The Theme Of Redemption In Fences And The Keepers Of The House

In both the play Fences by August Wilson and the novel The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau, the sins of the fathers significantly affect their surroundings, especially their connections with the family members. However, the two authors show different ways of redemption through the use of symbols in the end scenes. In Fences, Wilson delivers the message that any individual has a chance for redemption through forgiveness and that Troy Maxson’s sins will not affect the children if they put in their best effort to create their own identity. In Keepers of the House, Grau shows Abigail Tolliver’s possibility of redemption through rebirth without the society’s influence in the sins of her Grandfather.
In both works, the root of the father’s sins comes from prejudice that infects the family. To

begin with, in Fences, Wilson sets the play in 1957 before the Civil Rights Movement. He portrays Troy as a close-minded individual, never letting go of the thought that prejudice exists between White Americans and African Americans despite the transforming world. For example, Troy believes that White American men do not hire African Americans to be truck drivers for picking up trash, and he could not play baseball in the major league because of his skin color. His firm opinion negatively affects his son, Cory, from playing football because Troy argues that African Americans will not be given any opportunities to play. Wilson also utilizes the symbol of baseball when Troy gives Cory a warning by shouting, “Don’t you strike out!” (Wilson 1726) to show the gradual breakage of the relationship between father and son. Similarly, Grau sets The Keepers of the House in the height of racial tension from the Civil War. William Howland, a respected White American, passes down the family’s honor to his granddaughter Abigail along with William’s sin of marrying an African American servant named Margaret. Unlike Troy’s internal viewpoint that prejudice exists in the society, William hides his marriage to prevent the society’s prejudice from affecting his own children’s future. However, when the townspeople start to find out the truth of his marriage after William’s death, they become enraged at Abigail and burns down her barn. Like Troy destroying his son’s dreams from his own sins of power and control, William’s sins pass on to Abigail to receive his punishments. She describes William as a ghost that follows her, not letting her escape his sins of marrying an African American woman. Although the fathers have committed sins, the two works are similar with the possibility of receiving redemption through symbols of forgiveness and rebirth.
Troy and Abigail attempt to escape from the punishment of sins becomes a stepping stone toward redemption. In Fences, Troy’s identity becomes diminished when he commits adultery to look for happiness in his life without the weight of his responsibilities at home. As the family breaks apart from his sins, Troy builds a fence around the house to keep his family inside, away from his metaphorical enemy, Death. Although Troy struggles with Death from his sins when his second wife dies after giving birth to Raynell, Troy tries to hold onto his confidence and individualism by describing death as “A fastball on the outside corner” (Wilson 1706) in which he can knock over easily. Like Troy, Abigail decides that she should fight against the society’s betrayal with revenge. As if Abigail is about to die, she mentions that she wants to hurt as much as she has been hurt and destroy as much as she has lost (Grau 4). First, Abigail uses her financial power to economically destroy the town, and her last act of revenge is to call Robert who avoids receiving the society’s persecution by hiding his identity of being William and Margaret’s son. However, Troy and Abigail realizes that escaping the sins is possible not through a strike or revenge, but through forgiveness and redemption.
The symbols of forgiveness and rebirth demonstrate Troy and Abigail’s chance of redemption.

Despite Troy’s sins that hurt the familial relationships, the whole family joins together on his funeral day to help him to enter the gates of Heaven. For example, Gabe’s trumpet symbolizes a key to open the gates of Heaven, and Gabe performs an ancestral dance that connects back to the African Movement. Wilson describes Troy’s redemption from his sins with the power of forgiveness when a sound is heard from Gabe’s trumpet the third time and “the gates of heaven stand open as wide as God’s closet” (Wilson 1743). In comparison, in the end scene of The Keepers of the House, Abigail realizes she has wasted her life in revenge and hate. The juxtaposition of fetus and funeral describes Abigail's inner state as she is dying away from her old self and being reborn into a matured individual. Also, the prism colors equal to the rainbow colors that relates to Noah’s covenant with God in the Bible as she is reborn with a new perception that there is always evil inside good. Like Troy’s redemption from forgiveness in his family, Grau shows the hopefulness of Abigail’s redemption through

rebirth.
In Fences by August Wilson and The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau, the sins of the fathers can be escaped through the symbols of forgiveness and rebirth. In both works, the root of the sins of the fathers comes from the thoughts of prejudice inside an individual or within the society. Moreover, Troy and Abigail realizes that redemption can be achieved through forgiveness and rebirth. Lastly, Wilson delivers the message that the sins of the fathers can be broken with an individual’s effort to create his or her own identity, and Grau presents the hopefulness of redemption through the knowledge of good and evil. Redemption allows to break the chain of the sins of the fathers from passing on to the next generation.