A Boy's Spiritual Journey: The Cultural and Religious Conflict between Family Relationships and the Conventionalism of Tibetan Buddhism in Sarah Ruhl's The Oldest Boy (2014)

Abstract

This research paper is mainly concerns with the analyzing of Sarah Ruhl's play The Oldest Boy (2014), critically via considering the clashes of culture, and religion with family ideologies. By Adherents T.S. Eliot’s approach in his Notes towards the Definition of Culture, the paper is devoted to looking at and embodying the cultural and religious rift occurring in Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy. And to stand on the fact of the impact of the cultural and religious conflict on the family relations by passing throughout the main event of the play as to attract a Christian-born child who is only three years’ old to convert to Buddhism, and to be a Tibetan Buddhism Lama. The case is hectic for an American mother with no information on, or faith in, Buddhism. The paper proceeds with the hypothesis that the genuine clash is inner and it lies in the Mother's battle to give up her child or not in the middle of the spontaneous flood of cultural, religious and emotional clashes. The paper concludes that religion is what shapes the culture of countries.