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Segregation in sports
Essay on segregation in sports
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Troy Maxon is a responsible man with dashed dreams, and because of those unfulfilled dreams it created a tragic flaw that lead him to a lonely end. His stubborn, and self-centeredness becomes his greatest downfall.
One of the greatest sources of disappointment in Troy's life is the fact that he wasn't allowed to play pro baseball. Though he was a home run king of the Negro Leagues, he couldn't graduate to the majors because of racial discrimination. Troy refuses to let his son play football, claiming that he doesn't want Cory to suffer from the same sort of heartache.
Everyone around Troy tries to make him see that times have changed, and that Cory will have a better chance. His wife Rose tells him, "They got lots of colored boys playing ball now. Baseball and football". Troy's best friend, Bono, says, "Times have changed, Troy, you just come along too early". Cory points out to his father several current black baseball players, like the famous Hank Aaron. Troy dismisses all of this and tells his son,
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"The white man ain't gonna let you get nowhere with that football no way”. Instead of allowing his son to pursue football and college, Troy destroys his son's dreams, refusing to sign the permission paper and preventing the college recruiter from coming.Cory accuses his father of doing this out of jealousy, saying, "You just scared I'm gonna be better than you, that's all".
On some level, this may be true. Troy never admits this, though. He tells Rose, "I got sense enough not to let my boy get hurt playing no sports". In Troy's mind, he doesn't halt Cory's sports career out of jealousy, but out of a fatherly urge to protect his son. We have a feeling that Troy puts an end to Cory's football dreams out of both his own bitterness and an urge to protect his son. Another example of his selfish behavior is his affair with Alberta. He frames as an escape from a stagnant life he’s had for 18 years, all without a thought for his wife rose who has stood with during all that time. Not once thinking like him she had dreams she wasn’t able to
follow. In short Troy's hypocrisy 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.
Perhaps the most important and fulfilling relationship a man can be involved in is one with his own flesh and blood. At the beginning of the play, we learn that Troy has two sons, Lyons and Cory. Lyons is Troy's son by a previous marriage and Cory is Troy's son by his current marriage. Neither Lyons nor Cory share a close relationship with their father and Troy is mostly to blame for that.
Even though Troy does not physically abuse his children like his father did to him, he verbally abuses them. He treats Cory very callously and unjustly. In a way, Troy is taking out his frustrations of having an unsuccessful baseball career by not allowing Cory to pursue his dream to play football. Troy crushed Cory’s dream. In Act One, scene four, Cory expresses his misery. “Why you wanna do that to me? That w...
Despite his humor, Troy faces many obstacles throughout his life; however, some fences he has not been able to move past. Throughout the entire play he makes references to baseball and for good reason; baseball was his passion and he held an extreme talent for it. Troy compares himself to George Selkirk and states, “Man batting .269 . . . What kind of sense that make? I was hitting .432 with thirty seven home runs!” (1.1). Due to his race he was denied the right to play for the Major Leagues. Major League Baseball was integrated in 1947. At this time Troy was forty three years old, too old to play professional baseball. In a sense, he felt robbed. Troy will never believe the whites will accept African Americans into sports regardless of the talent they hold. His wife, Rose, even told him, “Times have changed, Troy, you just come along too early” (1.1). Once he grew older, his occupation was gathering trash on the back of the garbage truck, but he never got to drive because he was black. Troy overcame this fence by testing the Commissioner's Office and succeeding; he became a truck driver but was still hesitant to trust the white race. Regardless of his hard work, he had nothing to show for it and expressed this thought
This makes Troy the antagonist in the story because he is not only hitting up against everyone in the play, but he is also hitting up against himself and ultimately making his life more complicated. The discrimination that Troy faced while playing baseball and the torment he endures as a child shaped him into one of the most dynamic characters in literary history. The central conflict is the relationship between Troy and Cory. The two of them have conflicting views about Cory’s future and, as the play goes on, this rocky relationship crumbles because Troy will not let Cory play collegiate football. The relationship becomes even more destructive when Troy admits to his relationship with Alberta and he admits Gabriel to a mental institution by accident.
