Theme Of Fences By Pat Mora

The play, Fences, in conclusion acquires many interpretations of the “fence” that is mentioned variously. Despite there only being one physical fence, it represents many figurative fences throughout the play. The “fence” is signified as having both positive and negative

Some people in this world build fences to keep people in while other people build them to keep people out.

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.

In the film Fences by August Wilson, the audience is presented with a country that is fast evolving, with oppression, prejudice, and poverty remaining a common factor. Most scholars argue that sexism is the dominant theme in Wilson’s plays due to the portrayal of female characters occupying the stereotypical, male-fantasized roles of the domestic, powerless, or submissive mother figure rather than an empowered, complex, or realistic woman. However, a closer review of the character of Rose in Fences shows that Wilson has not embraced these stereotypes. In fact, he has aimed at subverting them by allowing domestic behavior,

Throughout time there have always been conflicts of morality and injustice. August Wilson wrote this play about issues that were prevalent in the 1950’s but also still are sadly present today. In Fences, there is an abundance of evidence of cultural clashes. In this play these clashes span over racial, generational, and even gender lines and its effects on the characters.

Pat Mora is an award-winning writer that bases most her poems on tough cultural challenges and life as a Mexican American. She was born in a Spanish speaking home in El Paso, Texas. Mora is proud to be a Hispanic writer and demonstrates how being culturally different in America is not easy. She explains this through her experiences and the experience other’s. In her poems “Elena”, “Sonrisas”, and “Fences”, Mora gives you a glimpse of what life as a Mexican American is; their hardships, trials, strength that make them who they are.

Matthew Jones declares that black masculinity is defined in three overarching categories: perception, expectation, and representation (Jones). The stories, Fences, by August Wilson and A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest Gains, the main characters are forced to live with many hardships. Yet only a few of them can declare value of their lives, and redeem themselves, despite these hardships. The stories both of the main characters are unhappy angry men the only difference is that one of the characters progressed while the other stays the same. This paper will compare and contrast them both.

The set and setting of a story plays a huge role in the story’s plot. The setting “establishes mood, situation, and character” (Mays 164). It tells you a lot about a character by revealing the character’s personality throughout the story. Setting also creates a strong emotion throughout the story, that the audience can understand. In the film and play “Fences” by August Wilson we can see the impact of setting in both versions of the story. The setting and characterization of the play and the movie changes in certain scenes, allowing the audience to make a comparison of the two.

In Pat Mora's poem, "Legal Alien," the author describes her biracial character as being "viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic, / perhaps inferior, definitely different, / viewed by Mexicans as alien," a description which highlights the situation encountered by people who strive to be prestigious individuals by floating between cultures and who consequently fail to be a part of any particular group (Mora 9-11). Often the individuals are biologically trapped between two probable lives, and they forge ahead to meet the opportunity of possibly belonging to the higher society while they degrade the small culture which has weaned them from birth. These people find themselves

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

Pat Mora easily obtains the audience’s attention by stating that the two characters will be playing a game. La Migra, is the Spanish translation from border patrol in English. It is often heard and used in the media to instill fear in immigrants in the U.S. towards deportation and troubling means. “Let’s play La Migra” (Mora 528) is the first stanza presented in the poem. Having this as the first line, it makes readers wonder. What game is it? How is it played? What does La Migra mean? (to non-Spanish speakers). It grabs and keeps your attention right form the get go because it gets you thinking about what game is going to be played and wanting to find out more of the game itself along with the rules and players. While continuing to read, more is introduced and us readers find out what kind of game it is. Then it bares the question, why would this be considered a game? Immigrants today are living in constant fear of being deported and taken back to their homeland where one can assume escaped life there in hopes of a better life in the states. While this is a real-life situation that people deal with daily, the author turns it into a game to interest the readers more and give insight into what is going on with border patrol.

Maggie Groat's piece "Fences Will Turn into Tables" is a thought provoking work that is "difficult" due to the material and function of the piece, the construction and poses questions regarding aspects of everyday life. This piece can be described as having a picnic table shape, where pieces of wooden fencing are vertically set beside each other to create a surface. Each piece of fencing is different; some are longer, others are of a different wood colour and some just have a different shape. The overall length of the table is 13.5 feet by 3 feet in width. The table is accompanied by 4 benches made of fencing, completing the set.

Subsequently, This research studies 'resistance' in Fences by August Wilson and, in which through action, time and place in use as well as characterization, introduces particular themes, which are: segregation, morality and faith, love, separation, oppression and its consequences, the sense of

1. Chorus - The function of the chorus is to keep the audience engaged by singing, dancing, and even making comments that are usually humorous about the play as it progresses. Sometimes the chorus gives out important information regarding the play like things that happen off stage, or the antecedent action: things that happen before the events of the play. The chorus in Stranger than Fiction is Karen Eiffel, who also happens to be the narrator.

Alan Nadel in his essay, May All Your Fences Have Gatest, rightly observes that, Wilson's dramas depend on the other side of the fence for each character. In other words, he discusses what is behind each character fences and boundaries. However, the identities of each character have different intention of understanding these boundaries. For instance, in the play Fences, Rose understands of building the fences is completely different than Troy's understanding. Fences for Rose represents security, represents gathering, family, and union.