Fences- August Wilson

Plot

Fences is divided into two acts. Act One is comprised of four scenes and Act Two has five. The play begins on a Friday, Troy and Bono's payday. Troy and Bono go to Troy's house for their weekly ritual of drinking and talking. Troy has asked Mr. Rand, their boss, why the black employees aren't allowed to drive the garbage trucks, only to lift the garbage. Bono thinks Troy is cheating on his wife, Rose. Troy and Rose's son, Cory, has been recruited by a college football team. Troy was in the Negro Leagues but never got a chance to play in the Major Leagues because he got too old to play just as the Major Leagues began accepting black players. Troy goes into a long epic story about his struggle in July of 1943 with death. Lyons shows up at the house because he knows it is Troy's payday. Rose reminds Troy about the fence she's asked him to finish building. Cory and Troy work on the fence. Cory breaks the news to Troy that he has given away his job at the local grocery store, the A&P, during the football season. Cory begs Troy to let him play because a coach from North Carolina is coming all the way to Pittsburgh to see Cory play. Troy refuses and demands Cory to get his job back. Act One, scene four takes place on Friday and mirrors scene one. Troy has won his case and has been assigned as the first colored garbage truck driver in the city. Bono and Troy remember their fathers and their childhood experiences of leaving home in the south and moving north. Cory comes home enraged after finding out that Troy told the football coach that Cory may not play on the team. Troy warns Cory that his insubordinance is "strike one," against him. Troy bails his brother Gabriel out of jail. Bono and Troy work on the fence. Bono explains to Troy and Cory that Rose wants the fence because she loves her family and wants to keep close to her love. Troy admits to Bono that he is having an affair with Alberta. Bono bets Troy that if he finishes building the fence for Rose, Bono will buy his wife, Lucille the refrigerator he has promised her for a long time. Troy tells Rose about a hearing in three weeks to determine whether or not Gabriel should be recommitted to an asylum. Troy tells Rose about his affair. Rose accuses Troy of taking and not giving. Troy grabs Rose's arm. Cory grabs Troy from behind. They fight and Troy wins. Troy calls "strike two" on Cory. Six months later, Troy says he is going over to the hospital to see Alberta who went into labor early. Rose tells Troy that Gabriel has been taken away to the asylum because Troy couldn't read the papers and signed him away. Alberta had a baby girl but died during childbirth. Troy challenges Death to come and get him after he builds a fence. Troy brings home his baby, Raynell. Rose takes in Raynell as her own child, but refuses to be dutiful as Troy's wife. On Troy's payday, Bono shows up unexpectedly. Troy and Bono acknowledge how each man made good on his bet about the fence and the refrigerator. Troy insists that Cory leave the house and provide for himself. Cory brings up Troy's recent failings with Rose. Cory points out that the house and property, from which Troy is throwing Cory out, should actually be owned by Gabriel whose government checks paid for most of the mortgage payments. Troy physically attacks Cory. Troy kicks Cory out of the house for good. Cory leaves. Troy swings the baseball bat in the air, taunting Death. Eight years later, Raynell plays in her newly planted garden. Troy has died from a heart attack. Cory returns home from the Marines to attend Troy's funeral. Lyons and Bono join Rose too. Cory refuses to attend. Rose teaches Cory that not attending Troy's funeral does not make Cory a man. Raynell and Cory sing one of Troy's father's blues songs. Gabriel turns up, released or escaped from the mental hospital. Gabe blows his trumpet but no sound comes out. He tries again but the trumpet will not play. Disappointed and hurt, Gabriel dances. He makes a cry and the Heavens open wide. He says, "That's the way that goes," and the play ends.