Since in Troy’s time colored people were not allowed to play baseball Troy still believes that the same morals apply to the present. Troy says that colored guys don’t get enough play time, once Cory refutes that claim with logic by stating that you cannot play everyone at the same time. Troy however ignores Cory and continues to argue without rationality, showing how fixated he is on the past. Furthermore, once Sandy Koufax is brought up Troy states that he’s “not thinking of no Sandy Koufax” indicating that Troy believes that by not thinking about it he can dispel Koufax’s existence, once more showing how fixated he is on the time where colored people weren’t allowed to play sports. It is clear that times are different, and Cory provides ample proof. The fact that Cory Is getting recruited for football shows that times are changing and that the present is different from the past. Troy, however, is too stubborn to notice the change due to his fixation on the
After Troy reveals his adultery to Rose, Cory remarks all the faults he sees now in his father, how Troy was always holding him back, how Troy stole Gabriel’s money, and, ultimately, how Troy only ever tried to make Cory afraid of him (Wilson 2.3.114-170). While Troy wins the physical scuffle that ensues between father and son, Cory has won the metaphorical. He has allowed himself to put himself apart from Troy metaphorically by realizing his father’s faults and literally by leaving his father’s house and joining the military. This is even further reiterated in the next scene when Rose remarks that Cory is just like Troy, and, thematically, he is.
Maxson, a combination of Mason and Dixon, a careful allusion to the line that stood between slaves and freedom. Yet, on either side of that line stood suffering and persecution for those slaves. Troy Maxson, central focus in August Wilson’s dramatic play Fences, embodies the ideals of the Mason Dixon line itself. His presence seems to promise freedom, yet being around him leads to endless suffering and oppression. Troy’s tragic heroic qualities create a centrifugal force of chaos and hatred that mauls characters that dare come near his pull. Troy is clearly presented as a tragic hero with a tragical flaw which itself causes tensions and sufferings in Troy’s family, particularly in his relationships with Cory, Rose, and Gabriel. Furthermore,
Everytime Troy Maxson gets the chance to avoid his son, he takes it. It does not matter if he hurts his son. Troy is always putting walls up between him and his son. Making Cory feel like he means nothing to him. As evidence from the play, proofs that Troy never gets along with his son. He lives in the past that can’t be changed by anything. And that’s affecting his relationship with his younger son. His wife, Rose, tells him that the only thing their son wants is “... to be like you with the sports” ( I.iii.39) and make his father proud that he did it because of him. “I don’t want him to be like me! I want him to move as far away from my life as he can get” (I.iii.39). Troy is keeping himself away from building a connection between him and
Cory and Troy’s relationship is not like your average father and son relationship such as playing football in a park or taking fishing trips etc. It was more like his son reliving his life as a child. See when Troy was younger his dreams were to become a major baseball league player, but his desire was shortly turned down
Cory has been offered an opportunity to be recruited and play college football, however due to Troy’s more than unfavorable attitude towards any sports and how they will discriminate against Cory, Troy refuses to let Cory pursue this. Despite Cory and Rose’s persistence, Troy will not budge from his stance and continues to explain that “[He] don’t want [him] to get all tied up in them sports. Man on the team and what it get him? They got colored on the team and don't use them. Same as not having them. All teams the same.” (34).Troy continues to show his dislike for the white population and society because he does not want Cory to become assimilated with the whites. Troy never budges from his stance and Cory is never given the opportunity to pursue his dream, thus creating a strong tension between Cory and his father that gives Cory a grim perspective on life. This is another way that Wilson conveys his message about crushed dreams and how they can alter how a person views their life. However, later in the play after Cory has graduated from the Marine Corps he returns to the home in the occasion of Troy’s funeral but not to attend because he left with the anger that his father brought upon him. Nonetheless he reveals that he will go to the funeral by telling Raynell to “change them shoes like mama told
Cory starts to talk to Troy about collge recruits coming to watch him play and Troy says, “I don’t care where he coming from. 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 that A&P or learn how to fix cars or build houses or something, get you a trade. That way you have something can’t nobody take away from you. You go on and learn how to put your hands to some good use. Besides hauling people’s garbage.” (Wilson 50) Troy tells Cory that his dream of becoming of becoming a football player is not reality and he needs to focus on real goals like maintaining a steady job. Instead of encouraging his son and realizing that there are a lot of colored boys playing ball now, he holds Cory back and does not let him pursue his dream. Troy and Cory get in a very heated argument and when Troy tells Cory that he has given him everything Cory says, “You ain’t never gave me nothing! You ain’t never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me scared of you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time .
