Codependant Interactions

In the mid-nineteenth century Romantic trend in American Literature, authors often used the idea of “walls’ that human beings place between themselves and others both physically and symbolically. Unlike a fence of gate, which imply a way in or out, a wall is a sound structure. A wall is a barrier to block someone else out, or is it used to block yourself in?

The play, Fences, in conclusion acquires many interpretations of the “fence” that is mentioned variously. Despite there only being one physical fence, it represents many figurative fences throughout the play. The “fence” is signified as having both positive and negative

Physical barriers in a built up environment could be not having access into buildings, narrow doorways, or the absence of lifts and accessible toilets.

In today 's society people have to deal with several issues that we can 't explain. For some of us we built fences to isolate ourselves from others or in some cases to protect ourselves. No matter what the issue is we, all have to struggle to be able to provide for our families. As a child I built fences when it came to my feelings. For example, growing up I was in the chunky side. Since I wasnt so skinny like the pretty girls in my class. I kinda isolated my self from the other students. That way my feelings wouldn 't get hurt. My fence was to protect me from what I thought was going to hurt me. Well the same thing happened to Troy Maxson. In the play, "Fences" written by the well-known playwright, August Wilson, is the story of Troy Maxson and his beloved family. Throughout the whole entire play, a fence is being built around the Maxson household. As the story unfolds to the viewers, the word fences may look like a simple title, but the truth is it has different symbolic meaning. The real definition of the word fence is revealed along with the personalities of the characters in the play. In "Fences", August Wilson uses different types of fences as a metaphor to explain how these people live.

August Wilson’s Fences was centered on the life of Troy Maxson, an African American man full of bitterness towards the world because of the cards he was dealt in life amidst the 1950’s. In the play Troy was raised by an unloving and abusive father, when he wanted to become a Major League Baseball player he was rejected because of his race. Troy even served time in prison because he was impoverished and needed money so he robbed a bank and ended up killing a man. Troy’s life was anything but easy. In the play Troy and his son Cory were told to build a fence around their home by Rose. It is common knowledge that fences are used in one of two ways: to keep things outside or to keep things inside. In the same way that fences are used to keep

Fencing can be dictatorial, marking space that strangers cannot access. As such, it can be said that a fence means to 'keep away'. In contrast, a picnic table invokes the notion of gathering and sharing. By integrating the fence into the form of a picnic table, the piece was personally interpreted as challenging the idea of social barriers. From personal experience, viewers who had no relations with each other would share ideas of what message is being conveyed. By breaking down the social barrier that is the fence, ideas and opinions would be shared and progress would be made. "difficult work can be important because in its difficulty it reflects the true difficulty of society...art is difficult because contemporary culture is difficult" (109). The table was seen as a comment on how socially displaced people are, making the piece socially difficult as

Throughout history, civilizations have built fences to keep enemies out and keep those they want to protect inside. In society today, people create metaphorical fences in order to fence in their feelings, while others create literal fences in order to keep the unwanted away. In the play Fences, the Maxon family lives in 1950’s America whose love for sports and one another are questioned at times when they need to be together the most. In the play Fences by August Wilson, two main characters Troy and Cory Maxon build a fence, literally and metaphorically, which as the book progresses, becomes a symbol that allows each character to truly understand each other.

Some gates are designed to keep people within the confines; others are designed to keep others from entering. In Never Let Me Go, it may be kind of hard to tell the difference, sometimes. Fences and barriers appear all over the novel, but the reasons as to why these gates are designed are not always apparent to us readers (the typical Kathy style).

they allow the perpetuation of other barriers to continue due to a lack of mutual

As you move down from landscape, into a spatial view of the school, you can begin to section off locations as contested space hot spots. The hallways for example, are packed in certain areas, yet flow fluidly in others locations. These contested spaces are “fought over” in quite a physical manner. These bottlenecks within the halls cause crowding, and lack of movement. Another example of a space would be the Courtyard located in the center of the school. This is easily the least crowded area within the school walls, and contrary of the hallways, is contested in a much more mental manner. After interviewing multiple seniors who presumably would know most about the conducts of the school, I discovered, most believed it to be off limits to students. These students see the courtyard every day for over three school years, and simply assume it is off limits space because of minimal student traffic through it. Much like the mentality of Jilian from N. Reynolds’ interview: “If everything they need is there in the student neighborhoods, why should (white, middle-class) college students venture into unknown territory?”(N. Reynolds, Maps of the everyday, p. 481) However after speaking to the Vice Principal Ms. Morse this is not the case, she states: ”anyone is allowed passing through the courtyard while the weather is fair, and as long as they travel through in a school hallway

This is report is about the reactions of personal space when invaded. A total of 20 strangers were tested to see how different genders and ages react to strangers coming to close. The experiment took place in Woden plaza where a student stood behind a subject and watched there reaction from the closeness. It was found that 60% of the subjects did react to the close proximities. This reports also shows different theories to why people act the way they do when they feel violated.

Although the fence was built to keep rabbits out of the farmland, it became a symbol of repression, as when it was built, it kept Aboriginal people form interacting with the white population. It was a way of dividing and repressing the Aboriginal people. This is true in other parts of the world as well. For example, the government of Belin built a wall that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. The Berlin wall divided families who found themselves unable to visit each other. Many East Berliners were cut off from their jobs. The Aboriginal families find themselves unable to raise or visit their own children.

In so many ways Fences is such an ordinary story that its power comes from the ways in which ordinary people hear and view it. There is no doubt but that the metaphor of the fence prevails, working its way across work, family, friendship and the emotional pain of living a life literally dependent on garbage for survival. This is what Wilson wrote about in his Fences of the 1950s. In retrospect, however, it doesn't take a lot to put some of these pieces together yet again to create a difference story of its own kinds of fences, wooden, social, economic. But then or now, this story is still about the ordinary failing of a person who cannot figure out how to get out of the box that surrounds him and who thus finds himself pulling others inside his own fenced in troubles and pains. Being a black man wasn't easy then and it isn't easy today.

Krzsztof Pomian discusses the relation between usefulness and value that might be seen to contradict what we typically think barriers, such as the one found of Sproul Plaza represent. He states that, “the more an object is attributed meaning, the less the interest which is taken in its usefulness” (Pomian 32). What Pomian does not address, however, is the idea of implicating an item to be both useful and valuable. He believes that when an item is used it deteriorates the value of the object. The barriers set up on Sproul Plaza contradict this notion in the sense that they provided both value and use for the police officers because they were able channel the crowd in a way deemed by the police to be safe. Not only did the police officers believe that the barriers were valued but before some students touched the barricades, they would look around to see if anyone was watching because they believed that there was value within the object they were about to touch and did not want to get in trouble. Students have inherently learned that these barricades instill power and value because of previous events where these barriers were also present. Pomian states, “most important of all, talk to the dead as though they were living” (Pomian,

Looking at these examples, it is clear to see where the hypothetical (and physical) fences have their uses. According to Erving Goffman, people will behave in a way