Im August in Osage County (2025)

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What is the message of August: Osage County? ›

Themes in August: Osage County

One major theme in the play centers around addiction. The incident that sets the play off, and nearly everything that follows it, has been a direct or indirect result of addiction. As the play progresses, the audience sees how addiction can cripple whole families, not just individuals.

Mattie Fae and Charles's shy, awkward son "Little Charles" misses the funeral because he overslept and is met at the bus station by his father.

The story of August: Osage County came from his own experience, Letts says. In fact, his actor father, Dennis Letts, played the role of the grandfather on stage. "It's based on family history," Tracy Letts tells NPR's Scott Simon. "My grandfather — my mother's father — committed suicide when I was 10 years old."

So, the ending. Onstage, August finishes with Violet all alone in her house: She's systematically driven away every single one of her family members, and now she's forced to endure the loneliness she probably deserves. It's a bleak denouement, but a fitting one.

The play August: Osage County (2007), written by Tracy Letts, reflects Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

It is eventually revealed—to nearly everyone but Little Charles himself—that Little Charles is actually Beverly's illegitimate son, making him Ivy's half-brother; Mattie Fae had an affair with Beverly some time ago and has been passing Little Charles off as Charlie's boy since his birth.

Barbara confirms Mattie Fae's fears, prompting Mattie Fae to reveal the truth: Ivy and Little Charles aren't cousins, but half-siblings; Little Charles is Beverly's son from an affair with Mattie Fae.

Violet's three adult daughters return to their hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, when their father, Beverly—a retired poet and an alcoholic, played by Sam Shepard—goes missing and is found dead a few days later in a river, having committed suicide.

Beverly's escape from his familial role through suicide seems bleak at first, but as the dysfunction and decay within the Weston family becomes more evident, his decision to take his leave of the clan forever—through the only guarantee that he will not be dragged back in—takes on the sheen of heroism.

Mollie Kyle (also known as Mollie Burkhart and Mollie Cobb; December 1, 1886 – June 16, 1937) was an Osage woman known for surviving the Osage Indian murders.

Is Ivy dating her cousin in August: Osage County? ›

In a private moment, it is revealed that Ivy's lover is actually Little Charles, her first cousin. Dinner is served, and Violet begins insulting and needling all of her family members. After inappropriately discussing Beverly's will at the table, she cruelly exposes Barbara and Bill's separation.

At the end of the play, when Violet reveals that Ivy and Little Charles are not cousins, but brother and sister, Ivy is devastated, and flees the house, vowing never to return.

Recently diagnosed with mouth cancer, Violet manipulates the doctors treating her into prescribing her pills, and grows more and more unstable throughout the play as a result of her addiction.

But the film doesn't end there. Instead, in the ultimate scene, Barbara (Roberts) is driving away, which shifts the focus to the younger character and conveys in a rather different way that she's leaving her mother. In his first cut Wells left the ending as it was on the stage - with the shot of Violet on the stairs.

BUT it turns out that Little Charles' mother (Ivy's maternal aunt) had an affair with Ivy's father, and so Little Charles and Ivy share the same father and are actually half-siblings! (And with their mothers being sisters, they're actually even more closely related than that.)

The death and funeral of their father brings three sisters to the home of their mother, Violet (Meryl Streep), an acid-tongued, pill-popping cancer patient. Daughters Barbara (Julia Roberts), Karen (Juliette Lewis) and Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) -- along with their significant others and various other kin -- take the full brunt of their dysfunctional matriarch's venom, for Violet tells every one of them exactly what she thinks of them. Based on the play by Tracy Letts.

August: Osage County / Film synopsis

There was a legal wrinkle: Headrights could not be bought or sold, only inherited. Non-Osage men would marry into families with headrights and then sometimes murder entire families, including their own wives, to ensure they would end up in possession of one or more shares.

The mission of Osage Nation Congress is to adopt a system of laws that promote the health, education, and well-being of Osage citizens.