Family Relationships In Fences

Fences written by August Wilson is an award winning drama that depicts an African-America family who lives in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania during the 1950’s. During this time, the Mason’s reveal the struggles working as a garbage man, providing for his family and excepting life as is. The end of segregation began, more opportunities for African American people were accessible. Troy, who’s the father the Cory and husband of Rose has shoes fill as a working African America man. He is the family breadwinner and plays the dominant role in the play. Troy’s childhood was pretty rough growing up on a farm of 11 children. Overtime, he realizes the change of society. He builds a friendship fellow sanitation worker, Jim Bono while in the penitentiary. Troy planned to build a fence around his house to control the number of people on his property. The fence also plays a symbolic role throughout the drama. These motives and characteristics control is what makes Troy the friend, father, worker, and husband he is today.

The theme of August Wilson’s play “Fences” is the coming of age in the life of a broken black man. Wilson wrote about the black experience in different decades and the struggle that many blacks faced, and that is seen in “Fences” because there are two different generations portrayed in Troy and Cory. Troy plays the part of the protagonist who has been disillusioned throughout his life by everyone he has been close to. He was forced to leave home at an early age because his father beat him so dramatically. Troy never learned how to treat people close to him and he never gave any one a chance to prove themselves because he was selfish. This makes Troy the antagonist in the story because he is not only hitting up against everyone in the play,

The play, “Fences” by August Wilson describes the life of an African-American family that is por. Troy Maxson, the father of the family, was a baseball player in the

In Fences, August Wilson introduces an African American family whose life is based around a fence. In the dirt yard of the Maxson’s house, many relationships come to blossom and wither here. The main character, Troy Maxson, prevents anyone from intruding into his life by surrounding himself around a literal and metaphorical fence that affects his relationships with his wife, son, and mortality.

The white man isn’t going to let him get nowhere with that football” (p. 14). Troy does not like that idea of Cory playing football because he thinks the “white man” will hold him back from his true potential as a football player. Troy thinks Cory should put his efforts into something that he can use in the world. “You go on and get your book-learning so you can work yourself up in that A&P or learn how to fix cars or build houses or something, get you a trade. That way you have something can’t nobody take away from you” (p. 37). Therefore, when Troy learns that a recruiter is due to come by the house, he goes down to the school and tells the football coach that Cory can no longer play football and not to have the recruiter come to the house.

Conflicts and tensions between family members and friends are key elements in August Wilson's play, Fences. The main character, Troy Maxon, has struggled his whole life to be a responsible person and fulfill his duties in any role that he is meant to play. In turn, however, he has created conflict through his forbidding manner. The author illustrates how the effects of Troy's stern upbringing cause him to pass along a legacy of bitterness and anger which creates tension and conflict in his relationships with his family.

August Wilson's Fences is a play about life, and an extended metaphor Wilson uses to show the disintegrating relationships between Troy and Cory and Troy and Rose. Troy Maxson represents the dreams of black America in a predominantly white world, a world where these dreams were not possible because of the racism and attitudes that prevailed. Troy Maxson is representative of many blacks and their "attitudes and behavior...within the social flux of the late fifties, in their individual and collective struggles to hew a niche for themselves in the rocky social terrain of postwar America" (Pereria, 37). Much of the tension in the play stems from Troy Maxson, and his inability to change, his, "refusal to accept the fact that social

In the play, Troy’s relationship with his son, Cory fades. The relationship first starts to wane when Cory and Troy are in the yard working on the ever so symbolistic Fence in the yard. Cory tells his father that a recruiter will be visiting him due to his success in both school and in football. Troy asks if he still has his job but Cory tells him that he will work on weekends. Troy becomes exceedingly angry with his son and forces him to quit the football team saying that: “The white man ain’t gonna let you get nowhere with that football noway” (35). Even with the tensions high between blacks and whites in the time period, Troy is still very harsh in his words. Perhaps, this can be attributed Troy’s past experience with baseball which didn’t end well for him. This action by Troy is both a crooked and straight. It is crooked because it holds a bar of limitation over his son’s head but it is straight because Troy is only doing it to protect his son. This event shows the reader that there can

