Fences And The American Dream

August Wilson’s Fences is a play about Troy Maxson, and how his values influence his family’s. The play takes place in 1950’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Troy Maxson is a black, middle aged man working for a garbage company. Each member of the Maxson family has a special relationship with Troy, that affects their behavior throughout the play. In life you learn the most from your parents. They teach you how to walk, speak, and respect one another. Your parents also give you a set of values for life. As you grow up as your own individual, your values will change from your parents. There will be things that are much more important to you, and not as important to them. In the play Fences Troy Maxson has a very strong set of values that he believes are true in how you should live life. Troy imposes these values on everyone in his family to the best of his ability. Each character in Fences is at a different stage in their life, so Troy can’t push his values onto characters that already have their own beliefs. The character that Troy has the most influence on in the play is Cory. Troy is in Cory’s life throughout his childhood, and as his father Cory must respect Troy. Troy is very firm with Cory, because he wants Cory to be successful. Cory has a dream of becoming a football player, and this does not follow Troy’s values. Troy influences Cory so much that Cory will always be like Troy whether he realizes it or not. “Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn’t … and at

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,

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

Lives are lead with anxiety over certain issues and with apprehension towards certain events. This play, Fences written by the playwright August Wilson deals with the progression of a family through the struggles of oppression and the inability to obtain the American Dream. The characters in the play develop throughout the story and can be viewed or interpreted in many different ways, but one man remains constant during the play and that is Troy. Due to certain events that transpired as he was growing up, Troy is shaped into a very stubborn yet proud man. To be a man who was black and proud ran the risk of getting destroyed, both physically and mentally. The world of the 1950s and 60s was rapidly changing and

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.

     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,

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.

the beginning, Troy is a tough character defined by his foul mouth and healthy disposition

The first time I read August Wilson's Fences for english class, I was angry. I was angry at Troy Maxson, angry at him for having an affair, angry at him for denying his son, Cory, the opportunity for a football scholarship.I kept waiting for Troy to redeem himself in the end of the play, to change his mind about Cory, or to make up with Ruth somehow. I wanted to know why, and I didn't, couldn't understand. I had no intention of writing my research paper on this play, but as the semester continued, and I immersed myself in more literature, Fences was always in the back of my mind, and, more specifically, the character of Troy Maxson. What was Wilson trying to say with this piece? The more that

We will first discuss the play “Fences” this is a story in which the main character is a hard working African American Man. He is a good provider for his family. His wife is able to be a great homemaker and mother to his children, one of which is from another woman. Troy, who is the main character, has to make decisions not only for his family but also for his brother who is handicapped from the war. This places a lot of responsibility and pressure on Troy. Troy feels discrimination from many areas

August Wilson’s play Fences brings an introspective view of the world and of Troy Maxson’s family and friends. The title Fences displays many revelations on what the meaning and significance of the impending building of the fence in the Maxson yard represents. Wilson shows how the family and friends of Troy survive in a day to day scenario through good times and bad. Wilson utilizes his main characters as the interpreters of Fences, both literally and figuratively. Racism, confinement, and protection show what Wilson was conveying when he chose the title Fences.

The American society expects only certain things from certain people, ruining the American Dream for residents of America. In The Great Gatsby, Myrtle represents the low and ignorant class of America. She is a model for citizen who tries to break the social barriers that the society puts up and pursues wealth by any means necessary. Although people that goes extend themselves outside of their social class is achieving the American Dream, the society has its limits. When Myrtle receives a compliment made about her dress, she acts snobbish and blows off the comment. Nick sees the act that Myrtle has put on just to be a part of the upper-class society. The people around her easily recognize Myrtle’s fraudulence. Similar to Myrtle, Troy Maxson soon realizes that the society has its limits that affect the American Dream. In Fences by August Wilson, Troy Maxson sees how African-Americans are suppressed in the society he lives in. He believes that all African-Americans are “born with two strikes on you before you come to the plate” (69). Troy is always cribbing about the disadvantages of being a African-American and how his American Dream of playing baseball was jaded by they society. For both Troy and Myrtle, they have both realized that with each society come political and social ideals that destroy their American Dream.

A life spent making mistakes is not only human, but expected when the life itself is seen as a mistake. While the main character, Troy, in Wilson’s play “Fences” elicits exclamations of disapproval from the readers, Troy’s background gives meaning to his poor decision making as a man, husband, and father in the 1950s. Troy’s thought process, loss of sense of self, and actions prove him to be a pure example of a black everyman. The black everyman bends under the pressure of having to be highly masculine while also living under the thumb of the white race. It is clear in every interaction Troy is in that he oozes sadness, while inwardly seething at the slightest implications of anyone around him reaching new heights. Thus making Troy’s character not only believable due to his hypocrisy, but also sympathetic as a result of the disadvantages he has lived through. I see a part of Troy in every black man I know, always wanting more, but never losing the awareness that it may be out of their grasp.