QUOTES- Black Culture (Bono)

"[Troy's] gonna be the first colored driver. Ain't got to do nothing but sit up there and read the paper like them white fellows

Context

-Fences ends in 1965, but the themes of the play directly place its consciousness in a pre-civil-rights-movement, pre-Vietnam-war-era psyche. -In Fences as in Wilson's other plays, a tragic character helps pave the way for other blacks to have opportunities under conditions they were never free to experience, but never reap from their own sacrifice and talents themselves. This is Troy Maxson's situation. Troy's last name, "Maxson," is a compressed reference to the Mason-Dixon line, considered as the imaginary line originally conceived of in 1820 to define the separation between the slave states and the free states. Maxson represents an amalgamation of Troy's history in the south and present life in the north that are inextricably linked. -Wilson asks his audience to put together what they know of American history with the way his various characters experience and perceive history through their own, often conflicted eyes. -The Pittsburgh of the Maxson family is a town where Troy and other men of his generation fled from the savage conditions of sharecropping in the south. After Reconstruction failed, many blacks walked north as far as they could go to become urban citizens. Having no resources or infrastructure to depend on, men like Bono and Troy found their way in the world by spending years living in shacks, stealing, and in jail. -Published: 1986 -Settings (Times): 1957, later, 1965 -Setting (Place): The dirt-yard and porch of the Maxson family's house in Pittsburgh, PA

QUOTES- Past/Black Culture (Troy)

...get you a trade. That way you have something can't nobody take away from you.

QUOTES- Death (Troy)

Alright...Mr. Death. See now...I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take and build me a fence around this yard. See? I'm gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See? You stay over there until you're ready for me. Then you come on. Bring your army. Bring your sickle.

Symbols - BETRAYAL- Fences

August Wilson did not name his play, Fences, simply because the dramatic action depends strongly on the building of a fence in the Maxson's backyard. Rather, the characters lives change around the fence-building project which serves as both a literal and a figurative device, representing the relationships that bond and break in the arena of the backyard. The fact that Rose wants the fence built adds meaning to her character because she sees the fence as something positive and necessary. Bono observes that Rose wants the fence built to hold in her loved ones. To Rose, a fence is a symbol of her love and her desire for a fence indicates that Rose represents love and nurturing. Troy and Cory on the other hand think the fence is a drag and reluctantly work on finishing Rose's project. Bono also observes that to some people, fences keep people out and push people away. Bono indicates that Troy pushes Rose away from him by cheating on her. Troy's lack of commitment to finishing the fence parallels his lack of commitment in his marriage. The fence appears finished only in the final scene of the play, when Troy dies and the family reunites. The wholeness of the fence comes to mean the strength of the Maxson family and ironically the strength of the man who tore them apart, who also brings them together one more time, in death.

Symbol- BLACK CULTURE The Blues

August Wilson says he uses the language and attitude of blues songs to inspire his plays and play characters. The blues is a melancholy song created by black people in the United States that tends to repeat a twelve bar phrase of music and a 3-line stanza that repeats the first line in the second line. A blues song usually contains several blue, or minor, notes in the melody and harmony. Fences is structured somewhat like a blues song. The play all takes place in one place like a key of music and the characters each have their own rhythm and melody that Wilson riffs off of around the common locale. Characters repeat phrases, or pass phrases around, like a blues band with a line of melody. Similar to the role of repeated lyrics and melody of a blues song, Wilson's characters display changes in their life and a changed attitude toward life by repeating scenarios in which they act. For instance, Friday, Troy's payday, is the setting of three scenes. By mirroring the situation in which events in the play take place, we can observe the change that occurs from one instance to the next. For instance in Act One, Scene one, Troy and Bono come home after payday as best friends worried about Troy's future. In Act One, Scene Four, Troy and Bono celebrate after payday because Troy won his discrimination case, but Bono is more concerned that Troy will ruin his life with his extramarital affair. Troy comes home after payday in Act Two, Scene Four, estranged from Bono and his family. He drinks and sings to comfort himself. By now, the good days of the play's first scene seem far-gone. This is a way playwrights manipulate the sense of time in a play, but for Wilson in particular, the repeated events and language of the play are in keeping what he calls a "blues aesthetic."

