Troy Maxson's Use Of Fences In Baseball

There was no “distinction between Troy Maxson, human being, and Troy Mason, baseball player,” (Pereira, 41). Troy describes his life in terms of baseball. “Fences” in baseball is “slang term for the outfield wall that must clear for a home run,” (Dreams and Zirin, 2018). The phrase “swing for the fences” or “clear the fences” derived from this, (Dreams and Zirin, 2018). Troy, who could clear the fences without a problem playing baseball, had difficulty clearing the fences in his life even though he was an outstanding baseball player. He portrays himself as not being afraid of anything and immortal to death. His family is the second generation of Maxsons and he passes on a legacy of songs his father taught him, his personal history and bitterness

of life to his family throughout the play, he says, “You gotta take the crooked with the straights,” (37). Rose ask Troy who does he love her or baseball, Troy response is Baby, ain’t no doubt it’s baseball…but you stick an get old with me and we’ll both outlive this baseball,” (Wilson 55). However, one can argue that there exists the same stereotypical mindset in black families today.
In Act 2 Scene 4, Cory talks to Troy about successful African American athletes, Cory says, “The Braves got Hank Aaron and West Covington.

Hank Aaron hit two home runs today. That makes forty-three.” Troy responds, “Hank Aaron ain’t nobody.” Troy and his son, Cory get into a confrontation and Troy tells Cory, “Don’t you strike out!” This metaphor used in baseball is an idiom of “three strikes and you’re out.” Note: In baseball, “a ‘strike’ is a legal pitch or ball, which batter fails to hit. The batter is out after three strikes,” (The Free Dictionary.com, 2018). Cory’s first strike is disobeying his father by not getting his job back at A&P. The second strike comes when Troy and Rose have an argument and Cory tries to protect his mother. The third strike is fighting, losing against his father, and told to leave his father’s house. The three strikes of Troy Maxson: The first strike is fighting his father and left by the river bleeding, he was out of the house. The second strike is when he stabbed and killed a man trying to rob him, and spent 15 years in jail. The third strike is cheating on his wife, having a baby by another woman and asking his wife to raise the child, and trying to keep out Mr. Death. Cory ends up leaving home in a similar conflict with Troy that he had with his father. This painful process of coming of age is confusing for both Troy and Cory, their own identity when their role model has been abuse and disrespect. Troy striking out in baseball

