Misery In The Play Fences

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,

During the Reagan Era, the play Fences was made in 1983 by August Wilson, in which discusses the race relations and experiences of black people. The play is set during the 1950’s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Troy, the protagonist, is a 53-year-old man trying to satisfy his family needs economically. Throughout the play, there is racial discrimination towards black people, due to them not having their civil rights back in the 1950’s. Not only that, but this text uses other texts to add support for the style of writing and create a more significant meaning of the text. Therefore, the text Fences has borrowed from other texts by the use of biblical allusions and referring to the context of historical indications, in which adds credibility

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

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 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

One narrative element that August Wilson uses in his play “Fences” to create tension, is that of conflict which he uses to show the tension that exists between Troy and his oldest son, Lyons. Lyons was raised by Troy’s ex-wife but now frequently stops by Troy’s house to borrow money which he seldom repays. One day, after Lyons has stopped by asking for ten dollars, Troy makes a comment to his best friend, Bono, saying, “What I tell you, Bono? The only time I see this nigger is when he wants something.” (16) This shows a conflict over money that is present between Troy and Lyons which is caused by and adds to the tension that exists in the play between these characters and others. August Wilson’s addition of conflict with Troy and Lyons’ story is able to show the immense tension that Troy

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

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

Troy is forced at fourteen to become a man, is shot then sent to prison for attempting to get “what [his family] needed when all of their avenues were closed” (“Blackness”). In other words, Troy is depicted as a character who is mixture of the traditional literary hero, admirable, brave, and honest, and the modern anti-hero who exhibits the qualities of a petty criminal. Because Wilson believed that Black people are capable of enduring debilitating racism and still convey “their most painful experiences in a transcendent or even joyful manner”, Fences could not address the dilemma of tragedy, “balancing a tragic hero’s sympathetic nature with his fundamental flaw” and simultaneously portray a truthful view into the life of a flawed Black hero (Webber 666). In order to demonstrate how a Black hero endures tragedy, Wilson spreads the themes of reversal and recognition throughout the play rather than a single conclusive scene. As a result, the play appears to reach moments of potential resolution with, as Joseph Wessling states, a forgiveness and grace that is more commonly found in a comedy, only to return to the continuing story of

I believe the play, “Fences”, was written and performed to show how hard it was for African Americans to “break into” the white culture and society. Fences has two acts and a total of nine scenes. There are two main characters that begin the play; Troy and Bono. There is also a series of themes, motifs and symbols that are relevant in the play. In this response, I will be exploring Troy Maxon’s character and how he is a very complicated person and how he as a father does not want to encourage his son because of his own past failures.

August Wilson’s, Fences, is often considered the African-American counterpart to the play, The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Therefore, this leads to many analyses comparing and contrasting the two main characters, Troy Maxson and Willy Loman. This is examined through the scene our group chose, where Troy is losing his grip on reality and his family, more specifically his son Cory, because it illustrates one of the main differences between Troy and Willy. In the scene chosen, Troy is conscious of what is happening, he understands he has lost the respect of his son, and begins to realize that he has lost the fleeting grip on reality he originally had. While contrastingly, in Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman lies to himself and others to avoid recognizing his failures. This led to our group focusing on researching more about the American Dream. The American Dream, or in this case the lack of, is essentially what killed both of the protagonists in each script. It emphasizes the message both playwrights were

In the play Fences by August Wilson, a man named Troy goes throughout his life feeling as if African Americans will never be equal to that of a white man. Although times have changed, Troy still does not believe racial discrimination is ending, and is withheld from many new opportunities. While most stories have a protagonist, that changes for the better throughout the story, Troy is not a typical one. Even though he has a stern and hard personality during the play, there is a hint of sympathy that is revealed throughout the dialogue. One major event that stood out was Troy swinging the bat at his son but not following through with his action. This demonstrated that Troy realized he didn’t want to be like his terrible father. Another example