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The Fall of the House of Weston and the Crumbling of the American Dream in Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County

The Fall of the House of Weston and the Crumbling of the American Dream in Tracy Letts’s August:... AbstractTracy Letts is one of the best-known and most successful American playwrights of the 21st century, having won critical and popular acclaim both for his writing and acting. August: Osage County, probably his most celebrated play, premiered in 2007 and introduced the theater-going public to the dysfunctional Weston family, who reunite in a stifling, decaying Oklahoma mansion after the family patriarch’s suicide. The Westons’ familial crisis is manifested through addiction, violence, aggressiveness, adultery, rape and incest, each member having their own secrets and troubles. The present article aims, first, to examine how the characters deal with their personal crises and second, how the perceived sense of crisis and decline in the American society at large (both in a longer historical sense and in a sense contemporary to the events of the play) pushed family patriarch Beverly Weston to commit suicide out of a sense of profound hopelessness and disillusionment. Letts, by bringing familial crisis and conflict into the spotlight, shows how the disintegration of the Westons’ family ties mirrors, to a significant extent, the crumbling of the American Dream. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American British and Canadian Studies Journal de Gruyter

The Fall of the House of Weston and the Crumbling of the American Dream in Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2022 Raluca Moldovan, published by Sciendo
ISSN
1841-964X
eISSN
1841-964X
DOI
10.2478/abcsj-2022-0020
Publisher site
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Abstract

AbstractTracy Letts is one of the best-known and most successful American playwrights of the 21st century, having won critical and popular acclaim both for his writing and acting. August: Osage County, probably his most celebrated play, premiered in 2007 and introduced the theater-going public to the dysfunctional Weston family, who reunite in a stifling, decaying Oklahoma mansion after the family patriarch’s suicide. The Westons’ familial crisis is manifested through addiction, violence, aggressiveness, adultery, rape and incest, each member having their own secrets and troubles. The present article aims, first, to examine how the characters deal with their personal crises and second, how the perceived sense of crisis and decline in the American society at large (both in a longer historical sense and in a sense contemporary to the events of the play) pushed family patriarch Beverly Weston to commit suicide out of a sense of profound hopelessness and disillusionment. Letts, by bringing familial crisis and conflict into the spotlight, shows how the disintegration of the Westons’ family ties mirrors, to a significant extent, the crumbling of the American Dream.

Journal

American British and Canadian Studies Journal – de Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2022

Keywords: crisis; addiction; the American Dream; family conflict; suicide; intergenerational conflict

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