Compare and contrast the ways in which Sam Shepard and Cormac McCarthy
explore concepts of duality in ‘True West’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’
On the surface, ‘True West’ by Sam Shepard spotlights the consequences of familiar
divisions and two brothers’ quest for success, as they live together in their mother’s home,
competing to write the ultimate Western screenplay. Cormac McCarthy’s novel ‘No Country
for Old Men’ tells a story similar to its titular inspiration, the poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ by
Yeats, surrounding an aging sheriff, feeling out of touch with the new superseding
generation, unable to accept his changing world afflicted with the growing narcotics
business, and finally failing to save the innocents caught up in a villainous hit man’s tyranny.
The core theme that pulses through both of these rather dissimilar narratives and becomes
defining to their matching settings of the American West, is duality. Through reappearing
concepts of duality, the writers contemplate psychological and societal divisions, as well as
the fate of a rapidly capitalising US – inspired by the Cold War, the first written in 1980 and
the second set in that same year.
The prominent concept of duality that underlies both pieces is the contending ideas of the
evolving American West. It is so paramount to Shepard’s play, that it becomes the titular
theme, as the playwright uses the two brothers to debate the ‘True West’ of the modern
era. To begin, Lee and Austin clearly appear as antipodes, through Shepard’s specific
costume descriptions and initial stage directions: Lee wearing ‘filthy’, ‘tattered’ clothes
‘covered with dust’, ‘mildly drunk’ with a ‘beer in hand’, whereas Austin dresses in ‘clean
blue jeans’ and ‘white tennis shoes’, ‘hunched over a writing notebook’. “This sense of
familial bifurcation informs the play’s geographical imagery, with Austin and his mother
associated with… Northern California, while Lee and the father are aligned with the south
(the Mojave and Mexico)” (Wade), and consequentially conveys the two conflicting realities
of the West: the ‘built up’ suburban ‘paradise’, and the ‘adventur[ous]’ ‘wide’ open ‘desert’.
This is reinforced through the brothers’ opposing ‘western’ screenplays, one being a ‘love
story’, the other about two cowboys ‘chasing each other across Texas’, both believing that
their own is more ‘true to life’, reflecting their separate realities in the divided West.
Not only this, Shepard repeatedly uses the contrasting noises of ‘crickets’ and ‘coyotes’
throughout the play, symbolising the coexisting harsh and serene environments of the West
that is manifested in the two protagonists. McCarthy’s western similarly surrounds the
inward battle of its protagonist, Sheriff Bell, between his traditional ideals of the West and
his growing realisation of its reality. Far darker than Shepard’s modern West, McCarthy
depicts it as a godless, cruel place without justice, largely due to the exploding drug
business: ‘if you were Satan and you were… tryin to… bring the human race to its knees
what you would probably come up with is narcotics.’ Set just prior to Ronald Reagan’s “war
on drugs”, two notorious drug lords, Pablo Escobar and ‘Pablo Acosta Villarreal’, who is
mentioned briefly in the text, had operations along the border during the time of the novel.
McCarthy implies that the traditional West and beating heart of the US suffers a death by
drug overdose, and that Mexicans are viewed as “anonymous merchants of evil and
arbitrary endings” (Sinclair), foreshadowing Trump’s promise to remove the dangers of
Mexican drug cartels with the infamous “wall”.
explore concepts of duality in ‘True West’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’
On the surface, ‘True West’ by Sam Shepard spotlights the consequences of familiar
divisions and two brothers’ quest for success, as they live together in their mother’s home,
competing to write the ultimate Western screenplay. Cormac McCarthy’s novel ‘No Country
for Old Men’ tells a story similar to its titular inspiration, the poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ by
Yeats, surrounding an aging sheriff, feeling out of touch with the new superseding
generation, unable to accept his changing world afflicted with the growing narcotics
business, and finally failing to save the innocents caught up in a villainous hit man’s tyranny.
The core theme that pulses through both of these rather dissimilar narratives and becomes
defining to their matching settings of the American West, is duality. Through reappearing
concepts of duality, the writers contemplate psychological and societal divisions, as well as
the fate of a rapidly capitalising US – inspired by the Cold War, the first written in 1980 and
the second set in that same year.
The prominent concept of duality that underlies both pieces is the contending ideas of the
evolving American West. It is so paramount to Shepard’s play, that it becomes the titular
theme, as the playwright uses the two brothers to debate the ‘True West’ of the modern
era. To begin, Lee and Austin clearly appear as antipodes, through Shepard’s specific
costume descriptions and initial stage directions: Lee wearing ‘filthy’, ‘tattered’ clothes
‘covered with dust’, ‘mildly drunk’ with a ‘beer in hand’, whereas Austin dresses in ‘clean
blue jeans’ and ‘white tennis shoes’, ‘hunched over a writing notebook’. “This sense of
familial bifurcation informs the play’s geographical imagery, with Austin and his mother
associated with… Northern California, while Lee and the father are aligned with the south
(the Mojave and Mexico)” (Wade), and consequentially conveys the two conflicting realities
of the West: the ‘built up’ suburban ‘paradise’, and the ‘adventur[ous]’ ‘wide’ open ‘desert’.
This is reinforced through the brothers’ opposing ‘western’ screenplays, one being a ‘love
story’, the other about two cowboys ‘chasing each other across Texas’, both believing that
their own is more ‘true to life’, reflecting their separate realities in the divided West.
Not only this, Shepard repeatedly uses the contrasting noises of ‘crickets’ and ‘coyotes’
throughout the play, symbolising the coexisting harsh and serene environments of the West
that is manifested in the two protagonists. McCarthy’s western similarly surrounds the
inward battle of its protagonist, Sheriff Bell, between his traditional ideals of the West and
his growing realisation of its reality. Far darker than Shepard’s modern West, McCarthy
depicts it as a godless, cruel place without justice, largely due to the exploding drug
business: ‘if you were Satan and you were… tryin to… bring the human race to its knees
what you would probably come up with is narcotics.’ Set just prior to Ronald Reagan’s “war
on drugs”, two notorious drug lords, Pablo Escobar and ‘Pablo Acosta Villarreal’, who is
mentioned briefly in the text, had operations along the border during the time of the novel.
McCarthy implies that the traditional West and beating heart of the US suffers a death by
drug overdose, and that Mexicans are viewed as “anonymous merchants of evil and
arbitrary endings” (Sinclair), foreshadowing Trump’s promise to remove the dangers of
Mexican drug cartels with the infamous “wall”.
