The fence in "Fences" has a lot of symbolic meanings for each major character. We see throughout the play that many things happen while the fence is being built and as a result their lives change. Now why would a fence be used for symbolism? A fence is normally used as a barrier, enclosing an area, or to prevent an escape. In "Fences" the fence is symbolically and physically used as a means for the characters to be protected or to protect whatever it is that they want to protect or keep out. Throughout the play, Rose wants Troy to build the fence but Troy shows carelessness and neglect towards it. His carelessness to building the fence can speak symbolically to how he is emotionally irresponsible towards his family. Since he isn't fully committed …show more content…
to building the fence, this can also symbolically tell us his lack of commitment towards his marriage. Troy and his son Cory are the ones who build the fence throughout the play. Troy and Cory's relationship is a very rocky one. There is a major cultural shift for African Americans during that time because of the opportunities that are starting to rise for them, in which Troy is too hard headed to realize. In this play, we get to know and see one of the worst fathers in Troy. But there is a reason why. Troy is a very harsh father because of the way he treats Cory throughout the play, and also the fact that he is cheating on his wife with another woman who becomes pregnant. Troy is a perfect example of a tragic hero. At almost the end of the play he loses everything because of the decisions he makes. His family and even his friend Bono keep their distance from him. He ignored their warnings, and destroys his sons dream and cheats on Rose. By the end of the play he dies but as man who lost everything. Throughout the play, the fence has more symbolic meaning towards Troy than any other character. Troy is the type of person who likes to bottle up his emotions and won't open up to his loved ones all thanks to his past, thus this creates an imaginary fence between him and the people that care for him He blames racism for keeping him from achieving his dream of playing baseball at the major league level, to which he can't ever let go. Troy's past living with his father also plays a key role on why he has a bitter and tense relationship with his own son Cory. When Troy was young, he left home because of the relationship he had with his father. "Sometimes I wish I hadnt known my daddy. He ain't cared nothing about no kids. But I'll say this for him...he fell a responsibility toward is." Troy's father influenced the way Troy treats his children even after running away from home. Even though Troy looks down on his dad, he still acts like him when it comes towards his children, except he never really abused them physically. We should also realize in situations like this, a person wants to protect themselves because of what happened in their past.
The fence in this situation tells us symbolically that Troy doesn’t want to get hurt anymore so it’s protecting him but at the same time he is losing his family. Troy doesn’t approve of Cory playing football even though there’s a good chance that a scout will recruit him after watching him play. Even though this sounds harsh, Troy is jealous of his son and protective of him. The thought of Cory achieving something that he couldn't makes their relationship bitter and tense. He’s protective of him in a way because he doesn’t want Cory to deal with the experience of racism in sports that he went through and would rather have Cory look for a job just like him. "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” (Fences 35). The fence is the physical and emotional barrier between him and his sons. Both of Troy's sons draw themselves away from him. Troy neglects his oldest son Lyon's and pushes him away by refusing to hear him play his jazz music and calls it "Chinese …show more content…
music." His relationship with Cory comes to an end after his third and final strike.
Troy states that Cory's things will "be on the other side of that fence" when he kicks him out to the street, thus creating the same situation that he went through when he was Cory's age. Through this scene, the fence becomes an actual, physical divide between Troy and Cory. The fence becomes a barricade between Troy and Death. In the play, Troy tells a story to everyone about how he wrestled with death and won. There was one notable scene where he taunted death and it was when his mistress Alberta died giving birth to their daughter. He cries out, “All right Mr. Death. See now Im gonna tell you what im gonna do. Im gonna take and build me a fence around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side” (Fences 77). Troy knows that eventually death will come for him and defeat him since its inevitable, but the fence displays that Troy is not going down without a
fight. The fence can also symbolize how Troy and Rose are different in personality. For Rose, the fence symbolizes that she wants her family to stay together and also wants Troy and Cory to bond while they build it. Troy and Cory never understood why she wanted the fence in the first place and it took Bono to explain to them why. "Some people build fences to keep people out, and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you” (Fences 61). Furthermore, Rose sees the fence as something that can protect her when she sings 'Jesus, be a fence all around me every day. Jesus, I want you to protect me as I travel on my way" (Fences Act I Scene 2). The fence can also represent her love for her family and the yearning desire for a fence indicates that Rose represents the love and nurture that a mother and wife has to keep her family safe In the end, the fence symbolizes all of the barriers that Troy has put up because of all the battles that he faced in his life. First he dealt with his abusive father who caught him being alone with a girl when he had a responsibility to take care of so his father decided to beat him and then rape the young girl. Troy ran away as a result of this and made his way to Pittsburgh. The next thing Troy dealt with was poverty and homelessness. To get by he stole food from people and stole money to buy other necessities and had to provide for his newborn son Lyons. He killed a man while trying to rob him and was sent to prison for fifteen years. Then it was the racism that kept him from becoming a professional baseball player, It’s a tragedy that Troy has hardened his heart because of his experiences in life. He had a chance to make something good with his family and friends, but chose not to and decided to put up his own fence as a precaution to keep them away.
