1

Analysis
The play’s title is a manifestation of its primary theme: the ways that people protect
themselves from forces bigger and more powerful than themselves, yet also trap those they
love into relationships of conflict. Each character in the play attempts to create their own
emotional fence to control others and protect themselves from those they love most. Though
the play is meant to give a realistic picture of life in the industrial north of the 1950’s, the
themes of Fences are also meant to be universal for all audiences.
Wilson spends much of the first scene establishing the characters, their relationships, and the
world of black working-class Pittsburgh. This scene introduces the play’s protagonist, Troy
Maxson. Troy is a man of many layers. He is a devoted husband and father, though as we
learn he is also controlling and unfaithful. He is forward thinking – he fights for equality and
his job and he pursues the American Dream – yet he also feels helpless in a world that seems
to be passing him by. Most importantly, perhaps, he is a man that wants his children to have
everything he did not, yet cannot seem to stand the idea that they would bypass the hardships
that he had to go through.
Jim Bono is Troy’s closest friend and confidant. It is noteworthy that Troy says the words “I
love you” to Bono, but not to his sons. Bono is Wilson’s representation of African American
brotherhood and their close relationship explores how masculine bonding creates an intimacy
not shared with family. Rose Maxson, Troy’s wife, is the epitome of this intimate divide.
Rose represents the choices (and lack thereof) for African American women in 1957. She has
the inner strength to love Troy and to care for his children even in the face of Troy’s
unfaithfulness, but she can never define herself outside the boundaries of family.
Troy’s sons act as a mirror of his best and worst qualities. Lyons Maxson, Troy’s oldest, is a
jazz musician. He is laid back and unconcerned with daily problems. His is a much different
life than Troy’s, but Troy begrudgingly respects Lyons for rejecting the proscriptions of
society. Cory, introduced in the second scene, is the truest representation of the conflict
between father and son, a dominant theme throughout the play.
Troy’s relationship with Rose and Bono and his relationship with his sons is a study in
contrast. In this early scene, Troy enters the play as a clown. He makes crude and funny
sexual advances towards his wife and he jovially drinks and gossips with his friend Bono.
When Lyons appears, however, the conflict between father and son becomes apparent. Troy
might somehow admire Lyons’ choices in life, but it is only because he has no control over
his son. The audience later finds out that Troy spent most of Lyons’ childhood in prison.
Now, he can only be a spectator as Lyons lives his life. Though Troy does not approve of his
son’s lifestyle, he understands that Lyons can only do what he wants to do. Troy’s issue with
loaning Lyons money symbolizes this. Troy knows that his ten dollars will only go to support
his son’s jazz career and so he gives him a hard time about it. In the end, Lyons gets the
money circuitously through Rose because Troy cannot help but support his son. Lyons’
declaration that jazz music gives his life meaning is powerful for Troy since he feels that his
life has had no other meaning beyond responsibility for others.
 2
This scene first introduces the play’s motif of death. Here, death appears in Troy’s story of
owing money to a furniture company. Death is a devil who appears as a white man selling
furniture. This story is Troy’s way of symbolizing his own concept of racism during his life.
Though he does not actually owe any money to a white man (as his father had as a
sharecropper), Troy still feels that his life is somehow indebted to forces that he cannot
understand or clearly perceive. In this way, he will always be in debt and will continually
struggle with death.
Analysis
This scene begins with Rose singing an African American spiritual representing the metaphor
of the play. Rose sings, “Jesus, be a fence all around me every day / Jesus, I want you to
protect me as I travel….” This song combines the uniqueness of the African American
religious experience with Rose's domestic desire to establish a safe and happy home with her
husband and son. There is an historic tradition in African American religion of travel and
movement. Eighteenth and nineteenth century Southern black slaves often identified with the
exodus of the Hebrew Bible. Fences, however, is a play about the tension between this
historic value of exodus and the mid-twentieth century American ideal of settling into a home
with a family. In this opening scene, Rose’s song is an outer expression of an inner conflict.
The dialogue between Rose and Troy regarding gambling and Cory’s work ethic is an
example of the value that Troy puts on self-reliance and responsibility. Troy is openly
disdainful of another man in the neighborhood who benefited from playing the lottery. He is
unable to appreciate the fact that the man is attempting to better his life through his luck,
even though both he and Rose know he is technically correct in his diagnosis of the social ill
of “the numbers.” There is an association for Troy in gambling and in Cory’s scholarship to
play football. Troy sees both games as a person’s loss of control over his own destiny. It is a
mistake that Troy decides never to make again and one he does not want for his son.
This scene introduces Gabriel, Troy’s brother who is disabled after losing part of his head in
battle during World War II. Gabriel is a “spectacle character.” His belief that he is the angel
Gabriel is meant to be humorous for the audience, even as he gains sympathy for how his life
and right mind were taken from him. Gabriel, however, does not just serve comic purposes;
instead, he is a part of the story and provides an intriguing sub-plot. Like Troy, Gabriel is
concerned with his freedom and independence. He has moved out of Troy’s house and is
trying to make it on his own, even though he can only peddle fruit on the street.
Gabriel, besides playing the role of clown to provide some measure of comic relief, also
functions as a kind of Greek chorus. In ancient Greek literature, a chorus was a group of
characters that provided background and summary information to the audience in order to
show them how they should react to a particular moment of the play. In some classical plays,
the chorus was directly involved with the characters in the play, providing them crucial pieces
of the story not evident from their point of view. Gabriel functions in a similar way in
Wilson’s play. He brings a back story (as a soldier) of contributing the ultimate act of
responsibility and sacrifice -- giving his life to his country. His presence is also a constant
reminder to Troy that larger forces are at work in his life and that he is not always in control.
 3
Troy loves and respects his brother, yet the audience learns that the relationship is more
complicated. Troy took Gabe’s initial disability payout from the government and built a
house with the intention of he, his wife, and Gabe living there. He also continues to take
Gabe’ s monthly government check for expenses. Now that Gabe has moved out, Troy faces
the reality that once again he is unable to provide fully for his family without the help of his
disabled brother. Because of Gabe’s presence, the audience slowly learns that Troy is not the
all-powerful patriarch that he claims to be.
Analysis
Troy and Cory’s conversation about the television set is both an example of father-son
bonding and a sign of just how much the world is moving on without Troy. The television
set is a symbol of the success of modernity and the ability of African Americans during this
time to advance (however limited those advancements might be) in social and economic
ways.
The television, as Cory describes it, is fundamentally changing how people interact with the
world. His argument that “they got lots of things on TV” is his way of telling Troy that the
world outside of Pittsburgh is much bigger than Troy remembers it. It is recognition that the
world has changed and continues to be changed. Cory understands his own future is
dependent on Troy’s understanding of this change and being able to convince him of this is
paramount if Cory is to ever play football in college.
Troy, however, is resistant to the idea of the television. It is not just that he fears the world’s
advancement, but it is also that he does not quite understand it and refuses to deal with it.
Troy prefers to keep his thoughts on the domestic scene. He reminds Cory that the price of
the TV is almost what it would take to re-tar the roof. Troy uses the example of the TV to
shame Cory for not taking his own domestic responsibility seriously. A conversation that
begins as a simple father-son lesson in economics turns into an argument in which Troy fights
to strip his son of his future manhood and Cory further develops his deep hatred of his father.
The argument between Cory and Troy in this scene also reveals Troy’s deep disappointment
with his own sports career. The audience begins to see that this, in part, is one reason Troy is
so obstinate about signing a paper for Cory’s scholarship recruitment. Troy played in the
Negro Leagues, the segregated baseball league, and he boasts to his son that he and his
teammates back then were better than almost all of the white or black major leaguers of the
present. Troy feels as though he never really got his chance to show his true talents to the
world. He can find no specific cause and so develops his own deep mistrust of the power held
over African Americans by white America.
This distrust is what fuels the passion in one of the key scenes of the play. After arguing that
Cory should get his “book-learning” so that he “can work…up in that A&P or learn how to
fix cars or build houses” instead of playing football (which Troy obviously sees his son is
passionate about), Cory asks his father why he never liked him. Troy is surprised by the
question and, instead of answering in a loving way, becomes cruel and militaristic with his
son. He demands to know what law says he has to like him. Troy’s life lesson to his son is
 4
valid -- a person must accept the responsibilities given to them -- but his delivery of this
advice is hurtful to both Cory and Rose and further alienates them from him.
