Comments on "Fences" by August Wilson

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

April 27, 2011

Comments on “Fences” by August Wilson

This play’s protagonist is Troy Maxson. His name is a combination of Mason-Dixon, the line between the north and the south. This play highlights the struggle in the fifties of black families to make their own identities in a world that refused to accept them as human beings. Troy worked as a garbage man and worked his way up to driver. This was both a good and bad thing. It was good because he was able to break through racial barriers and become more than a garbage man, but it was bad because he grew apart from his best friend, Bono. He and Bono were friends since they did time together. It was in prison that Troy learned to play baseball and was accepted into the Negro Leagues. Troy’s childhood was turbulent to say the least. His mother left when he was eight and he saw his father rape a friend of his when he was 14. He ran away at 14, and became a thief in order to survive. He was doing 15 years on a murder charge when he met Bono. As a father now, he carries this baggage with him into the marriage and mostly in matters concerning his son Cory. Cory is headed for a football scholarship. Troy can see himself in Cory. Troy believes that Cory will be heading for a lifetime of disappointment just like he was when he was placed in the Negro Leagues. His inability to see that things have changed now and that the world is different for Cory destroys his relationship with his son. Troy tells Cory to go back to the A&P and work his way up there. Troy believes that working hard is the only path available to black men and he will not stand by and watch his son lay his future in the hands of the white man. He believes Cory must work with his hands and not just play out his dream. Troy goes behind Cory’s back and tells the coach that he will not support recruitment and therefore Cory feels betrayed and bitter. Troy has another son Lyons. He is from a woman that Troy knew before Rose. Lyons grew up while Troy was in prison. Troy feels a lot of guilt about not being a father to him, so he gives this boy money nearly every week. He does not push this boy like he pushes Cory because this boy is not as much like him. This boy wants to be a performer. Troy has an affair with Alberta. His best friend Bono knows what is going on because he saw Troy buy Alberta a drink and he saw the way Troy was looking at her. Bono being the best friend he is, laid his friendship on the line and told Troy straight up that he needed to tell Rose about the affair. Troy denied the affair to Bono at first, but then did tell Rose about it. When he explained the affair to Rose, he used a baseball analogy. I’m not really sure why Rose did not at least scream back at him for using that stupid baseball analogy again that he used for everything. I think she should have said that life is not a game of baseball and he needed to get over himself. Life did not take him down the road of professional ball for whatever reason, so shut-up about the baseball. I was very tired of his constant king of the hill attitude and I cannot believe Rose did not have more of an argument when he started talking about how his affair with Alberta was like him “stealing second”. That analogy just makes me sick. I guess he was having some sort of mid-life crisis that lasted his entire life. He compared his marriage and life with her as being on “first base” and she was safe, but he just thought he might be able to… basically have an affair, get a thrill and not get caught all the while, bringing all that mess back home to her. He is such a selfish man. Just when Rose thought the affair was as bad as it could get, Troy comes home and says hey how about raising our love child? Rose feels that the right thing to do since Alberta died in childbirth is to raise the innocent child and cut Troy off sexually, emotionally and every other way humanly possible. This is basically how they finish their life. Troy the big dog dies while swinging a bat at a rope in the back yard. Cory joins the military and is enjoys coming home to his father’s funeral with a considerable amount of success under his belt. He at first refused to go to his father’s funeral because he was still mad at his father, but Rose and the love child Raynell put a stop to all that hatred. Raynell sings a song that the big dog used to sing about a dog named Blue which eases the spirit of forgiveness. Also, I think when Cory sees how much of herself Rose has sacrificed in raising Raynell as her own, he feels that his small amount of self sacrifice amounts to very little. In the end, Troy was unwilling to accept that the world had changed enough to allow his son to fulfill dreams that he could never get to come true. This allowed Troy to shape himself into a bitter, resentful, lonely, tired, old man swinging at a rope in the back yard at all the things he would never become.