is an allegory used as a change of circumstances. Troy could not accept the death of his own dreams, and did not allow Cory an opportunity to discover his dreams. Because of Troy’s stubbornness, and inability to accept change, he also, conceptualized the fence as an allegory, to keep “Death” away. Troy’s personality is hubris, and he loses contact with reality. The definition of hubris is “when someone tries to cross normal limits, and violates moral codes,” (Oxford Dictionaries |English, 2018). This was evident with the conflict between him and his son, Cory and his infidelity with Alberta.
Wilson has many metaphorical and complexed fences throughout the play, such as the fence as a dividing line between Troy and his son. This is obvious when Troy tells Cory to leave and Cory says, “Tell Mama I’ll be back for my things,” and Troy says, “They’ll be on the other side of that fence,” (Wilson, 89). The “fences” here is a combination of generational differences and inherited responsibilities for Troy. In that time, several changes occurred in the social and cultural lives of black people, (Pereira, 35). In many respects, the old adage “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” In each generation, “new tactics have been used for achieving the same goal—goals shared by the Founding Fathers, (Truthout, 2018).” The arguments and rationalizations that have been “trotted out in support of racial exclusion and discrimination in its various forms have changed and evolved, but the outcome has remained largely the same. (Truthout, 2018).
Wilson’s play honor the “warrior spirits” among African Americans, those who are not afraid to put up a fight with white society and with whatever or whoever else may stand in their way,” (Bloom, Bloom, Bloom, 100). The “warrior spirit” are those Wilson explains, “who look around to see what the society has cut out for them, who see the limits of their participation and are willing to say, ‘No, I refuse to accept this limitation that you’re imposing on me…” (Bloom, Bloom, Bloom, 100). However, it is important to note that Troy kept Cory from playing football, not racial discrimination or segregation. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “takes on the issue of reparations for slavery. One problem Gates says is, “African American, in particular, is that it is always difficult to acknowledge that one’s own people were complicit in wrongdoing.” As Gates puts it, “under these circumstances, it is difficult to claim that blacks were ignorant or innocent,” (Traces of the Trade, 2018), of reparation.
The fence, which Troy eventually builds in front of his house, is a symbol of him finally understanding and realizing his disconnect from his family through his friend, Bono. In his friend Bono’s words, “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.” (Wilson, 61). Rose wants the fence in order to keep her family together and Troy wants the fence to control and protect everything he loves. The pressures of life and fences that Troy carries internally from his past has separated him from his family and friend. This was symbolic of him threatened by Death. Troy tells death, “I’m gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me…Bring your wrestling clothes, I ain’t gonna fall down on my vigilance this time….This is between you and me. Man to man. You stay on the other side of that fence until you ready for me…” (77). In the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s…, “The term [Death] came to be a derogatory epithet for African Americans and a designation for their segregated life,” (YourDictionary, 2018). Troy did not play baseball in the United States Major Leagues because blacks could not commingle with whites during reconstruction and Jim Crow segregation.
Examples of Jim Crow Laws:
"It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards." This selection is an example of a Jim Crow law that was effective in the state of Alabama from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. (YourDictionary, 2018).
In Amateur Baseball:
"It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race. And it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race." (Georgia law) (YourDictionary, 2018).
Wilson’s message, then, is to remind the African Americans of their cultural heritage and their identity that has been maintained for ages despite their painful sense of alienation and their separation from their African culture,” (Eajournals.org, 2018). The metaphor ‘fences’ could also refer historically to keeping black people within the fences of slavery. According to Anderson, et al, the legacy of racial caste, is that “the color line persists in social interaction and is evident in racially determined perspectives, local working conceptions that order race relations and contribute to persistent racial inequality,” (Anderson, et al, 2012). Anderson, et al, did most of their study in Memphis, Tennessee in various neighborhoods. When the team arrived in Memphis, some of the “white people they met warned them to avoid black residential areas and, by implication, black people more generally,” (Anderson, et al, 2012). Yet “despite the civil rights victories of our past, racial prejudice still pervades…” (Truthout, 2018). Racial prejudice “need only racial indifference, as Martin Luther King Jr. warned more than forty-five years ago,” (Truthout, 2018).
The fences that closed the Maxson’s family in, supposedly for their protection that served as resistance to change, have come down.

They prepare to go out of the “yard freed of the burdens of a past that unacknowledged, severely limited their ability to live fully,” (Bloom, Bloom and Bloom, 84). Rose has come to understand the “dogged persistence of the past and all its irony” (Bryer and Hartig, 20), Cory says, “…Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere…I’ve got to find a way to get rid of that shadow…,” (Wilson, 96-97). Rose tells Cory, “your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn’t…and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was.” (Wilson, 97). Cory does not admit until the end of the play that his strength to move in rank to a Marine Corporal, while in the Military was Troy’s foreshadowing. Troy loved his son and did not want him to experience the pain of rejection as he did. Troy explained to Cory the best way he knew how, by not signing the papers for him to play football. He did not know how to have a conversation with Cory about his true feelings of him not wanting Troy to play football. Ironically, the fence that Troy tries to provide for Cory is not strong enough to strikeout Mr. Death. However, Wilson is subtly and powerfully transforming the problematic protagonist to be both victim and victimizer, intellectually astute yet spiritually or emotionally crippled, (Bryer and Hartig,

20).
Wilson’s major argument in “Fences” is that black families had to struggle to maintain self-identity, self-realization, and self-gratification, in a racist society. Troy describes his life as a game of baseball and the three strikes you’re out idiom. This symbolizes his realization of his disconnect and alienating himself from the family he was trying to protect, from Lyons because he was in prison during the boy’s youth; from Rose because of his affair with Alberta; and from Cory for refusing him permission to accept a football scholarship. “But this initial alienation ultimately leads each to individual empowerment because,