farming family are more honourable, an honest, clean way of living. True to both the American dream and cowboy fixation Shepard commonly explores. You could say they where living it to the fullest, in a kind of little house on the prairie. But the arrival of this unwanted child sets the momentum of decay. The ball starts rolling from a hard working, almost perfect example of Shepards American freedom and prosperity ideals to a household of disabled freaks and outcasts that you would find hard to believe could exist in the 20th century. Vince, away from all this is not effected by this decay of the American family, but comes across a bunch of losers that bare no resembles to the people he left in the first place.The split and fragmented relationships are easy to see. From the very start Dodge hiding his drink demonstrates to us how well they treat each other, keeping secrets each other , this would not happen in a normal family. Again these little details show us the fragmentation, all the way trough the play. His attitude of no hope is illustrated by how he doesnt care about his appearance (the cutting of his hair). This lack of caring also extents to how he treats his relatives. All he seems to worry about is have you got my bottle. He only interacts with any members of his own blood for material objects. There should not be any of these characteristics in a family, and the fact that blame is shifted to Tilden all the time also adds wired relationships (page 71).Other strange habits Dodge seems possess is his expectance to die, is life really that crap? What terrible guilt or terror hunts enough to make him hate living? The killing of a baby thats not his? All he seems to care about is keeping his secrets close, and dying with them. Keeping hush is more important then the duration of his life, this obviously sets tension and suspense to what must and very dark happenings that must have gone on. Another of his characteristics his is dep...