The way a family is viewed in today’s time is the one of the american dream, with the white picket fence and smiling faces from both the children and the parents. Unfortunately, the curtain is pulled back to see the father three doors down with the single mother, the son is leaping out the window every night and the mother is taking too many supplements for depression while the little girl sleeps alone in the dark, crying. Not every family can be portrayed as what they want to be. To some extent, every family has their own problems that they must deal with everyday. No matter how much white paint one coats over their fence, someone stopping by will see the cracks and uneven brush strokes on the structure that is supposedly supposed to protect them all. These types of families have children that grow up with their parents always on edge, snapping at random moments and start to believe that this is how a family is supposed to act. Then, when they leave their unstable environment, they have their own problems with the new family they created, which are inherited from the one they thought they left behind. The attachment they once had to their former life was left in loose ends and unneeded ties with no scissors available to cut them with. Dysfunctional families often have these types of dynamics and are viewed not only from personal experiences but now also are transferred into works of literature to develop the misgivings of such a family. In Fences, August Wilson creates a

In the book Fences by August Wilson, meet a small African American family going through everyday and not so everyday struggles. These very struggles seem to root from the same one person. we are soon quickly introduced to a character by the name of Troy Maxson. While Troy is portrayed as the protagonist of Fences I see him as very much his own antagonist. Not only to himself but to many if not all the other characters.

In the Drama based book Fences, August Wilson illustrates the tragic heroism of Troy Maxson as Troy faces troubling conflicts up to the point of his death. Throughout the play, his actions end up being misinterpreted or show an impure side to him, causing for his wife Rose and his son Cory to resent him. This is illustrated many times in the play, first through the refusal to allow Cory to play football, second through the use of his brother’s war reparations in order to buy his house, and third through the affair that he has with Alberta.

August Wilson in his play Fences gives his audience a unique view into the lives of individuals who lived in a time of great change in America. Into the chaotic household of Troy Maxson, “an illiterate garbage man … who fashions his identity and self-awareness through bold expressive tales”(321). Troy, a prisoner unto himself, fights with confusion and pain as he struggles with the truths of the ever changing world around him. Troy is very similar to the prisoner in Platos’ Allegory of the cave a slave who won’t turn around. August Wilson’s play Fences is the story of a black family in the middle of the nineteen fifties It follows Troy Maxson a middle aged laymen, who is married to Rose his wife of many years. Troy and Rose have

Troy Maxon is the protagonist of Wilson’s Fences. He is a black man who, throughout his life, is faced with the prevalent racial discrimination of the first half of the twentieth century. While this has made his life difficult, many of his problems were self-created. Troy Maxon can actually

Troy is the father to Cory, a high school student at the time. One day Cory came home excited with news, and told his father he was being recruited and had quit his job to be able to attend practice more (pg 1959 line 76). This intensified the not-so-good relationship the two already had. When Troy was younger, he wanted to go pro in baseball, but to that day kept making excuses about why he was prohibited from doing so. He uses baseball references when he struggles with finding the correct emotional words to say. He uses the ‘3 strikes and you’re out thing with his son. Cory doesn’t understand why his father doesn’t want to let him play sports and go to college because to Cory, times are changing and people are more accepting of race. Cory resents his father’s traditionalist ways and refusal to see ‘the now.’ Cory spends more

The story “Fences” written by August wilson talks about the issues and conflict that an African American face. The story dated back in 1957 which focuses on African American family in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. The conflict that is hovering the family seems to revolve round the head of the family , Troy Maxon; which in this case is the main character . Troy Maxon being the center of the conflicts had a way to affect the other part of the family which is Rose his wife and Cory his son. Being the main character of the story troy Maxon values, attitude, and personality and the way it affects his household cannot be overemphasized.