Analysis
This scene begins and ends with confrontation. The first confrontation is a fruitful one for
Troy and his family while the final one further destroys the domestic threads holding the
family together. Troy and Bono enter the yard recounting how Troy stood up to his boss, Mr.
Rand, and has now become the first African American garbage truck driver in the Hill District
of Pittsburgh. This is a good thing for the family since Troy will be able to work longer and
bring in more pay. In a way, Troy can finally feel that his persistence in standing up to the
unseen forces of the white world is now paying off for him like it never did during his baseball
career.
Gabe, Lyons, and Rose join Troy in the yard and comprise his audience for the celebration.
After speaking of his promotion, Troy moves on to a different story. He begins to recount the
story of his father and how he became independent at the age of fourteen. He proudly tells
the assembled group of his father’s dedication to his family, even though he was a mean and
bitter man. But his relationship with his father ended when his father had caught him having
sex with a young girl and chased Troy away, only so that he could have her for himself. Troy
fights his father, is beaten badly, and leaves home to begin his journey up north. Troy proudly
feels as though he took what was best from his father – his sense of loyalty and dedication to
his family. The irony is that Troy also has taken his father's bitterness and cruelty. It is not
entirely clear if Troy realizes this.
Critics have argued that Fences is a story of manhood in modern America. Troy Maxson is
meant to represent the African American experience of manhood, the contradictions and
flaws inherent in this masculine process. There is first the question of the creation of the man;
in Troy’s experience, this is a fundamentally violent operation. It is meant to symbolize the
birth of the self; Wilson portrays the African American creation of self as a process of
violence no different in the 1950’s than it had been for eighteenth and nineteenth century
slaves.
The second stage of manhood is the continual way in which the African American man is
measured against the ideal of the American Dream, an ideal that becomes increasingly
materialistic during the middle decades of the twentieth century and increasingly illusory as
well. This is another way to read Cory and Troy’s conversation regarding the TV in the
previous scene. Troy sees Cory accepting the idea that the accumulation of stuff creates
desirable social status for the individual. Troy is deeply skeptical of this even though he
implicitly understands it (he encourages Bono to buy his wife a refrigerator).
The solution to these problems of manhood, according to Troy, is to accept the world’s
inherent violence and to barricade oneself against any materialistic thing that might inculcate
passivity. The final section of Act One is the beginning of Cory’s own passage into manhood.
Though Troy recounted earlier how he rejected his father and that previous life, Troy now
embodies his father’s previous actions. He goes to attack Cory after Cory angrily returns
from the football game, distraught that his coach will not let him play because of Troy’s
 5
demand that he be kicked off the team. Rose holds Troy back but he verbally attacks his son,
using his baseball language. He tells Cory that he now has one strike (of three), and that he
shouldn’t strike out.
Analysis
Cory’s awkwardness with the baseball bat is a metaphor for his own feelings of inadequacy
in living up to his father’s expectations. Though Cory excels in football, his father’s swing
does not come naturally to him. Wilson visually captures the classic tension between father
and son. The son desires to overtake the father and yet in Troy Maxson’s life, there is no
room for anyone but him.
Bono further elaborates on the play’s chief metaphor. In handling the wood for the Maxson’s
fence, Bono is surprised that Troy didn’t get soft pine wood. Troy responds that the hard
wood he bought may just last forever. This exchange highlights Troy’s own unreasonable
feelings of invincibility. He compares his own life to that of the fence he is building, meant
to be a symbol for Troy’s emotional hardness. Troy’s fence becomes not just a barrier to his
relationships with his family but also a monument to his failings as a father and husband.
The scene moves into one of the play’s most dramatic confrontations. Troy admits to Rose,
while she is going about her daily duties as a housewife, that he has been unfaithful to her. It
is with some irony that Troy has such a difficult time telling Rose that he is going to be a
father since she could question whether he has been much of a father to Cory or Lyons. The
tone of the play now becomes angrier and more sorrowful and will remain this way through
the second act. Rose cries out to her husband that she tried to be everything for him that a
wife should be.
The audience now sees Troy for the truly selfish person that he is. The first act was spent
with Troy waxing eloquently, if harshly, on the necessities of responsibility and duty to
family. It is clear now that those words were hollow. When Rose tries to reach out to him,
Troy only retreats further into himself, claiming that he was with Alberta because she gave
him feelings that his family could not give him. Troy is now a man of inconsistency.
It is important to note the choice of language that Troy reverts to after admitting his affair.
Troy attempts to explain his actions in the mode of a baseball announcer. This only
underscores his self-centeredness, however. Troy creates a game out of his life and places
himself as the star player. He uses baseball analogies to try and explain the kind of life that
was handed to him versus the kind of life that he desires for himself. The analogies, however,
fall flat and Rose is unconvinced. Rose tries to explain to him how his selfishness takes from
her and Cory as well, but Troy is not willing to hear this. Troy’s anger almost explodes into
violence before Cory diverts his rage. He once again uses baseball terminology to threaten
Cory but it is Troy who is now the one striking out.
Analysis
The second scene of Act Two begins six months later. Very quickly the audience is able to
see the ways in which Rose and Troy’s life has unraveled. She, apparently, has not spoken to
him in months. For his part, Troy has made no effort to make amends and has presumably
 6
spent his days doing just what he is doing on this day, cashing his check and playing checkers.
Troy has also begun to let his other relationships and responsibilities lapse. Rose tells him
that Gabe is being taken to a mental hospital and she accuses him of sending him away in
order to keep his money. It is a damning accusation.
Rose is then put in the difficult situation of bearing the news of Alberta’s death. Her worry
about who will bury the woman foreshadows the ways in which Rose takes on Alberta’s
responsibilities in life, namely raising her daughter. In this turn of events, it is Rose that is
shown to be the truly responsible member of the Maxson family. Wilson’s play makes a
strongly feminist statement here. While up to this point the audience had only seen Rose as
the passive domestic partner, it is clear now that Rose is truly the foundation of the family.
This becomes more true as she takes Raynell as her own.
Troy’s conversation with “Mr. Death” is a dramatization of his fear of dying. In several
instances, most notably his bout with pneumonia, Troy casts himself as narrowly escaping
death. For Troy, death is something that is always near to him. Only through his wits is he
able to escape it. Alberta’s death is a kind of wake-up call for Troy. It is a realization that he
has fallen down on his duties as a man and as a human being. Troy’s fence now becomes a
fence of safety. Instead of keeping his family away from him, his fence is now meant to hold
everyone inside.
The next scene, in which Rose takes Raynell as her own daughter, is powerful in expressing
both what Troy has gained and lost during the play. Troy has obvious affection for his child.
The fact that he has owned his fatherhood and taken in the child shows that he is not
completely heartless. However, he is also powerless and can do nothing but ask for Rose’s
help. Troy’s selfishness remains just below the surface during all of this and he cannot help
but protest by explaining why he does not apologize.
Troy’s infidelity is a symbol of the destruction of the American Dream. Wilson’s play is, in
effect, a critique of that dream. Though the American Dream has been defined in many
different ways, Wilson uses his play to show the audience the ways in which the American
Dream has been defined for the African American community by forces outside of that
community. Troy’s life would seem to be following that dream – he is slowly rising into the
middle class, he has a family, and even owns his house which will soon have a picket fence.
This dream is an impossibility, however. It is Troy’s flaws that destroy this dream. As a
universal type of character, Wilson is commenting on the ways that the flaws of humanity
make the American Dream an impossibility.
The complete destruction of this dream occurs during Cory and Troy’s battle in the front
yard. Cory is blunt in forcing Troy to confront his own inadequacies and yet it is Troy who
is still the more powerful man. In this scene Troy becomes his father. He kicks Cory out of
the house just as his own father kicked him out of his boyhood home. In a cycle, Troy has
become the thing that he hated most.
Analysis
 7
The final scene of the play can be understood through the same language of baseball that
Troy Maxson uses to narrate his own life. In an earlier scene, Troy compared his relationships
with Rose, Cory, and Alberta to running the bases on a baseball diamond. It is Troy, however,
that the audience now sees has struck out. His first strike came with his unfaithfulness to
Rose, the woman who supported and stood by him for half her life. His second strike came
when he destroyed his relationship with his son, Cory. It is death that serves as Troy’s third
and final strike.