THEMES - Manhood (Gender Roles)/Social Structure and Upbringing (BLACK CULTURE)

Both Troy and Bono relate stories of their childhood in the south and tales of their relationships with difficult fathers to Lyons in Act One, scene four. Their often-painful memories provide a context for understanding the similarities and differences of the generations separating Troy and Bono from Lyons and Cory. Troy's father, like many blacks after the abolishment of slavery was a failed sharecropper. Troy claims that his father was so evil that no woman stayed with him for very long, so Troy grew up mostly motherless. When Troy was fourteen, his father noticed that the mule Troy was supposedly taking care of had wandered off. Troy's father found Troy with a girl Troy had a crush on and severely beat Troy with leather reins. Troy thought his father was just angry at Troy for his disobedience, but proving Troy's father was even more despicable, his father then raped the girl. Troy was afraid of his father until that moment. At that moment, however, Troy believes he became a man. He could no longer live under the roof with a man that would commit these unacceptable acts, so he left home to be on his own, though he was homeless and broke, with no ties or family elsewhere. Manhood, to Troy, meant separating from his father because of conflict and abuse. The one attribute Troy respected and proudly inherited was a sense of responsibility. Troy's father provided for eleven children, and Troy too became the sole breadwinner for his family. Bono however, remembers a different type of father. Bono's father was equally depressed about life as Troy's father, but unlike Troy's father, Bono's dad never provided a fathering or providing role to Bono and his family. Bono describes his father as having, "The Walking Blues," a condition that prevented his father from staying in one place for long and moving frequently from one woman to the next. Bono could barely recognize his father and knew little about him. Bono says his father, like many other African Americans of his father's generation, were "searching out The New Land." As blacks were freed from slavery and wanted to escape the often slavery-like conditions of sharecropping, many walked north in what history calls The Great Migration, to pursue a better life in the north, particularly in urban centers. Because of Bono's father's unreliable personality, Bono chose not to father children, to insure he would not abandon a child like his father. But, contrary to Bono's fears, his father's personality was not a family trait, but a choice he made to cope with his particular circumstances. Bono has been loyal to his wife, Lucille for almost eighteen years. Lyons and Cory had very different upbringings, though their development into men does not fall too far from the tree of their father's experience. Lyons spent his entire childhood growing up with only one parent, his mother, while Troy was in jail. Lyons feels he has the right to make his own life decisions and pursue his own dreams in music because he had more familial support and fewer hardships than Troy. Troy was not around to mold him into a responsible person, so Lyons tends to need to borrow money, though he does pay Troy back respectfully. Cory ends up leaving home in a similar conflict with Troy that Troy had with Cory's paternal grandfather. To Troy and Cory, becoming a man comes to mean leaving the man that raised you because of a violent conflict. This painful process of coming of age is confusing. For both Troy and Cory, the creation of their own identity when their role model is a creature of duality—part responsible and loyal, the other side, hurtful, selfish and abusive, proves a difficult model with which to mold their own identity as grown men with a more promising future than the father who threatens their livelihood.

Motifs - PAST/HISTORY Seeds and Growth

Characters in Fences literally and figuratively employ the motif of seeds, flowers, plants, and related actions like growing, taking root, planting, and gestation—in both their language and actions. Like August Wilson's mother whose name is Daisy, Rose has the name of a flower. Rose is a typical African American 1950's housewife and, as the caretaker of the family and home, she represents loving care and nurturing, attributes also frequently used to grow plants. Like the characteristics of the flower after which she is named, Rose is a beautiful soul who protects her family and protects herself when Troy hurts her. In Act Two, scene, five, Rose demonstrates to Raynell that seeds take time to grow. Rose says, "You just have to give it a chance. It'll grow." She exemplifies patience and generosity in her relationships with everyone in the play. For instance when she sides with Cory on his decision to play football, her compassion and concern for Gabriel when he is arrested and her acceptance of Raynell as her own child when Alberta dies. When Troy complains in Act Two, scene one that he needs to escape to Alberta's bed because he feels as if he has been in the same place for sixteen years, Rose replies, "I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy." Rose is sedentary, like the flower, growing upward in the same spot. She relates her decision to live life invested in her husband's life even though she knows he will never be as successful as they once hoped. In Act Two, scene one Rose's description of her life is a metaphor of planting. She says, "I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...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. And it didn't take me no eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom. But I held on to you, Troy." Rose lessens the rocky and hard nature of Troy with her love and compassion, providing shelter to her children from their father's destructive behavior and legacy. She has raised Cory lovingly and teaches Raynell about loving, a hopeful future and forgiveness.