As a result of Troy being unable to find a place to live or a job he started stealing to get by. Eventually the situation escalated and he murdered someone in a robbery gone wrong; this led to him being sentenced to 15 years in prison. Prison is where he found his love for baseball. He became quite good with a bat and hoped that when he got out he could play professionally. Unfortunately due to the segregation of the MLB Troy was never able to pursue that career and he is resentful of the situation his whole life.This caused him to be a very bitter person for the remainder of his life and this also caused him to shoot down the hopes and dreams of his son Corey by telling him things like “...The white man ain’t gonna let you go nowhere with that football
All of the characters are "fenced in," by various barriers. Troy is working in a job where African Americans can get the lowest and most difficult tasks. On the home front, he has responsibilities to his family. Rose has chosen life with Troy as an alternative to "a succession of abusive men and their babies, a life of partying, or the Church." Troy’s son, Lyons, is supposedly a musician but is going nowhere. Cory has potential but has his dream of playing college football extinguished by both protective and jealous Troy. The characters must deal with hardships of daily life, racial discrimination, straining relationships with each other, and the feeling that this is all their lives are: somewhat of a confined space with no escape; fenced in.
For him, fences were used to keep people out. Such an example can be found near the end of Act I, Scene IV when Cory and Troy are fighting and Cory says “Tell Mama I’ll be back for my and things” and Troy responded “They’ll be on the other side of that fence.”(905). In short, Troy built a physical fence around his house to create a border or separation from the outside world. However, in Troy’s situation, fences can be interpreted as a double entendre. For many weeks he kept putting off the building of the fence around the yard. Instead, he would wander off to “Taylor’s” to watch the game. By not building the fence it also showing his lack of commitment to Rose who was urging him to, “Where you going off to? You been running out of here every Saturday for weeks. I thought you was gonna work on this fence?”(888). Which is ironic because him not building the fence involuntarily not only broke Rose’s fences in addition to his as it let Alberta and Raynell into their lives. The lack of commitment he showed to Rose proves that as a family man, Troy was missing some key values that are entrenched in a prosperous
Troy has a right to be angry, but to whom he takes his anger on is questionable. He regularly gets fed up with his sons, Lyons and Cory, for no good reason. Troy disapproves of Lyons’ musical goals and Cory’s football ambitions to the point where the reader can notice Troy’s illogical way of releasing his displeasure. Frank Rich’s 1985 review of Fences in the New York Times argues that Troy’s constant anger is not irrational, but expected. Although Troy’s antagonism is misdirected, Rich is correct when he observes that Troy’s endless anger is warranted because Troy experiences an extremely difficult life, facing racism, jail, and poverty.
...in character of “Fences,” fights to be a father with nothing to go on but the harsh example set by his own father, which resembles a symbolic fence separating the relationship between father and son. There is also Troy's son, Cory, a boy becoming a man, coming of age under Troy's sovereignty. The play shows that no matter how old you are, you're constantly measuring yourself against the example set by your parents. Even if the reader’s family is nothing like the Maxsons, one may possibly connect with this basic human struggle.
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.
struggle for survival. Troy has come to believe, from his experiences, that blacks cannot get something for nothing and that life does not owe blacks anything. Due to this, Toy ?fences in? everything that he loves to protect his possessions from the monster of society. Thus there is a symbolization of Troy building a physical fence in the yard but building an emotional fence of protection around his family and friends. He believes that blacks owe it to themselves to make an honest, hard-earned living and that is the only way to survive. Troy states sarcastically that Lyans is blowing his...
