Beyond The Barriers In Fence, By August Wilson

The Random House’s online dictionary defines “fence” as a noun by “a barrier enclosing or bordering a field, yard, etcetera...used to prevent entrance, to confine, or to mark a boundary.” As a verb, it defines “fence” as both “to defend; protect; guard” and also, “to ward off and keep out.” (Random House, Inc.) All three of these definitions encapsulate the relationships August Wilson describes in his play, Fences, set in the 1950s. Whether the barrier is too keep something or someone in or out, there is always a struggle to know what is beyond the fence. Wilson uses the fence metaphor to interweave the themes of barriers and protection among the characters in Fences. Troy's character is the centerpiece that all of the other relationships

in Fences gather around.

The protagonist, Troy Maxon, creates a barrier with each of the characters he interacts with during the play. Troy is husband to Rose, father to Lyons, Cory, brother to Gabriel, and best friend to Bono. With his wife, Rose, he keeps her within a boundary he’s determined in his head as the role she should play. Troy’s inability to let go of his failed baseball dreams later becomes a barrier between him and his youngest son Cory, as he denies Cory the opportunity of a football scholarship. With his oldest son, Lyons, Troy keeps him at bay, out of a mixture of guilt and disappointment. Troy’s barriers extend even to his own brother, Gabriel, by the way Troy attempts to control Gabe’s life, claiming to be looking out for him. With his best friend, Bono, he allows him into the superficial aspects of his life, but dismisses Bono’s efforts into reigning Troy in. Bono makes it past one barrier, but not all of them. Unlike Troy, Rose sees the fence as a way to protect her family. However, Rose is not protecting it from people on the outside of the fence; she is trying to salvage what is on the inside of the fence. Rose tries to fence in Troy’s antics, tries to ensure Troy doesn’t ruin the relationship with Lyons, and eventually Rose is able to convince Cory to find forgiveness for his father and to leave

the past behind. Raynell Wilson uses the metaphor of “fences” to describe the weaknesses in the familial relationships.

In act 1, scene 2, Rose sings the chorus to “Jesus, Be a Fence Around Me,” which is a petition for her protection. In act 2, scene 1, both Cory and Troy wonder why Rose wants the fence built. Jim explains that a fence may have a double function: To keep others out, or in. He concludes that Rose is trying to hold on to her loved ones. In spite of Rose’s effort to be secure, Troy’s extramarital affair with Alberta renders her unprotected with the realization that her husband of eighteen years betrayed her. To survive this broken trust, she seeks protection in the church and seeks fulfillment in her role as a mother.
Intolerant of any sport as a career for his son Cory, Troy creates a barrier in the father-son relationship when he denies Cory the opportunity to pursue his dream to attend college on a football scholarship. In contrast, the occasional barrier between Lyons and Troy emanates from Troy’s incarceration, which had prevented him from being with Lyons during Lyons’s formative years. In turn, Troy frowns on Lyons’s upbringing and on Lyons’s desire to be a jazz musician, a career that does not enable him to be the financial and, thereby, responsible head of his household.
While the play centers on Troy, the characterization of Gabe, his younger brother, reflects complexity and significance. He is the only one of eleven children with whom Troy is in touch. Like his brother Troy, who engages in fiction making through storytelling and modifying the truth, Gabe’s world is etched by fantasy. His fantasies, however, are more serious; he is trapped in a world of illusion.
Gabe, a brain-damaged veteran of World War II, has a metal plate in his head. Misunderstood and perceived as threatening by outsiders, he is eventually placed in a mental institution. His war wound symbolizes the experiences of others in the play who have been wounded by rejection, injustice, misunderstanding, or neglect. His wound, however, does not obviate his need to maintain a semblance of personal worth. He delights in having a key to his two rooms at Miss Pearl’s. The key represents freedom and the desire to maintain dignity in challenging circumstances, even when it involves selling damaged produce. His decision to leave Troy’s home to live independently places Troy in financial difficulty, but Gabe has learned the same lessons about manhood and responsibility that Troy has learned from their father.

