Abstract This study has focused on a postmodern and present reading of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child. The play contains many postmodern points and the characters, were studied through postmodern theories of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Ihab Hassan. The characters of the play and their disintegrated life revolves around old beliefs in grand narratives and their struggle with the suspicion they have started to have, towards those grand narratives. The grand narratives, which are prominent in the play, are that of Christianity and that of the American dream. This postmodern play like other postmodern text is a hybrid, contains many references to previous works in the form of pastiche and transgressing genres through using many elements from Gothic style. The gaps within this postmodern text, which according to Hassan’s theory of postmodernism are called indeterminacy create a sense of confusion, mimicking the postmodern condition of distrust and lack of a stable reference point. The element of indeterminacy and the gaps require the reader to be an active participant to fill the gaps of the text. The results of the study show that these elements have created a sense of ongoing discovery in a world filled with uncertainties. The results also show how the characters have started questioning the grand narratives but are still for most part under their influence.

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