What Occurs in a Marriage?

What occurs in a Marriage?

August Wilson wrote the play Fences in 1983, the setting of the play was in 1950s. During the 1950’s women were supposed to find and husband, get married then stay home and take care of the house. The male role in the 1950’s was to provide for his family make sure he had a paying job. In Fences Troy and Rose Maxson are the perfect characters for these stereo types. After analyzing this play many themes became observable. Troy, Rose, Bono and Cory all go through situation where they have to deal with Duty, responsibility, limitations, and opportunity. Troy is the protagonist in the play; he lifts garbage into trucks for a career. Troy use to play baseball for the Negro Leagues. Rose is his wife and he has three children Lyons, Cory and Raynell.

Duty and responsibility is a major role in Fences, everyone seems as though they have a duty or responsibility to up hold and take care of. Some African Americans believe that happiness and stability comes from having duty and responsibility because it allows them to have a firm life. In this selection Rose believes it is her duty to find a husband to marry, she states “I told him if he wasn’t the marrying kind, then move out the way so the marrying kind could find me” (Wilson 6), this shows that she didn’t marry out of love she married because it was her responsibility. Maybe she was raised to believe that, that was what as real woman was supposed to do. “At the table, my grandma would pick out the most delicious food for my brother, while teaching me the virtue of self-discipline and tolerance. When feeling wronged, I would again ask her loudly, “Why do you treat me like this?” She Replied, frigidly, “because when you grow up you’ll get married”, “When girls ...

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...ntions converge to flavor contemporary African American culture. The Africa that Wilson resurrects in this play reveals itself by varying degrees and in both implicit and explicit forms. Often these forms cannot be comprehended if Western logic prevails as the only standard. These African connections emerge in unspoken codes that shape the daily rituals of these characters and infuse the play on a number of levels. By examining Fences within an African cosmology rather than by relying solely upon Western paradigms of analysis, the play yields a much more telling portrayal of how African Americans negotiate the ambivalence of their “double consciousness” in America. That African cosmology becomes an essential part of the play's subtextual narrative—a narrative that contrasts America's divisive racism with Africa's capacity to heal, empower, and reunite” (Shannon 2)