QUOTES- Betrayal/Family (Rose)

I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and waited and prayed over it

QUOTES- Past (Troy)

Jackie Robinson wasnt nobody

Motifs- HISTORY/PAST, BLACK CULTURE- Death and Baseball

Much of the conflict in Wilson's plays, including Fences, arises because the characters are at odds with the way they see the past and what they want to do with the future. For example, Troy Maxson and his son, Cory see Cory's future differently because of the way they interpret history. Troy does not want Cory to experience the hardship and disappointment Troy felt trying to become a professional sports player, so he demands that Cory work after school instead of practicing with the football team. Cory, however, sees that times changed since baseball rejected a player as talented as Troy because of the color of his skin. Cory knows the possibility exists that the professional sports world will include, not exclude him. In Act One, Scene Three, Cory provides examples of successful African American athletes to Troy. Cory says, "The Braves got Hank Aaron and Wes Covington. Hank Aaron hit two home runs today. That makes forty-three." Troy responds, "Hank Aaron ain't nobody." Cory's sport, football, integrated its players years before baseball. For Troy to accept this change in the world would cause Troy to accept the death of his own dreams. Troy refuses to see Cory's potential because it would mean accepting his own misfortune. Troy and Cory see history in a way that benefits their worldview. Unfortunately this conflict pushes father and son away from each other. Troy, who learned a responsible work ethic from his otherwise abusive father, means well when he insists that Cory return to work at the A&P because he sees the job as fair, honest work that isn't at the mercy of powerful whites' sometimes arbitrary decisions, as in Major League baseball. But by attempting to insure Cory of a harmless future, Troy stifles his son's potential and prevents Cory from having a promising future. Troy's perception of what is right and what is wrong for Cory, based on Troy's refusal to perceive a historical change in the acceptance of blacks, tragically causes Cory to experience a disappointing fate similar to Troy's. Troy passes his personal history on to his family in other ways throughout the play with sayings that represent his philosophies of life like, "You gotta take the crookeds with the straights." His children also inherit Troy's past by learning songs he sings like, "Hear It Ring! Hear It Ring!" a song Troy's own father taught him. Cory tells Rose in Act Two, scene five, "Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere." Troy's songs and sayings link his family to the difficult life in the south that his generation was free to run away from, though penniless and without roots in the north. Troy's purposefully and inadvertently passes on his life experience to his children and family, for better and for worse.

THEMES - Past/History

Much of the conflict in Wilson's plays, including Fences, arises because the characters are at odds with the way they see the past and what they want to do with the future. For example, Troy Maxson and his son, Cory see Cory's future differently because of the way they interpret history. Troy does not want Cory to experience the hardship and disappointment Troy felt trying to become a professional sports player, so he demands that Cory work after school instead of practicing with the football team. Cory, however, sees that times changed since baseball rejected a player as talented as Troy because of the color of his skin. Cory knows the possibility exists that the professional sports world will include, not exclude him. In Act One, Scene Three, Cory provides examples of successful African American athletes to Troy. Cory says, "The Braves got Hank Aaron and Wes Covington. Hank Aaron hit two home runs today. That makes forty-three." Troy responds, "Hank Aaron ain't nobody." Cory's sport, football, integrated its players years before baseball. For Troy to accept this change in the world would cause Troy to accept the death of his own dreams. Troy refuses to see Cory's potential because it would mean accepting his own misfortune. Troy and Cory see history in a way that benefits their worldview. Unfortunately this conflict pushes father and son away from each other. Troy, who learned a responsible work ethic from his otherwise abusive father, means well when he insists that Cory return to work at the A&P because he sees the job as fair, honest work that isn't at the mercy of powerful whites' sometimes arbitrary decisions, as in Major League baseball. But by attempting to insure Cory of a harmless future, Troy stifles his son's potential and prevents Cory from having a promising future. Troy's perception of what is right and what is wrong for Cory, based on Troy's refusal to perceive a historical change in the acceptance of blacks, tragically causes Cory to experience a disappointing fate similar to Troy's. Troy passes his personal history on to his family in other ways throughout the play with sayings that represent his philosophies of life like, "You gotta take the crookeds with the straights." His children also inherit Troy's past by learning songs he sings like, "Hear It Ring! Hear It Ring!" a song Troy's own father taught him. Cory tells Rose in Act Two, scene five, "Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere." Troy's songs and sayings link his family to the difficult life in the south that his generation was free to run away from, though penniless and without roots in the north. Troy's purposefully and inadvertently passes on his life experience to his children and family, for better and for worse.