One often wonders whether fences were built to keep people out or to keep them in. August Wilson's play shows us both sides of that old adage. Troy has just finished serving fifteen years in prison and now has an honest job. Upon returning to his life, however, he wants to rule the lives of his wife, Rose, who is more than willing, his injured brother, Gabriel, who doesn't understand the world's realities any more, and his son, Cory, who dreams of going to college and play football, but whose dreams are shattered by his father's different dreams for him.
It is the 1950s, and slowly things are changing for American's blacks. Yet, the change comes too late for Troy. Yet, he makes every attempt to stand up for racial justice in his own way. It would be simplistic to say that the reason Troy won't sign those papers for his son to be recruited, and perhaps, go on to college, is -- as he explains it -- "The white man ain't gonna let you get nowhere with that football no way. You go on and get your book learning so you can work yourself up in the A & P, or learn how to fix cars or build houses or something, get you a trade. That way you have something nobody can take away from you" (Wilson, 1986, p.35).
Cory himself says as much later on, "You ain't never done nothin' but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you" (p 86).

Perhaps what Wilson was trying to show was that Troy's commitment lay within his fences.

That all his strength was in permission or denial of events within his own household. He was fighting for control of the next generation. No matter how hard he tried to involve his son in this fence-building chore on a Saturday morning, the more the fence was an illusion for Cory. Perhaps Wilson's focus was narrowing in on the way a black man saw himself, rather than a white man's point of view. Knowing that he and other blacks at the garbage dump got no respect, Troy demanded a "SIR" from his teen-age son. There is surely a heart-breaking point in the play when Troy, trying to defend his dominance, tells his son "Who the hell says I got to like you? What law is there say I got to like you? . . .It's my job. It's my responsibility. You understand that? A Man got to take care of his family" (pp. 37-8).

At the same time, Troy's aim with his son is for him to be different. Perhaps better. Perhaps not as frustrated. When his wife admonishes him about Cory's, "just tryin' to be like you" (p 39) Troy follows with an angry outburst, "I don't want him to be like me. I want him to move as far away from my life as he can get" (p. 39). In this speech, where he also tells Rose that she is the only good thing that ever happened to him, and that he wants that for

Cory,
Lyons, the eldest son, is supposedly a jazz musician. This, too, was an escape for reality for many younger black men who had some musical aptitude. "The jazzman may be on an adolescent seesaw where, when he feels too dependent or too independent, the result may be self-destructive" (Stearns, 1956, p. 300). Lyons is dependent on the ten dollar loans (which he repays from his live-in girl friend's pay check). His self-destructiveness ends him in the work-house for a three-year term.
As such, he has built a fence between himself and those he views as a threat who try to rob him of opportunity. He has become very controlling and emotionally closed off as such, controlling the life of his son, Cory. Any objections to his will are vetoed, one of the fences he has built. "Because I say so, that's why," is his catch-all barrier to any objections to his will, (Wilson, p. 17).

Rose is constantly trying to get Troy to finish the fence. She repeatedly says “how you gonna put up the fence”(1.2), “I thought you was gonna work on the fence”(1.2), “He say you were supposed to help him with this fence”(1.3), “Go on Troy! You supposed to be putting up this fence”(1.3). The fence means more to Rose then just wood around her house, it symbolizes her trying to keep her family together.
Rose is never told of leaving the house until the end after Troy has passed. She stayed inside the boundary Troy was building and was committed to her husband. In Act 2, scene 1 Rose tells her husband:
“I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don’t you think I ever wanted other things? Don’t you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me? Don’t you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who’s got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. 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 that the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn’t never gonna bloom. But I held on to you, Troy. I held you tighter. You was my husband. I owed you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you.”
She stayed with him because it was her job. However, Troy never stayed inside the fence. To fix it was a chore and he showed no effort to do so, just as he made no effort to Rose. Troy was able to walk through the broken part and find another woman on the other side.
All things considered Fences portrays the lives of a family living in boundaries. Rose was bound by trying to be a good wife. In return she had a husband who felt bound by the sacrifices of being married for so long. Cory was held back by his father suppressing his dreams to play football. He was able to support his family on one side of the fence but denied them on the other side. It wasn’t until his death that the family was able to see the other side for themselves and be free from the struggle.