Family Values In Fences

Troy’s Responsibility August Wilsons play Fences is taken place in the 1950s in the city of Pittsburgh. The play mainly revolves around Troy Maxon, his wife Rose, and his son Cory. Troy Maxon is a fifty-three-year-old man that has lived through it all. He grew up in times where there were color barriers. Troy was a phenomenal baseball player but the color of his skin set him back from becoming a professional player.

August Wilson’s play, “Fences”, is a play about a father who is trying to make do to support his family as well as come to terms with his boisterous upbringing and the collapse of his Major League Baseball career. The Father, Troy Maxson, resents his son’s painless childhood and chances to pursue a college level football career. In multiple excerpts from the play, Troy brutally lectures his son Cory about life and adulthood. He uses short and incomplete sentences, rhetorical questions, repetition, connections from his past, and current examples to support his claim: life is not about being liked, but being treated with righteousness.

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,

Both of them have the racism, discrimination, the generation conflicting. The hard period time in which Troy Maxson in Fences, he is an African-American. He has his dream to be a player in the Major Leagues. The racist segregated society destroys the dream of a man. The big suffering which he has to be from his child life until he has a family and the relationships in the rest of his life. A father of his children, a husband of Rose, he volunteers put the big responsibility on his shoulder. He is proud of his protection on his family to be safe. However, the conflict between Cory and Troy, that is a big picture of interculturalism in the relationship between father and son. Troy put the bad thought in his son's head about him by accident. Cory thinks his father never likes him because Troy stops Cory to play football and attend to college. Cory thinks Troy want Cory to be a stupid one, just working for a supermarket. Troy tries to explain the problem and make it clear to Cory. Troy wants his family to be safe. Troy wants to protect all people in his controlling because he knows this feudal society, is never fair and equal to African-American. The fear of Troy is so big to blind to see the future of his son. He is scared of people around him, the White people, America society. The fear of the Black American. they are always the lowest stream of this society. They were exploited labor, they being held as

     We all lead lives filled with anxiety over certain issues, and with dread of the inevitable day of our death. In this play, Fences which was written by the well known playwright, August Wilson, we have the story of Troy Maxson and his family. Fences is about Troy Maxson, an aggressive man who has on going, imaginary battle with death. His life is based on supporting his family well and making sure they have the comforts that he did not have in his own childhood. Also, influenced by his own abusive childhood, he becomes an abusive father who rules his younger son, Cory?s life based on his own past experiences. When the issue comes up of Cory having a bright future ahead of him if he joins the football team,

The play, 'Fences', presents a slice of life in a black tenement and is set in the late 1950's, through 1965.  The main character, Troy Maxson, is a garbage collector.  Throughout the play he rebels and frustrates as he struggles for fairness in a society which seems to offer none.  His actions and behavior towards his family can be interpreted by a reader as those of a violent and bad father.  However, soon one notices that beneath a mask of cruelty and toughness there is an individual who takes responsibility for his family no matter how difficult circumstances may seem.  Hence, he is a good father who tries to keep his family together and provide necessities for them.

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.

One message Fences addressed was the slight shift in spirituality that was taking place among African Americans. Switching from the belief that because you were black, certain doors will always be closed to you, to the idea that although you were black, and will face obstacles because of it, there were dreams and opportunities you now felt you could peruse. The play represented this dichotomy in the form of Troy and his son, Cory. Troy represented the old mindset, that because you were black you couldn’t strive to reach or be certain things because this country wouldn’t allow it. This was displayed in act one when Troy talks about not being able to get promoted and his failed baseball career. Troy had everything it took to play in the Major

The conflict during the play “Fences” was the unsatisfied dreams the Maxson Family had. Troy could not make it into baseball because he was over age. “Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.” (Hughes, Harlem 617). Troy cannot overcome his failure.

Throughout the play “Fences” by August Wilson, the character of Troy is constantly trying to shape Cory into the person he wants Cory to be, rather than permit Cory to explore possibilities and make his own decisions. These dynamics compel Cory to take drastic measures in an attempt to create the change that he wants to experience and to become the person that he envisions. The drastic measures Cory employs involve verbal and physical violence against his father. Each episode of violence changes the dynamic between father and son, but also changes Cory himself. He begins to think that aggression is the only means of creating meaningful change. While he may be correct in thinking that violence changes situations and people, he does not fully understand the implications of change for everyone touched by the conflict and this shapes his character

In Fences by August Wilson, Cory’s character is more hopeful and confident as well as passionate about his future. Due to racism and it plaguing society it has affected Troy to follow his dreams and become a father who worked a lot and make money to support the family. Cory is a stubborn character and in Wilson’s play he wishes to be independent and be able to make his own choices about his future. He decides to quit his job and pursue his football career to the college level.

“The ambition and focus that propel you to success can also be your downfall.” This quote stated by Judy Smith precisely pertains to the tragic hero, Troy Maxson, in August Wilson’s Fences. Troy Maxson had a far from endearing childhood due to a traumatizing experience where he witnessed his father rape a young girl and was a delinquent until he met his wife, Rose. For the sake of his wife, Troy became a “better man” and works a wearisome job as a garbage collector to provide for his family. His pragmatic, officious, stubborn, and hard-headed character allows for him to establish his goals for him and his family but, moreover, results in his downfall as his relationship with each of his family members crumble due to his characteristics. As the storyline progresses and Troy encounters certain circumstances that lead to his debacle as a father and a husband, the audience can detect both significant and trivial conflicts and friction between Troy and many of the other characters in the play.

Fences, a play written by August Wilson, is about how life was for African Americans in the late 1950’s. The play talks about how their race determined how people would treat them, where they could live, what kind of job they could have, and what kind of activities they could participate in. There is a character in the play, named Troy Maxson, who was a pervious baseball player in the Negro League Baseball, because of his race; he was not allowed to play in the Major League Baseball. Since Troy didn’t play baseball, he became a garbage handler in Pittsburg. He met his wife, Rose, and they had a child together. Troy ends up having an affair with a woman named, Roberta, and they conceived a child together. One of his sons, Cory, wants to play football when he attends college, but his father ruins that chance and turns down the offer before he could even make the decision. Troy worked hard to provide his family and did what he needed to make sure they survived, he thought by not allowing his son to play college football and making the decision for him would be best, and he also thought cheating on his wife would make him feel better. Troy did all of this because he felt like it was the correct thing to do in his circumstances.

In the play "Fences" by August Wilson Troy Maxson is a selfish father of three, has a wife and he had