It is important to note the setting for this scene. It is 1965, and though Wilson does not allude
to it, much change has been made in the racial dynamic of the United States in the eight years
that have passed. This setting, in fact, alludes to what is considered the most important Civil
Rights legislation of the era – the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Troy’s death is a line of
demarcation. He represents the passing of a particular era of African American history. His
generation led the great migration to the North and sowed the seeds of unrest that resulted in
great change. Troy’s absence represents an opening of space for a new generation to heal and
to grow.
This rite of passage between generations is seen in two powerful scenes in this final act. In
the first scene, Cory returns and meets his baby half-sister for the first time. They have
nothing in common, no shared experiences or memories, yet are able to together perform the
song of Old Blue that Troy taught them. Despite his bitterness and unfaithfulness, the song
symbolizes Troy’s ability to bequeath something of his own life and himself to his children.
This scene is also an example of the role of the blues in the play. The blues is a uniquely
African American musical form. It is music of sin and redemption; the blues chronicles the
emotions of a neglected race in America. Troy’s story is a blues story. He is the maligned
character that the world has turned against. Alberta represents his sin and Rose his chance at
redemption - a redemption he fails to claim. Blues provides the play’s bitter rhythm and in
this final scene Raynell and Cory’s song becomes a blues dirge.
The second important action in this scene is Gabriel’s entrance to blow the trumpet and let
Troy into heaven. Earlier in the play, Gabriel assured Troy that St. Peter had his name written
in his book in heaven. This would be his ticket through the pearly gates. Gabriel’s trumpet,
however, does not emit a sound. Gabriel does not give up and begins a ritual dance. This
dance is open to interpretation by the audience, but its power is that it achieves Troy’s
redemption. The gates of heaven are opened. Gabriel, thus, is the play’s redeeming figure.
He represents the victory of innocence and family bonds. He does not give up on Troy even
while his wife and son are ready to be done with the man. Troy becomes the redeemed,
though deeply flawed, hero.
Fences Fences and the Negro Leagues
In August Wilson’s Fences, Troy Maxson is a former Negro League baseball player who
narrowly missed the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues. When he was a young player
at the top of his game, Major League Baseball was segregated. The first African American
baseball players were not recruited to the majors until Troy was already too old to be a viable
 8
team member. This experience leaves Troy cold and bitter, and it influences his relationship
with his son, Cory, who has aspirations of playing college football.
This experience was not an uncommon one for the scores of African American ball players
who played in the Negro Leagues. Only now, approximately fifty years after the dissolution
of the last Negro League teams, are the skills and talent of these Negro League players
beginning to be honored by modern day baseball. A look at the history of Negro League
baseball offers a glimpse into a world of segregation, but it also offers a look at an elite group
of skilled players representing their communities on a national stage.
Until the 1950’s, baseball in America mirrored the broader racial culture. In baseball, the all-
white National and American Leagues garnered most of the money, prestige, and attention
for professional sports fans. African American ballplayers played in the Negro Leagues. The
Negro Leagues had their beginnings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with
the organization of the first professional, paid teams of baseball players. These teams would
participate in circuits, called Barnstormer leagues, where teams would travel across the
United States playing in large cities and small towns or anywhere else that provided a field
and fans. In 1920 the first professional league of black baseball teams was organized by Rube
Foster, a baseball pitcher and manager. The league was named the Negro National League.
It consisted of eight team: the Chicago American Giants, Chicago Giants, Dayton Marcos,
Detroit Stars, Indianapolis ABC’s, Kansas City Monarchs, St. Louis Giants, and the Cuban
Stars.
The history of Negro league baseball is best seen through the careers of famous Negro
legends Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson (both are mentioned in Wilson’s play). Paige is
considered to be not just one of the best Negro league pitchers ever but also one of the greatest
pitchers in the history of the entire game of baseball. Paige notoriously refused to give his
exact age, though historians of the game have determined that he was born sometime around
1906-1908 in Mobile, Alabama. Paige suffered a rough childhood – he was born into poverty
and resorted to stealing by the time he was a boy. He was sent to Mt. Meigs Juvenile detention
center as a child. It was here that Paige first learned the game of baseball and learned that he
had a special talent for pitching.
Paige played for at least eight Negro league baseball teams throughout his career, though his
time spent in the Barnstorming leagues and in South American winter leagues meant that his
career was much more prolific than what can be verified. Because statistics were not widely
kept during Paige’s career, his legacy has relied more on legend than on numbers. Paige
would famously call in his outfielders or tell his infielders to sit down when he was pitching
to certain batters, so sure was he of his ability to strike the batter out. In the Negro league
World Series of 1942, Paige claimed that he intentionally loaded the bases just so that he
could pitch to Josh Gibson, the league’s best batter, and strike him out on three straight
pitches.
Gibson himself is, perhaps, a model for Troy Maxson in Wilson’ play. Gibson was known as
the best hitter in Negro league baseball. According to the Baseball Hall of Fame, into which
Gibson was inducted in 1972, Gibson hit almost 800 home runs in his career (the current
 9
leader in career homes runs is Barry Bond with 762). While this number is impossible to
validate since, like Paige, Gibson’s statistics were never officially kept by league officials,
these stories of legendary ability speak to the status that such players held in the imaginations
of fans and baseball historians.
Like Troy Maxson in Fences, Josh Gibson would never play in the white Major Leagues.
This fact haunted Gibson for much of his life. Later in his life, he is reported to have suffered
from alcoholism and depression, diseases that his former teammates and friends say was
brought on by his frustration and disappointment with the game. Gibson died of a stroke in
1947, just months before baseball was integrated when Jackie Robinson signed a contract
with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Satchel Paige, on the other hand, would get the chance to play in the Major Leagues. At the
age of 42, Paige was signed by the Cleveland Indians to pitch from their bullpen during the
pennant race of 1948. Though his pitching was not as electric as it had been in his younger
days, Paige played a crucial role in helping the Indians win the American League pennant
that year. In 1965, in what was considered a gimmick promotion, Paige was brought on to
pitch in a game for the Kansas City Royals. He thus became the oldest man to ever pitch or
play in the Major Leagues.
The Negro leagues, as seen through the lives of its players, is remembered as a symbol of
both great injustice and great achievement. Several of its players, including Jackie Robinson
and Hank Aaron, would go on to legendary careers in the Major Leagues. Most of the
league’s great players, however, were denied the chance to compete against their white
counterparts. Players such as Gibson and Paige, including other great stars like Monte Irvin,
Cool Papa Bell, and Judy Johnson, are remembered for their individual achievements but
also for the way they ushered in a golden era of black baseball. Through such players,
baseball was not just white America’s game. It was a game for all.
Fences Essay Questions
1. 1
Why does Gabriel carry a trumpet around his neck?
Because of a head injury, Gabriel believes that he is the angel Gabriel and that he is able to
open the gates of heaven with his trumpet. While the audience knows that this is not literally
true, the final scene shows that Gabe becomes the play's figure of redemption. He
unsuccessfully tries to blow his trumpet and when that does not work, dances his brother into
heaven. Troy does not have the play's last word; instead, it is the fool, the representation of
innocence, that finally offers Troy deliverance.
2. 2
Why is the setting of the play important?
The setting of the play is important because the 1950's represents a time of great upheaval in
race relations in the United States. Troy Maxson represents a previous generation that now
watches the world move on around them. They have been maligned by white transgression
 10
in the past and yet have been able to procure a small portion of the country's booming wealth
for themselves. Troy dies, however, in 1965, the year of the greatest legislative triumph of
the Civil Rights era. He is not able to enjoy the victory that he helped bring about.
3. 3
Why is Troy Maxson considered an "everyman" character?
Troy Maxson is a character of universal type. Though his life is dictated by the particulars of
the African American experience of the early twentieth century, his failings as a man as well
as his small measures of redemption are applicable to all people. Wilson deftly creates a
character who is a flawed and identifiable hero, through his responsibilities to family and his
inabilities to live up to his own high expectations. His battles with his sons resonate across
racial and cultural lines as universal human experiences.
4. 4
Explain the play's principal metaphor of the fence.
