story of t...

A little healthy competition between brothers is no big deal. After all, if Eli Manning didn't grow up trying to beat his big brother Peyton in backyard football, there's a good chance he wouldn't...

Violence drives True West forward. When the brothers reach an impasse, or when Lee grows frustrated, violence is often the go-to reaction. That's why it's no surprise that the final scene of the pl...

You could argue that criminality and violence go hand and hand (seriously, feel free to argue that). However, there is a difference. For Lee (and later Austin), acts of violence are not premeditate...

Most well written protagonists undergo some form of change throughout the course of the story. Not all of them, though, go through a complete and utter transformation. Austin's arc, which is the ce...

Shepard delves into the idea of freedom almost immediately in the play. At their mother's house, it's clear that Lee feels confined. Everyday life and all of the sights, sounds, and smells that com...

It's probably not the best thing to say that all relationships are about who is in power. Hopefully, that is not the case in the real world. Unfortunately, power does play a role in many relations...