Prompt #8--Buried Child

I should start by saying that I generally see Buried Child as a theatrically realistic play—like most everything by Sam Shepard, there are copious details in the stage descriptions regarding little set decorations that help place the scenes in a world that is consistent.  Buried Child is stylistically very similar to Fool for Love, which also lends itself to kitchen-sink realism, but includes the ghostly, fantastical Old Man.  However, the world of Buried Child is NOT logically consistent, even if the set disguises itself as such.  The primary problem I run into when reading the play is the subject of family bloodline.  The play never really resolves the tension between whether or not Vince is actually Tilden’s child, and, if so, what relationship he has to the buried child.  For some reason, no one ever brings up Vince’s birth, and Tilden only acknowledges the birth of his murdered child.  If the play is trying to be remotely true to real life (or even just simple logic!), then something has to give, especially since we actually see the remains of the dead and buried child at the end of the play.  Because of this, I would describe Buried Child as realistic on the surface level, but illogical on a deeper, nonrealistic level.  Similarly, there is the unexplained growth of unplanted crops in the back yard.  While it is not unfeasible for corn to grow very high in the back yard, and it is not entirely impossible for there to be some way that the corn was planted, the occurrence of the excess growth of corn, as it is explained in the play, it utterly illogical and unrealistic.