Jim Bono best sums up the play's overarching metaphor by explaining to Troy, "Some people
build fences to keep people out…and other people build fences to keep people in.” Both Troy
and Rose Maxson attempt to build emotional fences throughout the play. Rose attempts to
keep her family within her fence by being a good and faithful wife. Troy is more concerned
with an emotional fence that never permits his sons to understand his love for them.
5. 5
Is Rose's character an example of feminism or an example of the repressed role of
women in society?
Scholars have been divided on Rose's role in the play. Some have seen Rose as the
prototypical 1950s housewife, disappearing into her husband and leaving no room for her
own self to flourish. Others, however, have seen Rose as occupying a feminist position; she
does remain a housewife and mother but only because she makes the choice for herself. No
one forces motherhood on her. She admits that when Troy takes pieces of her, it is because
she gives those pieces out of her own choice. But then, what other choice does she have?
6. 6
Discuss the role of the blues in Fences.
Troy's blues song for his dog, Old Blue, is an example of Wilson's use of blues music in the
play. Troy takes on the role of an archetypal blues character who has seen his world taken
away from him for his transgressions. The blues also acts as a form of aural tradition. Cory
and Raynell sing Troy's blues song as they bury him, representing pieces of Troy that pass
down through generations.
7. 7
Discuss the meaning of baseball in the play.
 11
Troy uses baseball as a metaphor for his own life, yet the audience comes to understand that
the game Troy plays is not necessarily the one in which he sees himself. Troy remembers
himself as a star in the Negro Leagues, but he was never given a chance to prove himself.
His relationship with Alberta, and the selfishness that it inculcates in him, is his chance to
please himself in a way that he never could while playing baseball. Troy, however, fails at
his own game. His failures in his relationships with his wife and son represent two strikes in
his life. The inevitability of his death is his third and final strike.
8. 8
What traits make Troy Maxson an unlikable protagonist?
Troy is seen as an unsympathetic character for much of the play because of the emotional
fence he builds to keep his sons and wife from seeing and accepting his underlying love for
them. This is best observed when Cory asks Troy why Troy does not like him. Instead of
offering a reassuring remark, Troy shames his son by telling him that there is no law that says
he must like him. The fence that Troy puts up to keep his sons from accepting him also acts
as a fence to keep the audience from sympathizing with Troy.
9. 9
What traits make Troy Maxson a redeemed protagonist?
For all of his faults, Troy Maxson is ultimately redeemed. This is accomplished through the
small glimpses of care and affection that his children remember in the play's final scene.
Raynell tells Cory that Troy always called her room "Cory's room" and that he never threw
out Cory's football equipment. They close the play by singing Troy's old blues song about
his dog. It is inevitable that fathers pass on pieces of themselves to their children. Through
this process, Troy becomes a redeemed character and a flawed hero, but a hero nevertheless.
10. 10
Discuss the cycle of father-son relationships in the play.
In the play, sons become outraged at the actions of their fathers. This outrage turns into hate,
and yet the sons cannot help but bear a resemblance to their fathers. For Troy, this happens
when he assaults Cory and kicks him out of the house. Troy believes that he is protecting
Cory from a life of failure in football, yet Troy has become the same man that his father had
been. The final scene sees Cory struggling with this same dynamic. He seeks to reject his
father, but he cannot completely leave Troy - he carries his memory, influence, and song with
him.
Fences Quotes and Analysis
"You and me is two different people, Pop."
Fences, 18
This line is spoken by Troy's oldest son, Lyons. Troy chides Lyons for being lazy and poor
and for not wanting to get a real job in the sanitation department or with some other company.
Lyons spends his nights in the jazz clubs as a musician. Troy, however, has only a limited
 12
say in how Lyons lives his life because Lyons was raised by his mother while Troy was in
jail. Though Troy teases his oldest son, the audience sees that Troy begrudgingly respects his
son for being his own man and for doing what he loves even at the expense of stability. It is
a choice that Troy feels he was never able to make.
"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
Troy speaks this line to his youngest son, Cory, as they work together to build the fence that
Rose has been asking for around their yard. Troy is troubled by Cory's interest in sports and
the opportunity that he is being given to play football on scholarship at a college. Troy feels
that his own years playing professional baseball in the Negro Leagues was time wasted; that
the white powers of control conspired against him and prevented him from being recognized
as the great player that he was. In response to this disappointment, Troy demands that his son
give up a dream that he believes will only break his heart.
"Cory: How come you ain't never liked me?
Troy: Liked you? Who the hell say I got to like you?"
Fences, 37
In this conversation between father and son, Cory unearths Troy's deep seeded emotions
towards his family. Though he does love his family, and his tenderness and concern are on
display in other scenes, Troy has come to a point in his life where he finally becomes broken
by the responsibility of caring for them. Responsibility, in Troy's world, is the most noble
calling of a man. This responsibility, however, has caused Troy to become a bitter man. He
cannot "like" his son because of his own desire that Cory not become like him.
"(He sings.) Hear it ring! Hear it ring! I had a dog his name was Blue...You know Blue was
mighty true."
Fences, 44
This is a line from a song that Troy created about his childhood dog, Blue. Troy feels a special
kindred to this old dog because it licked and cared for him after his father beat him and kicked
him out of the house as a child. Troy took his dog north with him and, in a sense, Troy loved
Old Blue more than anyone because the dog exemplified traits of loyalty and dedication to
which Troy aspired. Old Blue becomes a metaphor for Troy's own failings as a husband and
father. In the play's final scene, Cory and Raynell eulogize their dead father by singing of
Blue's redemption in heaven.
Some people build fences to keep people out...and other people build fences to keep people
in.
Fences, 61
 13
This line occurs during a conversation between Troy and his friend Bono. Here, Bono
succinctly sums up the overarching metaphor of the play. Though Troy initially asks why
Rose would want to build a physical fence, Bono understands the symbolic importance. Rose
builds her symbolic fence to keep her husband and her son together. She attempts to keep her
family inside the home. Troy, on the other hand, builds symbolic fences of dedication and
responsibility, aspirations so high that neither he nor his sons can live up to them. These
fences push people away and, in the end, Troy loses his wife and son because of the lofty
standards he cannot reach.
"Got me two rooms. In the basement. Got my own door too. Wanna see my key? ...That's my
own key! Ain't nobody else got a key like that."
Fences, 25
This line is spoken by Troy's brother, Gabriel Maxson, during the play's first act. Gabriel
represents Troy's conflict over protecting the ones he loves and giving them their freedom.
Gabriel, like Troy, is concerned with being his own man and controlling his own destiny,
which is why he moved out of Troy's house. However, Gabriel was wounded in World War
II and is disabled to the point where he is unable to care for himself. Troy and Gabe's
relationship becomes tragic as Troy sells out Gabriel, sending him to a mental hospital and
taking his monthly disability checks from the government to support his own family.
"Alright...Mr. Death. See now...I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take and
build me a fence around this yard. See? I'm gonna build me a fence around what belongs to
me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See? You stay over there until you're ready
for me. Then you come on. Bring your army. Bring your sickle."
Fences, 77
This quote, spoken by Troy after he hears the news that his mistress has died giving birth to
his daughter, is a reminder to the audience that Troy's struggle is not just with his son or his
wife but also with forces beyond his own earthly power. Wilson uses archetypal themes from
classical Greek theater to depict the struggles of Troy Maxson. In this case, it is the struggle
between heaven and hell over the soul of one man. Troy is in a constant battle with death
throughout his entire life. It is a battle for his own destiny and the right to control his own
fate.
"Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn't...and at the same time he tried to make
you into everything he was. I don't know if he was right or wrong...but I do know he meant
to do more good than he meant to do harm."
Fences, 97
Rose Maxson speaks these lines to her son Cory after Troy's death. Cory struggles with being
released from his father's hold. Cory finds that his father's control extends beyond the grave.
In this scene, Rose attempts to offer some measure of redemption for her husband. Here, she
sums up Troy's conflicting relationship with his sons. He strongly desired that his sons not
 14
be forced to endure the disappointment that he himself faced during his life, yet he also could
not stand for Cory, the boy he raised, to overtake him as patriarch.
