SOURCE: Radavich, David. “War of the Wests: Saroyan's Dramatic Landscape.” American Drama 9, no. 2 (spring 2000): 29-49.

In the following essay, Radavich proposes that Saroyan's plays are reflective of the conflicts inherent in the inspiration for his dramatic landscape—the American West—and that they echo this tension by presenting characters that navigate between the romance and ideals and the unforgiving nature of reality and cultural conflict in the West.

For some years now, William Saroyan's worldview has remained largely out of favor, despite the ongoing popularity of such works as The Time of Your Life and My Name Is Aram. In an America currently beset with deeply troubling patterns of violence, crime, and even terrorism, Saroyan's works have been regarded as too whimsical, optimistic, and willfully carefree to stay relevant to contemporary issues, his “quixotic brand of escapism and wish-fulfilment … no longer effective in a world desperately staving off...