Rose Maxson

Rose's name, like August Wilson's mother's name, Daisy, is the name of a flower. Flowers, seeds and planting comprise a motif that Wilson uses in Fences to represent nurturing, loving, kindness, and care because of the parallel qualities these attributes share with all living things that need nurturing to grow or change, like love and patience and forgiveness. Rose Maxson exemplifies these traits of compassion in all of her relationships, especially as a parent. Unlike Troy, Rose is a fair judge of character. She puts her faith in her husband and son and hopes for a better future while not begrudging the stagnant present situation.

QUOTES- Manhood (Troy)

This is men talk. I got some talk for you later. You know what kind of talk I mean. You go on and powder it up

Gabriel Maxson

Similar to characters like the Fool in King Lear or other Shakespearean plays, Gabriel is the wise fool, a character who often sounds silly or nonsensical, but who often knows more about the characters around him than they know about themselves. When he talks to his brother Troy in riddles about hellhounds and St. Peter in Act One, Scene Two, Gabe seems to observe Troy's fates with clarity. He tries, in his playful language, to warn Troy of his tragic fate.

QUOTES- Betrayal/Family (Bono)

Some people build fences to keep people out...and other people build fences to keep people in.

Troy Maxon

The protagonist of Fences, Troy is a responsible man whose thwarted dreams make him prone to believing in self-created illusions. Troy begins the play by entertaining Bono and Rose with an epic story about his struggle with a personified Death, or Devil, character. Another example of Troy's ability to live in a fictitious world is his denial to his best friend, Bono about the reality of his extramarital affair with Alberta. Fences is largely Troy's story. What all of the play characters have in common is a complicated relationship with Troy. Troy's character creates the large and small conflicts with everyone else in Fences. Troy instigates conflict as a result of his ability to believe in self-created illusions and his inability to accept other's choices in life when they differ from Troy's own philosophy. Rose often contradicts his stories about himself and versions of what happened in the past. Troy also aggressively disagrees with Lyons' decision to be a musician and Cory's decision to play football in college, as well as Rose's habit of playing the numbers. Troy's last name, Maxson, is an amalgamation of Mason and Dixon, after the Mason-Dixon line, the name for the imaginary line that separated the slave states from the free states. Troy's name symbolically demonstrates Troy's character as one who lives on a line between two opposing ideas. Troy's history is equal parts southern and northern, half-full of hope and half-filled with disappointment. He was once at the top of an exciting career opportunity as a ball-player that nose-dived into a life in a dead-end job. The son of an unsuccessful sharecropper, Troy provides a bridge to the Maxson family history in the south and to the effects slavery had and continues to have on generations of black lives. The south and the north define Troy's history and this duality drives a dividing line between him and his sons, Lyons and Cory who grew up believing that they could achieve their dreams without unjust restraint. Through song and story-telling, Troy's character serves as the family grit, a traditional role in African cultures as a paternal oral historian whose stories provide an understanding of the context of their loved ones' lives. Another duality is Troy's hypocrisy. Troy demands that his loved ones live practical, responsible lives while he has the freedom to have an affair, rebel against racist practices of his employers by protesting the limitation of black workers as lifters not drivers on the trash trucks. Troy refuses to see life in any way presented to him but the way he perceives events in his own head. Troy Maxson is a classically drawn tragic-hero. He begins the play loved, admired and getting away with his secret affair. But eventually, Troy's death leaves many negative attributes as an inheritance for his family to sort out and accept.