"I wanted a house that I could sing in. And that's what your daddy gave me. I didn't know to
keep up his strength I had to give up little pieces of mine...It was my choice. It was my life
and I didn't have to live it like that. But that's what life offered me in the way of being a
woman and I took it."
Fences, 98
Rose Maxson, who speaks these lines in the play's final scene, is contradictorily a figure of
repressed femininity and also a figure of great feminine strength. She admits in this scene
that her life as a housewife and mother was forced upon her by Troy, yet she insists that at
no point did she ever lose her ability to choose. The domestic life was what she chose and in
this scene she owns that choice for herself. Some of the play's critics have noted that Rose is
the least dimensional of Wilson's characters, but this scene shows that glimpses of Rose's
complexity are able to come through.
"That's the way that go!"
Fences, 101
Gabriel Maxson speaks the play's final line. After Troy dies, Gabriel shows up at the house
with his trumpet, ready to "tell St. Peter to open the gates." As he tries to blow his trumpet,
no sound comes out and Gabriel begins a strange dance. It is a dance of grief and trauma but
also a foolish dance. Wilson turns the traditional ending of the play on its head; the
protagonist, Troy, does not have the play's final word. Instead, it is the "fool," Gabriel, who
ends the play with a simple declaration that fate has finally taken its man. Gabriel does not
let anything keep him from redeeming his brother and sending him into heaven.
Fences
Fences was written by August Wilson in 1983 and first performed at the 46th Street Theatre
on Broadway in 1987. Fences is the sixth play in Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle." The Cycle is
a series of plays set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania over the ten decades of the 20th century.
Fences is set in the 1950's and deals with issues of race relations and the changing broader
culture of the United States.
The play was both a critical and commercial success. During its initial run on Broadway, it
brought in an astounding $11 million in its first year of production, a record for a non-musical
play. It won four Tony Awards, including Best Play; several Critic's awards; and the Pulitzer
Prize for drama. Beyond its commercial and critical success, however, Wilson's play is
perhaps most notable for its impact on popular theater. Fences, along with Wilson's other
most successful play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, proved that the theatrical tastes of the
country were shifting from an appetite for popular musicals and comedies to an acceptance
of serious theater dealing with the cultural, racial, and social issues of the day.
The play's impact reached beyond the theater and into the academic and artistic conversations
of the late twentieth century. It has been deemed a "generational play" by critics and
 15
academics for its depiction of three generations of African-American men -- Troy Maxson,
Troy's father, and Troy's son. It depicts an archetypal struggle between fathers and sons,
themes that have proved pertinent across racial and generational divides. The play has even
premiered in numerous foreign countries (including China), demonstrating its thematic
power across cultures.
Fences is unique among Wilson's plays in that it adheres more strictly to the classical tragedy
structure than his other works. Wilson often objected to such structure in his plays, yet Fences
ultimately embraces the orderly flow of beginning, rising action, climax, and falling action.
Wilson's play also features a clear protagonist, Troy Maxson, with whom the audience can
identify, suffer, and become redeemed.
Though written in the 1980's, the play deals with African-American life in the post-World
War II era. Troy is a product of this time, continually caught between the African-American
oppression of his Southern childhood and his Northern adopted home, and his changing world
- a world in which African-Americans were joining the middle class, securing better jobs,
and seeing their children gain opportunities, such as college and sports careers, that previous
generations never had. Troy represents an entire generation, unsatisfied with the legacy of
racism that they bore and uncomfortable in their slow social ascent.
In a testament to its enduring universal themes, Fences was revived on Broadway in 2010,
with Denzel Washington in the lead. Again, the play was nominated for multiple Tony
Awards, winning Best Actor for Washington, Best Actress for Viola Davis in the part of
Rose, and Best Revival. Fences also remains one of the most assigned theatrical texts to
students in the United States, ensuring that it will continue to be the subject of academic
debate for generations to come.
=======================
Fences In 1965, August Wilson’s “Fences” was created as the fifth part of his Pittsburg Cycle
of dramas of the 20th Century investigation of the evolution of black culture (Gantt, 1; Gantt,
2).The play has an influx of symbolism and metaphors that tells the late life story of Troy
Maxonand the family that surrounds him. Even from the beginning of the drama there is
conflict andforeshadowing that can be attributed to his own belief that he has failed in life
and that the worlddid not give him what he deserved. He believes that he has to go outside
of the family to findrefuge and that is how the story begins and ends.Using Formalistic
analysis the essay will focus on the motifs that occur in each act andscene of the drama to
build to the last scene and the conclusion of the play (Chapter 3, 37).The point of view
through out the play is through the eyes of Troy Maxon as viewed by theaudience. He is the
lead in the drama, and all plots revolve around his life and his decisions,some good and others
not so good. These motifs also give the audience an understanding asto the life of the African
American, both male and female, in the mid to late 1950s and early1960s. Life was getting
better in the sense of gaining citizenship, but this was also before thecivil rights movement
and shows that citizenship did not mean acceptance or understanding of the assimilated
African American culture, or putting into the open the injustice of the past(Burbank, 118).The
second facet of this analysis is the combining of each act and scene through unityand
 16
relational issues and actions that keep the drama moving forward and keeping the
audienceintrigued as to what is to come in the future of the drama (Chapter 3, 40). Since
Wilson loved touse metaphors, the relationship between the metaphors is as an important
aspect as themetaphors themselves (Wilson, 479).The introduction to the drama reinforces
the plight of the African American to prepare theaudience. The audience needs to look at the
drama from the 1950s based on the social andeconomic conditions of the African American
in that decade. The African Americans of the
1950s were looked upon as less than citizens, and definitely the lowest of the immigrants
thatwere coming to America to find a better life. Many of the African Americans in the cities
hadmigrated to the North, which instead of taking them in with open arms, pushed them aside
andpushed them back, giving them only the basest parts of life. It is this aspect of their life
thatWilson wants the audience to understand throughout this play (Burbank, 117). He
introducesthe fence in this part as well, so the audience will know the importance of the fence
as a symbolthroughout the play on several levels, both societal and individual.Once the
setting and atmosphere was set, Wilson immediately takes the audience intothe seemingly
happy life of Troy Maxon, before making it apparent that he felt a failure and nothappy. The
first symbol that arises is the difference between the white people and the blackpeople. Troy
takes a stand and asks why black people never get to drive the trash trucks. Mostof his
coworkers believe that he will be fired. Luckily, by the end of the play, the audiencerealized
that Troy made a giant step for all African Americans, but he still does not appreciatewhat
he has done, and what he has been given. It is not enough. This theme of not beingappreciated
and believing that something is not enough will permeate throughout all thesymbols used in
this drama.A second symbol or relational symbols are sports and the individual’s dreams of
thefuture. Troy had been in the Negro League and played baseball until he was over 40 years
old.The problem in regard to baseball arises, when Troy is overlooked by the newly
desegregatedprofessional baseball league because of his age. His dreams of playing for the
professionalwhite league were smashed, and he had nothing to show his worth in the years
that followed.That is he believed that he was nothing because he never made it to the big
leagues (Gantt,10). Unfortunately, this defeat in career also defeated Troy mentally. From
that time on he sawhis family and his life as failure he wanted to escape from them, but also
felt a responsibility to them.
This feeling of failure continues into the relationship that Troy has with his son, Cory.Cory
is an excellent football player, and yet, Troy refuses to acknowledge his son’s ability
evenwhen he is recruited by a college. Troy cannot and will not let Cory succeed where he
failedand refuses to let Cory go to college on a football scholarship (Gantt, 10). But this is
not theonly time that Troy shows resentment of his son. In Act 1, Scene 3, Cory asks Troy
“How comeyou ain’t never liked me? (Wilson, 504). Troy is angry at this question and tells
Cory that “…it’smy duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you!” (Wilson, 505).
However, even beforethis it is obvious that Troy sees Cory as nothing but an irritation that
continues until the finalscene, when Cory arrives for Troy’s funeral. Only then is the
animosity put to rest on bothsides.Unlike Cory, Troy’s first son, Lyons, is accepted by Troy.
The fact of the matter is thatLyons is a failure in Troy’s eyes and, therefore, is not any better
than Troy. Lyons wants to be amusician, but is not very successful. Troy sees Lyons failure
 17
in music the same as his playingbaseball in the Negro League and never getting to the
professional league. He believes that hisson will eventually take a menial job and claim defeat
as his own. In the last scene of the play itcomes to light that Lyons did end up defeated, but
only to a point. His love of music was stillalive and he was still following his dream.One
thing that is a bit confusing is the love and praise that Troy speaks in regard to hiswife, Rose.