Troy wants to be a good father to Cory, but he had a terrible example to look at when he was a teenager. The mistakes That Troy’s father made have manifested themselves in the decisions he makes with Cory. August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey a book written by Kim Pereira explains how Troy has his mind and energy set on “survival” which limits the amount of “parental affection” he can give to his son, Cory. This is the same mentality that Troy’s father had when Troy was growing up. Cory looks up to his father as any teenage boy would do, so when Troy denies Cory the opportunity to play football he transforms his father’s” hard-line advice into personal rejection” (Snodgrass 133). Troy refuses to see Cory's potential because it would mean accepting his own misfortune. His inability to express his reasoning and feelings causes Cory to perceived Troy as cruel. At that point in time, Cory needed his father’s approval but was met with harshness. Troy is trying to spare Core from the pain of racism and discrimination, but he dominates his son the same was Troy’s father had dominated him. Troy’s unwillingness to let Cory live a life Cory envisions, results in a very strained relationship between the two. By attempting to insure Cory of a harmless future, Troy impedes his son's potential and prevents Cory from having a promising future. That leads Cory to resent his
Troy is very stern with his sons. He doesn’t always support them, especially with the actions they want to take in their lives. Not being a supportive father causes his sons to turn against Troy, and they lose the connection with him. Lyons, Troys eldest son from his previous marriage, is a talented Jazz musician. Troy wasn't apart of Lyons life the entire time, he was in jail. When released from jail he met Rose while pursuing a baseball career. Lyons often comes over to ask his father for money because he isn't making much money while being a musician. Cory, a teenage boy, is the son of Troy, and his wife Rose. Cory is a high school boy, who is a talented football player. Troy doesn't support his son in football, he continues to push Corey away until he enters the Marines. While away in the service Troy dies, Cory comes home to attend his fathers funeral. Throughout “Fences,” we about the relationship Troy didn’t have with his father. The relationship that he had with his father is very similar to the relationship with his
When Cory asks his father why he never liked him? Troy responds back by saying “Like you? I go out of here every morning ... bust my butt ... putting up with them crackers every day ... cause I like you? You about the biggest fool I ever saw.(Pause.)It's my job. It's my responsibility! [...] You my flesh and blood. Not 'cause I like you! Cause it's my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you” (Wilson ). Though the story Troy controls Cory by not letting him play football and telling him to get a job because Troy feels like he owes his son the responsibility of not going somewhere where me fail, such as in sports like Troy himself. Responsibility also plays a huge part because before Troy went to prison he was married to another woman whom he had a son with named Lyon. It appears as if Troy had missed so many years of showing responsibility to his first child and now he is making it up with Cory by pushing him around. Responsibility can also be seen when Troy lends money to Lyon, although he tells him he has to work on his on to make his money he still gives it to him because he knows he owes him for all the years he had left him during his imprisonment. Also Troy, “Having been forced to leave one wife through imprisonment perhaps also influences indirectly Troy's decision to leave Rose--figuratively--in the current action of the play. It is a reflection of the mental defeat
He had the dream of playing professional baseball, although he was a talented player, his dream was demolished and never came to a reality due to his African American background. Troy mentions while he is arguing with his son Cory that, “The color guy got to be twice as good before he get on the team… They got colored on the team and don’t use them. Same as not having them. All teams are the same” (Wilson 34). Cory has the same fantasy of playing football. However, his father does not want him to play because he does not want the past to repeat itself with his own son. Troy knows that if his son Cory were to play professional football, he would never get the opportunity to play and would just waste his time. Even as an adult Troy faced discrimination once more in his work. Although he is capable of much more, Troy works as a garbage man and picks up the trash. One day during work Troy comments to his boss “Why?” Why you got the white men's driving and the colored lifting?” Told him, “what's the matter, don’t I count too” (Wilson 2). Troy is always questioning why the whites are more privilege than him and that he can do just as much as the whites. He states that he is capable of driving a truck as part of his work, if he is given the opportunity. However, during this time it is nearly impossible in their society to be heard about their equal rights, as African