Symbols - BLACK CULTURE, PAST Trains

Troy brings his illegitimate baby, Raynell home for the first time at the beginning of the Act Two, Scene Three of Fences. Troy sits with his motherless baby on a porch where he once reigned, but now is an unwanted presence. Then, Troy sings the song, "Please Mr. Engineer, let a man ride the line," which echoes the pleas of a man begging a train engineer to let him ride, in hiding, for free. Especially during the Harlem Renaissance (the flourishing of African American artists, writers, poets, etc. in the first half of the Twentieth Century) and during slavery times, respectively, trains were common literary devices in African American literature and music. A character that rides a train or talks of trains, or even goes to a train station came to represent change. Trains represent the coming or arrival of a major change in a character's life. In Fences, Troy identifies with the blues song about riding the train. By singing this particular song, Troy's acknowledges that his actions caused the upheaval in the lives of his loved ones. Troy sings, "Please Mr. Engineer let a man ride the line," but in other words he is crying out to his wife, Rose to let him back into her home. Like the voice in the song, Troy is homeless and has nothing to offer the one he needs something from in order to keep going. Especially with a baby in hand, Troy has no future without his wife. In order to come back into her life, Troy knows he is asking Rose to give him a free ride of forgiveness. If she does take him back, Troy knows life with her will never return to the life they once had together because he lost her trust and respect when he committed adultery. The train song also connotes the time Troy and many other men of his generation spent wandering North during the Great Migration. He sings, "I ain't got no ticket, please let me ride the blinds," which represents the poverty the released slaves and the failed sharecroppers experienced in Troy's father's generation. Troy sings the song to his newborn daughter, passing on a song that tells an important story of her past and links that past to the present. Troy's song exemplifies the tradition in African American history to make something from nothing-like the song. Troy hopes his love for his daughter and her innocence will change Rose's heart and allow Troy another chance at fatherhood and marriage.

Symbol- DEATH The Devil

Troy casts the Devil as the main character of his exaggerated stories that entertain, bewilder and frustrate his family and friends. Eventually, Troy's association of the Devil as a harbinger of death comes to represent his struggle to survive the trials of his life. Many scenes in the play end with Troy speaking a soliloquy to Death and the Devil. In Act One, Scene One, Troy spins a long yarn, or tale about his fight for several days with the Devil. The story of the Devil endears Troy to audiences early on by revealing his capability to imagine and believe in the absurd. In another story, Troy turns a white salesman into a Devil. Troy calls a man the Devil who tried to sell Troy furniture in exchange for monthly payments by mail. Again, providing the pragmatic version of the story, Rose explains why Troy invents stories about the Devil. "Anything you don't understand, you call the Devil." Troy observes door-to-door salesmen and the process of layaway for the first time and in his ignorance, turns a modern occurrence into a mythical story. Troy also describes the Devil's appearance as a man in a white hood. Wilson conjures the image of KKK members in KKK regalia with this description. Troy imagines the Devil, not just as an airy spirit from hell but also as a living human being. To Troy, the Devil sometimes symbolizes the aggression and cowardice of bigotry. Troy's stories about the Devil show that Troy sees himself as a man winning a fight against injustice and hatred. Troy's courage in overcoming racism is also suggested by Troy's complaint against the Sanitation Department that eventually hires Troy as the first black man to drive a trash truck. However, as the play progresses and Troy loses the love of his family and inadvertently betrays his brother, Gabriel, the less we believe in Troy's ability to win in his struggle to overcome the bad luck of his fate and the demons he carries within that become even greater forces than the racism that curtailed his dreams.

QUOTES- Past/Family (Cory)

You just scared I'm gonna be better than you, that's all.

QUOTES- Manhood (Troy)

You live in my house...sleep you behind on my bedclothes...fill you belly up with my food...cause you my son. You my flesh and blood. Not cause I like you! Cause it's my duty to take care of you.