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Buried Child the text exposes the archetypal American family as a…

- - - - However, he is not the loving, nurturing father who only wants what is best for his children
      - "'You think just because people propagate they have to love their offspring?' he growls. 'You never seen a bitch eat her puppies?'"
  - - - Housewife
        
        Halie is also a woman who is concerned with the domestic realm, another important facet of the feminine mystique - but is not fulfilled in this role.
        
        Through her hostility towards Shelly in response to hearing of the bouillon she cooked for dodge, Shepard exposes that although she may feel unsatisfied by her position within the family, she defends and adheres to it
        
        The alienation resulting from this internal conflict is likely a contributing factor in her incestuous relationship with Tilden, which catalyses the destruction of the family
        
        This highlights the internalisation of the feminine mystique within Halie, and thus within women generally
        
        She wants to appear as though she is interested in domestic duties and care of her home to seem outwardly like the ideal image of the housewife-mother
        
        "Time to dress up the corpse for company!... Put up a little front!"
        
        Halie's entire sense of self is based in her sexual function, and she has a drive to involve herself sexually with men, and takes a sense of fulfilment from doing so
        
        She can be seen to accept the role of the housewife-mother as a sexual object through her ostensibly self-inflicted relegation to the bedroom
        
        This is her position at the beginning and end of the play, showing her entrapment in the room, and thus her inability to escape the influence of the mystique
        
        Symbolised by the difference in her appearance between the first and third act
        
        Initially, she is "dressed completely in black, as though in mourning"
        
        When she returns she is clothed in "bright yellow" and appears "giddy"
        
        The bouquet of flowers is an overt sexual implication
        
        Without her sexual function she appears lifeless, lacks sense of identity
      - The expectation from men for women to fulfill the role advocated by the mystique is evident through Dodge
        
        "Regular fireball. I had some a them in my day. Temporary stuff."
      - Mother
        
        Halie does not feel complete in the limited role prescribed to her under the mystique
        
        She is in denial of her lack of conformity in this role as she cant escape its influence, which leads to insecurity
        
        She justifies her emptiness and avoidance of her children by falsifying the past of her late third son, Ansel
        
        "Ansel never played basketball"
        
        Responds quite angrily, exposing deep insecurity
        
        This lie is not resolved at the end of the play, not related to the central concern of self-discovery for the men of the house
        
        It is likely that the traits attributed to Ansel are really those of Tilden from the past, before the act of incest and subsequent infanticide - indicated by Basketball
- - - - One of the most important is the death of the old Corn King king and his replacement
        
        Inside the farmhouse lies dodge, near death, and outside a fallow field which has not been planted in years
        
        early in the play, Tilden covers his sleeping father in the husks of corn he has mysteriously brought in from the field
        
        He once had the youth and virility that his father once had, and was a threat to the old Corn King. Back then he showed he could reap more than just crops from an empty field - "We hadn't been sleepin' in the same bed for about six years"
        
        However, he is now burnt out displaced, and the rite he performs serves only as a reminder of that time, which Dodge and the rest of the family attempt to conceal
        
        Bradley could perhaps be the new Corn King, but he is incapacitated. Nonetheless he tries, standing over the sleeping form of Dodge and muttering "harvest's over, pops" and proceeds to savagely cut his hair as though scything corn". The old Corn King falls closer to his death"
        
        when Vince returns after his journey of self-discovery and a drive through the purifying rain, he cuts his way through the locked screen door and bursts through, like a baby emerging from his mothers whom. this is calculated to occur at the same time as Tilden pulls the buried child from the cornfield
  - - - the lie has been exposed, the murderer has died, Vince has become the new patriarch and the buried baby has been unearthed and brought inside
        
        However, Vince, at the end of the play, is simply the equivalent of Dodge in 1935
        
        "Dodge? Is that you, Dodge?"
        
        The man and women of the house are in their designated positions: Vince is situated on his sofa-throne and Halie is in the upstairs bedroom
- - - - Bradley takes advantage of this by cutting his hair in an attempt to assert dominance over him
        
        "There was a time when I had to take that tone a voice from pretty near everyone. (Motioning to Dodge) Him, for one! When he was a whole man... Him and that half-brain..."
        
        there is some humour in this as he is not a ‘whole man’ either – Dodge referring to him as a ‘push-over’
- - - - at no point is the idea of male inheritance challenged, on the contrary the symbolism related to the cyclical nature of the household serves to solidify this system as the natural order
      - "I've gotta carry on the line. It's in the blood"
    - - She does however manage to escape for periods of time, spending the entirety of Act 2 with Father Dewis. However, her extramarital affair with him casts her in the role of mistress, which is also defined by a man.
        
        Though she displays some agency, she cannot escape her role as housewife-mother
  - - - symbolised through Halie's relegation to the bedroom
  - - - can be assumed he will continue to emulate Dodge's violent and dominant nature
      - no mention is made of his mother
      - he comes to the realisation that his own identity is inseparable from that of his ancestors, inheriting Dodge's own as part of the estate
        
        "And then his face changed. His face became his father's face. Same bones. Same eyes. Same nose. Same breath. And his father's face changed to his grandfather's face"