August Wilson Literary Devices

Troy's lack of commitment to finishing the fence that Rose wants put up represents his lack of commitment in his marriage. He doesn't understand that Rose wants to keep the family close because he never truly had a close family. He becomes a womanless man. “From right now… this child got a mother. But you a womanless man” (79). Troy pushes Lyons away by refusing to hear him play his "Chinese music" (48). He also damages his relationship with his other son, Cory, by preventing him from playing football and rejecting his only chance to get recruited by a college football team. The “fence” also depicts that Troy is disowning Cory when they get into an argument and Troy kicks him out on to the streets. Troy states that Cory’s things will be on “the other side of that fence” (89). As a result, Troy ends up driving everybody away just like his father. The “fence” acts like a physical divider between the Maxson’s household and the outside world because Troy doesn’t bring anything others would normally have into his house and Rose does not want any outsider intruding her family.

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

Throughout the play, readers see an incomplete fence which symbolizes Rose (Troy’s wife) and Troy’s drifting relationship. Rose wants Troy and Cory to build a fence to keep her loved ones protected. This is evident when Rose is seen singing the church hymn, “Jesus, be a fence all around me every day. Jesus, I want you to protect me as I travel on

Troy and Cory is all Rose has, she is afraid of losing them and although she does not say anything, she believes the fence will keep them close to her and the bad will stay on the other side of the fence. Rose is a strong black woman who loves and cares for her family and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe and close to her. Troy does not care for the fence, he believes it’s pointless to build the fence therefore, he slowly works on it.

As with most works of literature, the title Fences is more than just a title. It could be initially noted that there is only one physical fence being built by the characters onstage, but what are more important are the ideas that are being kept inside and outside of the fences that are being built by Troy and some of the other characters in Fences. The fence building becomes quite figurative, as Troy tries to fence in his own desires and infidelities. Through this act of trying to contain his desires and hypocrisies one might say, Troy finds himself fenced in, caught between his pragmatic and illusory ideals. On the one side of the fence, Troy creates illusions and embellishments on the truth, talking about how he wrestled with death, his

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

In the play when Cory and Troy fight, Troy kicks Cory out of the house saying, “Cory: Tell Mama I'll be back for my things. Troy: They'll be on the other side of that fence." (Henderson) It is in this particular passage that Troy uses the fence physically to represent the dividing line between Cory and him, but more specifically the emotional barrier he’s put between him and his family. Troy grew up with an abusive father which makes his complete emotional disregard towards his family logical. If the man that raised you taught you keep your emotional guard up even with your family, you would probably treat your family the same way that Troy treated his; with complete emotional neglect and disregard. The fence working as barrier could also symbolize Troy trying to protect himself from feeling too deeply towards things which could end up disappointing him or already have. For instance, when Troy became passionate about becoming a Major League Baseball player he suffered extreme disappointment when he was rejected because of his race. It was this life lesson that reinforced Troy’s upbringing of emotional disregard towards things he could grow to either want, love, or feel passionate about like his family and friends. Troy’s philosophy in building the fence was that if you don’t grow an emotional attachment to something then it cannot hurt you, and he stayed by philosophy till his death. The fence also became symbolic of the barrier Troy wanted to

Wilson uses the character of Troy, his family, and his friends in Fences to pour out his life, his

Part of the reason it takes the entirety of the play to be built is because Troy has been ignoring its construction. He builds the wall between himself and Cory by not having a perfect relationship with him from the start and for not being around to work on the fence. Cory alludes to the fact that Troy, "don't never do nothing, but go down to Taylors’" (29). Knowing what Troy has been doing with Alberta this whole time, every time he goes “down to Taylors’”(29) he is seeing his mistress Alberta. Troy neglecting to build the fence represents his neglect for his family. He forced himself to fence himself in and his family out, causing despair for Cory, Lyon, and Rose. Although it may have been a bad thing to do to your own family, it was effective for Troy to gradually become independant from the rest of his family

August Wilson is a well-known playwright from the 1980s, in which he wrote and published the “Pittsburg Cycle”, a series of plays about struggling black families in the city. In Wilson’s 1983 play, “Fences”, the topics of oppression and betrayal are discussed through the trials of a family living in Pittsburg whom the odds are seemingly stacked against. This play was made into a movie, where the trials and tribulations of this family are brought to life. Troy and Rose, husband and wife of eighteen years, share one climatic scene in which all the issues they face bubble to the surface. In this scene, Wilson utilizes rhetorical strategies to enhance the emotional appeal for the audience.

One of these metaphorical fences that was shown throughout the play was the fence that Troy built between himself and his wife, family, and friends. Bono points out that Troy builds this fence between his wife because he is cheating on her. Troy pushes his wife farther and farther from him by cheating on her. Rose finds out that Troy had been cheating on her when Troy tells her that the other woman is pregnant. The other woman dies during childbirth forcing Rose and Troy to take care of the child. During the play he does not have the motivation to finish the physical fence that he is building, which is similar to the motivation he is to stay committed to his wife. Troy is unable to open himself and communicate his emotions and his own affection. This effects Rose because she is unaware that he is cheating the entire time, and she has to find out when he tells her he got Alberta pregnant. This leaves Rose in disappointment of her husband.

Towards the end, the fence also symbolizes confinement for Rose. One afternoon, Troy tells Rose that he’s expecting a baby from another woman, Alberta. Upset and angry, Rose passionately argues and asks Troy why he did that to her. She tells him, “I took all my feelings, my wants and my needs and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom” (2099). Rose, like every other person, is a woman with dreams, but for the sake of her husband, she placed them within him. Troy had a cruel and distressing effect on Rose. It didn’t help that Troy was bitter most of the time and made poor choices. Seemingly, Rose was not joyous the majority of the time. She wasn’t upset or outraged

It all ties into the film’s claustrophobia and the fact, as Mr. Bono tells Troy, “some people build fences to keep people out and other people build fences to keep people in.” And fences are everywhere. The fence Rose wants built around the property. The fence that Troy wants to put around his son’s dreams. The fence that stops Troy from being happy for any accomplishment outside of his own. The fence that limits Troy from watching his oldest son perform at a jazz club. The fences that Troy boasts about hitting over, with the supposed countless number of home runs he hit in the Negro Leagues.