He constantly states that there is no better woman or wife, and that she is the bestthing that
happened to him. The confusion sets in for the audience, when Bono, Troy’s friend,brings up
his interest in Alberta in Act 1, Scene 1. Troy does not exactly deny his interest inAlberta;
instead he turns it around by asking Bono questions and thereby changing the subjectwithout
truly answering the question. This avoidance continues on through the drama until hehas to
tell Rose that Alberta is pregnant with his baby.Rose becomes the strong archetype of the
African American woman. She has put her life and soul into Troy, and yet he has sought out
the companionship of another (Gantt, 11). He explains the affair as a way to ignore the
responsibilities of his failed life, if at least for a while.This aggravates Rose even more, since
he has never taken her feelings, wants or needs intoconsideration. Troy continues to be
married to Rose, but still sees Alberta with Rose’sknowledge of the situation. Rose even takes
the call from the hospital when Alberta dies whilegiving birth. The strength of Rose does not
reach its apex until Troy brings home his daughter.He asks Rose to help him raise her. Rose’s
response gives the audience the berth of her strength. In two lines, she puts the future in place,
“From right now…this child got a mother. Butyou is a womanless man.” (Wilson, 530) The
strength of not blaming the child is apparent, andit becomes known that this child will have
as good a life as Rose can give her with no animosityor jealousy of the creation of the child.
Troy, on the other hand, is shown that he will not onlyhave the responsibility of the child, but
will continue to have the responsibility of Rose, Lyons,and Cory with nothing in return.While
all of these outward trials are occurring, the fence and baseball are intrinsic in theexplanation
of Troy’s life. The fence represents the knowledge of Troy’s affair even before itwas known
to his family. Rose had requested the fence, and symbolically it was to hold her family
together. The fact that Troy never really worked on the fence all that much shows that hewas
not in love with Rose, but felt a responsibility to her. He wanted his freedom and the
fencesymbolized his acceptance as a failure.Throughout the work, Troy constantly used the
game of baseball as a metaphor to life.This is the metaphor that is used, because he was a
failure in the desegregated professionalleague and he was a failure in life. The baseball
references just reinforce the lack of successand create even more animosity toward the family
and friends in his life. Rose reminded him of his failure, because she was there when it
occurred. He was able to forget about his failurewhen he was with Alberta, because she was
new and had no knowledge of his true failure in life.
The symbol of the fence and the metaphors of baseball used throughout this drama,connect
everything back to the sense that Troy Maxon was unhappy with his life, and felt as if he
were a failure. The failure was taken out on those he felt a responsibility to, such as Rose,and
Cory. He felt no real responsibility to Lyons, hence there relationship was better. Troy
was jealous of Cory and reminded of his failures by Rose. Wilson used the fence and baseball
to tellthis story. It was not just a story of a life perceived as a failure, but a look into the mind
andthoughts of an African American man of the 1950s.
 18
======================
Rose as a Powerful Dramatic Character in Fences var addthis_config =
{"data_track_addressbar":true}; Rose is the most powerful dramatic character in Fences. She
has her own ways of coping with and enduring the layers of anxieties and suffering resulting
from the racial discrimination and patriarchal domination. Her ability to cope with her
husband's anxieties, his betrayal and her response to Raynell's arrival at her home and the
way she tries to manipulate her son's sympathy and respect for Troy are the elements in the
play that present her as the most dramatic character. August Wilson (1945-2005)
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Troy lived at a time when blacks in
America were not able to enjoy the same opportunities as the whites. The blacks were barred
from participation in different political, cultural and social activities. This discrimination
made Troy internalize the racial oppression practiced by the whites against the blacks. It is
the major cause of frustration in his life. He has lived the life of missed opportunities and is
much despaired because of it. Rose is such a motherly figure that she has always been beside
him when he is preoccupied with the idea of death and the devil. It is the expression of his
agony and struggle for life and self-assertion. In such difficult circumstances Rose feels
deeply for him and asks him not to talk about death and the devil. Her emotional support for
Troy is unparalleled. When Lyons comes to her house, she treats him in a loving way though
she knows that she is her stepson. Troy calls him a nigger on the street but she is very
affectionate towards him. It is her greatness as a woman and a mother. Any other woman
would have reacted very differently under such circumstances. Words are not enough to talk
about her benevolence. When she finds Gabriel suffering she knows that her husband is
responsible for it. She tells him frankly that his carelessness and indifference were
responsible for what Gabriel was. The Maxson family is suffering because of the social
discrimination practiced by whites. Within the family, she suffers as a female. She is thus a
victim of double oppression. Under such circumstances her power to endure is remarkable.
Her husband is not loyal to her. He has relation with others as well. She has planted her hopes
and dreams in him, but he has proved to be rocky and infertile. Despite this, she doesn't desert
him. She expresses her anger and pain openly, but doesn't nurture any bitterness. There is a
spiritual side to her personality. She is a saint in human form. Rose builds fences not for
keeping people outside, but to have them near her. Fences in her case stand for protection
and love. She accepts Raynell though the baby is the outcome of her husband's betrayal. The
innocent baby has lost her mother, but she finds another mother in Rose. No woman can
accept her husband's illegitimate child. Therein lies her greatness. It is a great sacrifice that a
married woman can make Rose nurtures the baby because the innocent child stands for the
hope of better future and society. Given her husband's betrayal and deception, she should be
punishing him severely and leaving him. But no such things happen. Troy and Cory had
always had a tensed relation. The father tries to mold his son the way he himself was trained
and conditioned. The son, too, cannot understand the father's point of view. He hates his
father and shows disrespect towards him. He is not even willing to attend his father's funeral.
Rose persuades her son to show respect for his father. After all, he is Cory's father and should
respect him and hold him in awe. Because of these virtues and ability for endurance she is
the most powerful dramatic character in the play.
 19

==============
Rose Maxson Character Analysis
Wife to Troy and mother of Cory, Rose represents the maternal gentleness of the Maxson
household. In opposition to Troy’s toughness and disrespect for Cory’s feelings and opinions,
Rose is a source of love and understanding. While Troy discourages Cory’s dream of playing
football, Rose supports her son’s ambitions, and tries to convince her husband that times have
changed since he played sports—that Cory’s skin color will not bar him from a future in
sports, like it might have in the past. Rose largely serves as the voice of reason for her
husband. While Troy is prone to telling tall tales about his life, Rose always corrects him and
translates his fictions into the actual acts they represent. When Troy tries to say that he met
the Grim Reaper and wrestled with him, Rose decodes his fantasy, and reveals that he’s
talking about when he contracted pneumonia. Rose is also characterized by her devotion to
her family, and her willingness to sacrifice her desires to be the best wife and mother she
possibly can, and provide the most love she can muster. In contrast, Troy gives into his desires
even when they take him beyond his commitment to the family, as we see in his affair with
Alberta. Rose, however, believes in preserving the bonds which hold her family together, as
embodied in her wish for a fence to border her home. Wanting to keep her family close to
her, and the integrity of its bonds intact, Rose is crushed when she learns that Troy has
betrayed her and the private, enclosed space of protection she envisions as the relationship
they vowed to sustain and protect.

Cory MaxsonCharacter Analysis

The son of Troy and Rose, Cory embodies a hope for the future unmet by the pessimism of
his father. When Cory seeks love and compassion in his relationship with Troy, it’s met with
a hardened toughness, as his father believes that his relationship with his son is born out of
sheer duty—not love. Raised in an era where the racism Troy experienced in his youth has,
to a rather small yet significant extent, faded—and where opportunities for black lives have
begun to open—Cory has an optimism about his future. Troy, however, views Cory’s career
aspirations as idealistic and detached from the realities of a racist society where, for instance,
he believes the white-dominated sports world will not support his son’s ambition to become
a football player. August Wilson therefore casts Cory as an opposing force to Troy’s views
and the values for which Troy stands, and this clash drives the story at the core of Fences.
Corey also undergoes his own development over the course of the play, coming of age when
he finally stands up to his father and leaves home to join the Marines, but maturing even
further when at the end of the play he rethinks his plan to refuse to go to his father’s funeral.
