Buried Child: Act 3 Summary & Analysis

The passing of the storm parallels the clarity that has begun to come from Tilden’s attempts to reveal the family’s past. Bradley sleeps in Dodge’s former position of power, but his leg leaves him vulnerable for upheaval.

Along with the improvement in weather, Shelly provides a positive point of view in the wake of the previous night’s harrowing truth-telling episode—apparently the men seem less frightening and ominous in the light of day. These tonal shifts hint at more change to come.

Shelly assumes that Vince will return, but it seems that he has been sucked into the life of the family already and is abandoning his life and dreams (represented by both Shelly and the saxophone). Dodge and Bradley’s mutually abusive relationship remains strong. Even in his state of weakness, Dodge looks for ways to emasculate and get back at his son.

Again, Shelly provides the audience a lens to view the family. Despite the grotesque dysfunction of this particular family, there is still something about it that is universally recognizable. Shelly’s observation also seems to hint at how stuck in the past the family is—everything feels out of place in the present.

This description of the room reinforces Halie’s penchant for both nostalgia and religion.

At first glance, this photo seems to depict the stereotypical, idyllic, “Norman-Rockwell-type” American family, and yet at a closer glance there are things very out of place—the mother seems estranged, and there is a baby who has now mysteriously disappeared. The photo seems to encapsulate Shepard’s skeptical view of the idea of the American Dream.

In contrast to Halie’s nostalgic tendency to revise history, Dodge chooses to ignore and deny the past. Yet this forgetfulness also seems to be selective to the crime Dodge committed. When the subject turns away from himself, Dodge volunteers information (albeit vaguely) about Tilden’s return home.

From the moment Father Dewis is introduced, his behavior does not reflect the uniform that he wears. His drunken and lecherous actions seem to suggest that in the world of the play, even religion is too perverse to help the family.

Dewis’s joke encapsulates the play’s cynical viewpoint on religion. Although Halie broadly uses religion to justify her sense of right and wrong, she’s just as wicked as the people she condemns—and she knows it, and doesn’t feel guilty.

This sequence of pseudo-burials symbolizes an ongoing transfer of power within the family. The dying Dodge is “buried” by the blanket, and this burial simultaneously removes Bradley from power and puts him at his most vulnerable.

Father Dewis, the embodiment of religion in the play, demonstrates his inability to solve problems, and worse yet, he encourages Halie’s adulterous behavior. The roses, an obviously weak fix to the dysfunction and “sin” in the house, reinforce this sense of ineptitude—similar to how Halie’s nostalgia attempts to cover up the horrifying reality of the past.

This fantasy gets to the heart of Halie’s revisionist delusions. Using the church to bolster false beliefs, she purposefully misremembers the past to repress the truths that have started to surface.

Even when Dewis does offer advice, Halie willfully misinterprets it to emphasize her own points of argument. The rose on Dodge’s lap adds to the ongoing funerary symbolism.

Halie adds to the sense that the family’s memory is selective, and that Vince, at least for the time being, has been erased. This moment also echoes Shelly’s conversation earlier in the act with Dodge, where Dodge used Tilden as way of redirecting the focus away from his own past.

After enduring horrible treatment, Shelly finally acts out. The outsider is able to grab the attention of the other characters by stooping to their level and speaking their language of violence.

The family’s toxicity drives Shelly to take Dodge’s suggestion from earlier in the act. In order to have a voice, her actions become more consistent with those of the family—she becomes more infantile, bullying, and grotesque in her actions the longer she stays in the house.

In this moment Shelly fully expresses the shattering of her Norman Rockwell preconceptions about the family.

The ever-persistent undercurrent of failure, resentment, and guilt that surrounds the family, paired with Dodge’s severe illness, finally cause him to relent to Shelly’s coaxing.

Dodge’s speech clarifies the details of the crime, illuminating Tilden’s estrangement, and expanding upon the implications of Halie’s incestuous past. Even in this climactic moment of revelation, when the truth is finally spoken aloud to an outside audience, Halie still invokes Ansel as a fantasy solution.

Once the whole truth has been aired, the cloud of selective memory is lifted and the grandparents seem to recognize Vince as family (or perhaps they only recognize him now that he’s drunk and aggressive—acting like a true member of their family). And yet, their earlier refusal to acknowledge him has apparently caused an identity crisis for Vince.

To reinforce the play’s stance on religion, Dewis commits rather obvious adultery with a vulnerable follower of his in a time when guidance and wisdom are desperately needed.

Vince is barely recognizable in his drunken state. He immediately displays his power over the room by barging in and stealing the prosthetic leg—he is the new “alpha male.”

With this declaration, Vince officially becomes the new patriarch of this collapsing family, Tilden is left in essentially the same position, and Bradley is punished for his abuse.

The image of Vince seeing his ancestors in his own reflection and being compelled to return demonstrates the intense power of the family bond and the power of the past. In this case, these forces prove insidious as they destroy Vince’s relationship and his career goals. Sally has learned the truth, and now she escapes the family’s grotesque world.

Vince’s sense of power grows as he commands the space. However, this newfound power does not feel especially glorious, but rather it seems like the beginning of a new cycle of failure. Once again, religion (or at least Dewis’s shallow, hypocritical kind of religion) is portrayed as ineffectual in the face of such problems.

Dodge’s death completes the transference of power, as he is “buried” yet again. Vince now assumes the same position on the couch that Dodge was in at the beginning of the play, setting the new cycle in motion.

The corpse of the murdered child is “harvested” and displayed by Tilden, as everything that was “buried”—both the truth and the child itself—is now uncovered to the light of day. At the same time as this horrifying and symbolic “harvest” takes place, the resurgence of crops on the family’s formerly barren land suggests the possibility for growth and renewal once the family has finally faced the truth. It’s unclear if they will be able to do this—especially as Vince seems to have already become the new version of Dodge, and Halie continues to avoid the truth and focus on something positive and simplistic—but at least the possibility is there, as Shepard ends his grim play on this ambiguous note.