Similarities Between Troy Maxon And Fences

To begin with, Troy Maxson is noble because he is the man of the house. He goes to work everyday, pays the bills, buys food, does maintenance , and

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 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

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,

Almost everyone Troy encounters in the play, he betrays, for example taking away his son's dreams, and locking away his brother. One person Troy betrays is his son, Cory, out of spite and jealousy. Since Troy is Cory’s father he feels he can control his life even if it means hurting Cory, one way he does this is by taking away his dream, “Papa done went up to the school and told Coach Zellman I can’t play football no more.” (Act 1 Scene 4) Troy knows that this is what Cory wants to do, he wants to play professional football. Due to the fact that Troy’s baseball dream did not come true, he pulled Cory out of football, claiming that it was for his own good when in reality it was out of jealousy. Troy also betrays his brother by locking him in a mental hospital. In the beginning of the play, Troy claims he wants his brother to be free and explains that nobody should be locked up. Then towards the end of the play Rose tells Troy, “I said send him to the hospital, you said let him be free… now you done went down there and signed him to the hospital for half of his money.” Troy claims he wants his brother to be happy but truthfully he wanted half of Gabriel's money, and just did not want to admit it. In order to receive half of the money Troy took away Gabriel's happiness and betrayed

In Fences, August Wilson tells a story that includes baseball as a major part of the play. Even though baseball is a huge part of the play, the game itself is not actually played. Troy, who is the main character of the play, is the main source of all the conflicts that occur in the story. Whenever a conflict occurs in the story, Troy uses baseball analogies to explain his reasoning. Baseball also plays a historical part of the play to create the setting and the characters. In the play, baseball echoes the history of America and the racial discrimination that occurred to African Americans.

A tragic figure is someone who is noble or wholesome that does something that leads to their inevitable demise. Troy fits this profile. He especially shows this when he tries to show off to his wife by talking about how great he is at baseball. “Selkirk! That’s it! Man batting .269, understand? .269. What kind of sense that make? I was hitting .432 with thirty-seven home runs! Man batting .269 and playing right field for the Yankees!”(1159). Clearly Troy feels as if he was cheated out of his chance to play in the major leagues. He’s talking about how he’s much better than the players now and you can tell that he’s upset about it. Troy lets the fact that

In the Negro Leagues, black athletes were almost never given a chance to continue their career into the big leagues. This remained the way of baseball until Jackie Robinson was aloud into the white baseball leagues. The character Troy was set in the times before Robinson and would never reach the professional level because Robinson was a good role model who had no bad habits. As for Troy, he was no role model learning how to play baseball in jail. This is why Troy would have to fight and fight to make it into the major leagues.

In "Fences" baseball symbolizes a lot of meanings. Troy is proud of baseball and he not afraid of anything or the values of his life because his attitude toward death is satisfying. In addition, Troy discover baseball as one of the best moments of his life. In the article "Baseball as History and Myth in August Wilson's Fences" by Susan Koprince, she writes about history and mythic connection of baseball as metaphor for the American Dream, while in the article "Walking Around the Fences: Troy Maxson and the Ideology of "Going Down Swinging" by David Letzler, writes about Troy beliefs and ideas of "Going Down Swinging" in "Fences." Both articles by Koprince and Letzler are summarize and compare with each other analysts and one article was point out to be more convincing than the other and the reason why I agree with each writer.

Troy, when he was younger, played baseball and in the play he touts he was better than some of the “greats” playing now. The integrated baseball leagues didn’t come about until after Troy was out of his prime so he could never make a career out of it like he had wanted. Throughout “Fences” Troy brings up his past glory days in baseball mostly to draw attention back to the discrimination in the world that still exists after the integrated leagues. He doesn’t directly mention he’s upset about not being able to follow his dream, or even that baseball was his dream, but Wilson has Troy reflect back onto those days so the reader knows that was his hidden passion. Since the baseball leagues allowed blacks to play only after his prime, Troy begins to believe the world is against him so he grows to become a rude, self-righteous man (Wilcots).

Troy becomes so wrapped up in his own misfortunes and bitterness that he fails to realize what strength his family really has (Zirin). They are trying and willing to help him but he is unable to fathom the possibility of that because he is so far gone. Troy says “…Come on! It’s between you and me now!

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.

A tragic hero is a literary character who exhibits qualities that are greater than normal. Some catastrophe or problem sparks, causing the characters downfall. The character Troy displays a protagonist and antagonist role in the play/movie “Fences”. First incident where Troy displays the hero role is when he battles to earn the African American men the right to drive the dump trucks instead of only being able to pick the trash up. He talks to his boos about the situation because it isn’t fair that the whites can drives but not the blacks. His boss tells him that he needs to take his concern to the Union because he can’t do much about it in his position. With his will to not give up on the case he ends up winning that decision so now the African

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 all cases considered, the villain usually reigns over the hero of the story, and as he may seem fearless, he is a coward hidden within himself. Never is a villain positioned lowly in a story, because the purpose is to have an imbalance between good and evil to show that even when evil is dominant, good still conquers.