In other words, Cory must learn to stand up to his father, but also to respect the struggle his
father faced that made him who he was.
Troy MaxsonCharacter Analysis
 20
The husband of Rose, and father to Cory and Lyons, Troy is the central character of Fences.
Shaped by the effects racism has had on his life—by the struggles it created in his youth and
the career ambitions that it thwarted, including his desire to be a baseball player—Troy lives
in the shadow of what could, and what should, have been. The play can largely be described
as charting how Troy’s actions, as they’re informed by his past, affect those around him: how
his own shattered sense of hope ripples into and distorts the aspirations and dreams of those
around him—how the racism of his world growing-up continues to express itself through
Troy’s actions, indirectly shaping those of a new generation. As a result of Troy’s
experiences, he has become a man who at once espouses and insists on rigid practicality in
order to protect himself and his family from the world, even as he indulges (or can’t stop
himself from indulging) in a kind of wild impracticality of his own as a way to escape or
redress the unfairness he perceives as having thwarted his own life. This inner contrast –
which to those around him can feel like hypocrisy – is evident in a variety of ways. For
instance, Troy can’t see anything practical, or therefore worthwhile, in the professions (music
and baseball, respectively) to which his sons Lyons and Cory each aspire. But at the same
time, Troy’s affair with Alberta suggests that he’s perfectly willing to engage in something
not grounded in practicality, but rather in pure pleasure divorced from the needs of his family.
Similarly, Troy’s willingness to protest the unfair treatment of blacks in his workplace
(they’re only hired to carry garbage, while whites are exclusively hired to drive the trucks),
embodies a progressive view on the possibilities of race which mirrors the possibilities that
his sons see for the future of race relations. But, in Cory’s particular case, he sees such
possibilities as unrealistic (i.e., his belief that Cory will never succeed in professional football
because black players aren’t given a chance). Troy’s inner conflict seems also to play out in
the way he puts a fantastical spin on the reality of his past, such as telling fanciful tales about
encounters he’s had with a personified form (the grim reaper or the devil) of death. These
fantasies of Troy’s suggest that his past failures and suffering have pushed his mind, perhaps
as a kind of involuntary self-defense, to favor imagination and fictional constructions over
any consistent, constant consideration of his real past. Yet, while August Wilson seems
concerned with highlighting this conflict and hypocrisy at the core of Troy’s character, he’s
perhaps not condemning Troy personally. Rather, Wilson shows how Troy is the product of
historical, racist forces beyond his control; he shows how Troy is a vehicle for these forces,
for their reproduction and reinforcement on a new generation
Lyons MaxsonCharacter Analysis
The son to Troy and his former, unnamed wife (prior to Rose), Lyons strives, against the
wishes of his father, to be a professional musician. While Lyons claims to be fundamentally
dedicated to music—while he claims that music is the only reason he gets out of bed every
morning—August Wilson writes, in a note in the script, that Lyons is more obsessed with the
idea of being a musician than with the actual art and practice of music itself. Like his brother
Cory, therefore, Lyons’s dreams challenge Troy’s rigid sense of what constitutes a proper
profession. However, while Cory ultimately succeeds in paving a way for himself—even if
it’s through the military, and not through playing football, as he first intended—Lyons
ultimately fails. Too narrowly focused on becoming a musician, Lyons has to resort to crime
 21
(cashing other peoples’ checks) in order to make ends meet. Following in his father’s
footsteps, Lyons ends up in jail.
Gabriel MaxsonCharacter Analysis
Troy’s brother, Gabriel is the victim of a brain-injury he received at war. As a result of the
injury, Gabe’s gone insane and lives trapped in the psychotic belief that he is St. Gabriel. He
therefore sings songs warning about judgment day, and frequently mentions that he’s
working to chase hellhounds (sinning demons) away; he even tells Troy that he’s personally
seen his name in St. Peter’s book of judgment. While Gabe insists that he’s in regular
association with renowned religious figures, he also considers himself to no longer be human,
and to have died and been spiritually reborn into his sainthood. In this chronic preoccupation
with his own immortality and spiritual destiny, Gabe is yet another avenue through which the
play’s portrayal of mortality finds a voice. Gabe’s obsession with the final day of judgment
resonates with the eventual death of Troy, whom Gabe subtly foreshadows through his
preoccupation with the end of the world.
Jim BonoCharacter Analysis
Troy’s best friend, Bono is the follower in their relationship, evidenced by his admission to
Troy when confronting him about his affair with Alberta. Ever since Bono observed Troy’s
decision to take Rose’s hand in marriage, Bono admired his sensibility and wisdom. Troy,
though attractive to many women, chose to commit himself to Rose, and this signaled to
Bono that he was a man worth following: that Troy would lead Bono somewhere prosperous
in life. Unlike Rose, Bono gives-in to Troy’s fantasies—to his fictional tales about meeting
with Mr. Death, probably as a result of Bono’s own, somewhat blind devotion to what he
views as Troy’s strength and work ethic. Further, whereas Troy ultimately embodies betrayal
and the hurt caused by adultery, Bono constantly demonstrates a devotion to his wife, Lucille.
Whenever Bono leaves the Maxson household, he says he must get home to Lucille—even
on Friday nights, when he and Troy engage in their ritual of drink and conversation, Bono
leaves a little early in order to get home to his wife.
RaynellCharacter Analysis
The child of Troy and Alberta, Raynell is ultimately raised by Rose after both Troy and
Alberta die. In this way, Raynell challenges the “fences” that Rose envisions as surrounding,
protecting, and holding together her real family. At one point in the play, Rose tells Troy,
upon learning of Raynell’s impending birth, that she’s never wanted anything “half” to enter
her family. Raynell’s appearance in the world therefore stretches Rose’s ideal sense of a
family unified by parental, biological blood, and Rose’s decision to raise him marks a
broadening of her conception of what a family can be and how far her love can stretch.
AlbertaCharacter Analysis
Alberta is the woman with whom Troy has an affair. At the beginning of the play, Troy and
Bono talk crudely about her attractive physique, and Bono questions Troy about his
involvement with her throughout the book. Eventually, Bono realizes that Troy is having an
 22
affair with Alberta, and tells Troy that he must make everything right. Ultimately, Troy fails
at this: he impregnates Alberta (with Raynell), and as a result his eighteen-year-relationship
with Rose disintegrates.
Mr. RandCharacter Analysis
Mr. Rand is Troy and Bono’s manager/overseer at the garbage collection company. Troy
confronts Mr. Rand about the racism he perceives in the workplace: that exclusively whites
are hired to drive the garbage trucks, while blacks are only hired to collect and carry the
garbage. Ultimately, Troy’s complaint gets noticed by the garbage company, since the union
to which he and Bono belong pressure it into giving him a position as a driver. Troy says that
Mr. Rand had a difficult time getting out the words when delivering him the news of his
promotion.
The FenceSymbol Analysis

The fence that Rose asks Troy to build, and envisions as wrapping protectively around
her family, can be read in a several ways. On one level, the division effected by the fence
seems to echo the separation of people and social spaces central to the workings of
segregation—an unjust practice pervading the time in which the play takes place. Yet, while
Troy and Cory’s construction of a border around their home may resonate with the racial
divide plaguing the society it pictures, it’s also an emblem of black courage and strength, and
of the integrity of black lives and history. Rose yearns to fence-off and fence-in her family’s
lives and the bond connecting them from a racist world of white dominance—from a society
bent on delegitimizing black life and casting it as second-class. The fence therefore also
speaks to the psychological need Rose and many like her felt, and still feel, to preserve an
inner, private life against the brunt of an outside world where that life is rejected and made
to conform to the mechanisms of white power.
The fence also seems to serve as a figure for Troy’s career, resembling the perimeter of a
baseball stadium: the fence he strived, with his bat, to hit beyond. Despite Troy’s talent, his
skin color barred him from any chance of a steady career in the white-dominated world of
professional baseball. The fence of Troy’s career, therefore, was at once a marker of his skill
whenever he hit a home run, as well as a border enclosing a world and a future he could never
fully enter. Therefore, when Troy builds the fence for Rose, he’s building his own limit, his
own arena—a limit not imposed upon him by forces of discrimination out of his control.
