Three-Act Plot Analysis

Just because True West is a relatively short play written in only two acts, that doesn't mean it can't fit into the traditional three act plot structure. In fact, this is one of Shepard's more traditional plays. (Check out Shepard's The Tooth of Crime and Buried Child if you want to deal with some mind-blowing, non-traditional stuff.) So let's take old Sam's two acts, and break them down into three.

Act I

Now, because this is a short play, things are going to move from one phase to the next pretty quickly. You can look at Shepard's Act 1 (scenes 1 – 3) as the traditional Act I of a story. This takes us from the exposition in the beginning through Saul's meeting with Austin and subsequent dialogue with Lee.

There is a major shift at the end of Saul's first scene that marks a change in the direction this play is going. We know from the get-go that Austin and Lee's relationship is uneasy at best, but there's still a chance that Austin can suck it up for a few days, do his best to get along with his brother, and just wait for Lee to leave.

Once Lee talks to Saul, though, Lee figures out that he needs Austin's help to make his movie idea work. Once the decision is made that the two will work together and that Lee really wants to make this movie thing happen, the play is never quite the same, and the conflict starts building at a much more rapid pace.

Act II

The final scene of Shepard's Act 1 (Scene 4) through the end of Scene 6 in Act 2 can function as the second act of a three act structure. Austin's transformation is starting by the end of this, and he's made it clear that he will have nothing to do with Lee's movie, cutting ties completely with Saul in the process:

AUSTIN: There's no such thing as the West anymore! It's a dead issue! It's dried up, Saul, and so are you. (2.6.123-124)

When we next see Austin, he will not be the man we have come to expect. This confrontation with Saul (and Lee) sends him into a deep, dark metaphorical hole that he will not climb out of for the rest of the play.

Act III

Breaking down the play into the three acts leaves Scene 7 through Scene 9 of Shepard's Act 2 to serve as Act III. This is the point when Austin completes his transformation. This is when he's stealing toasters, claiming he wants to give up his life and move to the desert, and this is when he attacks his brother, which leads to the climax of the play.

Amidst all of the chaos of this part of the play, there's something extremely important revealed. Austin has a simple line that could go almost unnoticed if you're not paying attention (of course, you're paying attention, though, so you totally caught it):

AUSTIN: He thinks we're the same person. (2.7.28)

Austin's line to Lee about Saul gets to the heart of the whole play. While they don't start out alike in any way (at least on the surface), Austin and Lee do become the same person; they come to embody the dark and the light in all of us. Let's see what Sam Shepard himself had to say about this aspect of True West:

"I wanted to write a play about double nature, one that wouldn't be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It's a real thing, double nature. I think we're split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal. It's not so cute. Not some little thing we can get over. It's something we've got to live with." (Source)

Austin's "double nature" reveals itself in full force when he attacks and almost kills Lee in the climax of the play at the end of Shepard's Act 2, which serves as the end of the traditional Act III for our purposes.