The trials of Troy’s life are filled with racial discrimination which mentally scars him. His attitude and behavior towards others are governed by experiences and in most cases he uses the symbol of death in his fictional stories to represent the oppression of the white man. The play Fences, which is largely about Troy, begins with Troy entertaining Bono and Rose with an epic tale of his struggle with death or in other word...
Fences is a play that was written by August Wilson, it follows the life of Tony Maxson, a garbage man, who throughout the play is building a fence around his home. The title, Fences, has more significance than one may have thought at first glance. The title is very symbolic in the perspective of almost every character in the play. Within Act 2, Scene 1 of the play, when discussing the reason as to why Rose wanted the fence up, with Cory and Troy, Bono says “Some people build fences to keep people out… and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you.”. In the perspective of Rose, she wants to keep people in and with Troy it is the complete opposite.
Troy was met with many hardships in his life that left him feeling like he needed to protect himself from the things that have hurt him and could hurt him. The fence that Rose told Troy to build symbolized the barrier that he puts up to protect himself from the things that have hurt him and could hurt him in the future. Troy uses the fence to symbolize the emotional separation and neglect he has towards his family; Rose and Cory in particular. The main reason why the fence took the whole play to complete is because Troy neglected it and spent his time with his mistress which symbolized his neglect towards his family. Cory brings this to attention when he tells Troy that he "don't never do nothing, but go down to Taylors'", which is obviously his mistress’s home (Henderson). This was Troy’s f...
A fence is actually there to keep people in and to keep people out. There are people who build a metaphoric fence for themselves to protect themselves and to protected their loved ones. August Wilson’s play “Fences” illustrates how the symbol of a fence describes the relationships of an African American family living in Chicago during the mid 1950s.
The fence to Troy symbolizes keeping things out by establishing his territory. Troy has always been known as the alpha dog in the Maxson’s household, no matter what it takes, even if he has to push people away creating a blockade between him and his loved ones. This is clearly apparent with Troy’s son, Cory, throughout the entire play, but more specifically, the scene after Troy and Cory had an aggressive argument. “Tell mama I’ll be back for my things.” (Wilson, 89) Troy responds to Cory’s remake by answering in a unique way, saying “they’ll be on the other side of the fence.”(WIlson, 89) This quote shows that the fence is not only a physical barrier, but also an emotional one too. Troy is situating a line between himself and Cory that’s marking his territory; showing Cory his father is still under full control of his side of the fence.
Troy Maxson is portrayed as a big man with a very big personality and a lot of dignity. He is a bitter guy who believes that he owes his family absolutely everything, from his money down to even his own soul. He is the type of man who wants more than what he can get and that is what drives him but it is also that very “want” that leads him into a very tragic life. Writing on the idea of Troy being a tragic hero, Martin says “Troy’s strengths are found in his willingness to fulfill his duty at all times. He also speaks directly to his dignity regarding his position of work and his career in baseball) Martin, 2) “Fences” Troy has many
August Wilson uses the symbol of a 'fence' in his play, Fences, in numerous occasions. Three of the most important occasions fences are symbolized are by protection, Rose Maxson and Troy Maxson's relationship, and Troy against Mr. Death. Throughout the play, characters create 'fences' symbolically and physically to be protected or to protect. Examples such as Rose protecting herself from Troy and Troy protecting himself form Death. This play focuses on the symbol of a fence which helps readers receive a better understanding of these events. The characters' lives mentioned change around the fence building project which serves as both a literal and a figurative symbol, representing the relationships that bond and break in the backyard.
Troy denies Cory the opportunity to go to college to play football leaving Cory feeling like a prisoner of Troy. Metzger states that, “The fence Troy completes, however, will fail to keep Cory [home]” (2). Cory strengthens the fence between him and his father even more after they have a physical altercation. After the dispute, Troy says to Cory, “All right. That’s strike two. You stay away from around me, boy. Don’t you strike out. You living with a full count. Don’t you strike out” (Wilson 2.2). This clearly exhibits the barrier and tension building between the father and son. Ultimately, the fences Troy and Cory build between one another leads to Cory leaving the house and joining the Marines (Metzger 2-3). The fence built between Cory and his father hinders them from having a loving father-son