While it’s critical to read the fence as a symbol of race division and how it affects the Maxson
family, the motivation to build it can also be read as stemming from Rose’s sheer, maternal
desire to protect and fortify her family. Additionally, Troy’s efforts to wall-off his home
resonate with his ongoing conflict with “Mr. Death.” By fortifying the perimeter of his home,
Troy gestures towards his desire to dam-up any lethal forces assailing him from the outside
world.
“Mr. Death”Symbol Analysis
 23

Death appears as a personified figure in Troy’s fanciful tales about wrestling with death
and buying furniture from the devil. Troy’s typically stubborn sense of manhood and strength
largely derives from his relationship with death. Having beaten all the obstacles thrown at
him in his early years and survived, Troy props up his sense of self-worth and
accomplishment through personifying death into a tangible form he’s proactively and
successfully fended off. Further, by rendering death or the forces of destruction into a person
(the grim reaper and the devil), Troy gives the unpredictability and mystery of death a
concrete form, and thereby attributes a kind of reason and discernible motive to the process
of death. Death, for Troy, is therefore a force that personally tries to antagonize and destroy
him. This personification provides a reason for the suffering of Troy’s past beyond its basis
in racism, and the severe poverty into which it landed him; it gives a higher purpose to what,
in reality, boils down to a corrupt society and a childhood made difficult by abusive and
unloving parents. “Mr. Death,” therefore, resembles the fence, since its invention helps Troy
fence-off the harsher reality that’s largely cheated him in life.
Theme Analysis
Blackness and Race Relations
Set in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, Fences explores the experience of one black family living in
the era of segregation and a burgeoning black rights movement, exposing, at the heart of its
characters’ psychology, a dynamic between the inner world of a black community and the
expanse of white power around it.
The fence which Troy gradually builds in front of his house serves as a symbol of segregation,
as well as the general psychological need to build a fortress where a black ‘inside’ or interior
can set itself off from the white-dominated world around it. From one angle, the fence
represents the geographical effects of segregation in general: the fencing-off of blacks, the
creation of ethnic insularity in certain neighborhoods, and it is a monument to this basic social
division effected by white economic and political power. Yet Troy also builds the fence
himself; it’s largely his own creation, though Rose initially tasks him with building it. Rose
wants the fence in order to set her and her family off from the outside world, to protect a
private interior of their experience—lived, black experience—from an outside world
threatening to invade it, and from the divisive effects which white power inflicts upon society.
While the latter divides with the aim of controlling and limiting black prosperity and
influence, the division effected by Troy’s fence is one of protection and an affirmation of the
world within it.
Throughout the play, we also see how its characters are forced to define their world in terms
of how it’s limited by a racist system of white social and economic power. We see that Troy’s
workplace, for instance, is organized according to a racial hierarchy privileging whites, since
exclusively white men are hired to drive the company’s garbage trucks, while black men are
only hired as garbage collectors. Further, much of the characters’ speech relies on pointing
out their status as people of color in order to describe their position in relation to white power.
 24
Wilson’s play therefore, in part, concerns itself with depicting how racism governs and
structures the everyday lives of its characters, in order to expose—through the concrete
experiences of one family—racism’s many effects on the black American community of the
1950s at large. The meaning behind and need for the fence, and the play’s exposure of a black
world in many ways defined by its oppression, are a scathing condemnation of the division
and pain inflicted by white power. Fences gives a palpable reality to the abstract mechanisms
of racism and white power—it reveals the pain of, as well as the aspirations and opportunities
withheld from, its black characters. Through framing pain as being at the heart of almost all
its characters’ lives, Wilson reveals the psychological complexity and intensely tiresome and
tasking nature of navigating a racist world divided principally between white and black. At
the same time, he reveals how that division divides blacks themselves through the pain it
inflicts upon them (such as Troy’s conflict with Cory over his desire to play football, since
Troy’s parenting is informed by his past experience of discrimination in the world of sports).
Practicality, Idealism, and Race
Fences explores the different views some of its characters have about what’s feasible,
achievable, and practical or life-sustaining with regard to career ambitions and future goals.
Troy disapproves of the livelihoods to which his sons aspire, considering them to be idealistic
dreams compared to what he views as more practical trades. Troy’s disapproval, especially
in Cory’s case, is largely informed by his own experience growing up black. Cory’s youth—
his experience growing up in a different period of history—however, affords him a broader
view of what the future might hold in store for him, of the careers open to him as a young
black male. Consequently, he has a different understanding of what qualify as practical,
viable ambitions.
Troy doesn’t think Cory should pursue a future in football, since he believes that black people
are prohibited from success in the white-dominated world of sports. Troy’s past in the
sharecropping South, and his experience as a talented baseball player whose career could
never take flight because of discrimination, have all informed his sense of black life and
opportunity in the world around him. It’s this background which makes Troy perceive Cory’s
ambition as idealistic, and not grounded in reality or practical. Further, while Lyons says
music is something essential to life, Troy sees Lyons’ lifestyle as shirking the responsibility
and hard work Troy associates with a man’s ‘proper’ profession. Though Lyons says he
values being a musician for a value intrinsic to it, Troy thinks only about money, finding
Lyons’s ambitions to be impractical. Lyons lifestyle fails to adequately provide for him, but
he nonetheless continues to pursue music over a more stable trade.
Does Fences suggest that the idealism of Cory or Lyons is a better choice than Troy’s
practicality? While Wilson ultimately writes Troy’s existence off at the end of the play with
an aura of failure, dissatisfaction, anger, and betrayal, it might be too simplistic to say that
this is a gesture of critique—that Wilson condemns Troy’s practicality altogether. Further,
the fact that his sons appear to be more compassionate, level-headed, and hopeful as human
beings are not sufficient grounds to say that Wilson favors their idealism over Troy’s
practicality. Rather than taking a stance on either, Wilson seems more concerned with
showing us how the social world of white power and racism, and how it changes and evolves
 25
through time, forms its characters’ perceptions of idealism and practicality—how, to a great
extent, especially as disenfranchised black men, Troy and his sons’ perceptions of idealism
and practicality are molded by the white power outside and around them.
Troy’s practicality, informed by his sense of failure at the hands of racial discrimination,
ultimately leads him to become an embittered man who withholds affection from those
around him, and who cannot see past his own horizon when it comes to thinking about his
sons’ futures. But Wilson perhaps wants to show us that people like Troy exist because an
unjust world has hurt and formed them, and that the pain which racism inflicts on such people
gets recycled into the generation they raise. Wilson doesn’t seem to want to delegitimize
Troy as a human being by implying that his practicality is something which he personally
invented—rather, he wants to educate a white audience, and give a voice to a black audience,
about the suffering which exists in people like Troy, why it exists, and how it is passed on.
Similarly, Cory and Lyons are not treated by Wilson as a choice in an ethical decision
between idealism versus practicality, but rather as two views of a racially divided world
informed by a different, more progressive but still grossly regressive social atmosphere—as
the two have different personal pasts than Troy. By pitting Troy against Cory and Lyons,
Wilson again shows us how white power not only separates itself from blackness, but also
separates and divides blacks themselves. While not picking a side, Wilson positions the play
from the standpoint of a more historical perspective about how these sides are formed, and
how they shape future generations, at the same time that he grounds that higher perspective
in a family’s everyday lived experience.
Manhood and Fathers
The play largely revolves around the turbulent relationship between Troy and his children—
particularly his relationship with Cory. Cory’s desire to assert his own manhood and
determine his own future clashes with the authority Troy feels as a father. Further, Cory’s
ambitions go against everything Troy thinks will be good and healthy for his son’s prosperity.
Cory evolves in the play from cowering in fear of his father to ultimately severing his ties
with him in a gesture of ‘masculine’ hubris. While Cory grew up being incredibly passive
and submissive to his father out of fear, he gradually starts acting out of his own self-interest
(such as his pursuit of football) in his later teens. Troy actively denounces Cory’s attempts
to define and pursue his own goals, and believes that Cory is obligated to absolutely bend to
his way insofar as Cory lives under his roof. But this eventually pushes Cory to leave home
and curse his father’s treatment of him and his mother. Earlier in the play, Troy describes a
similar situation with his own father growing up. Troy’s father, while a tough man to live
with, looked after his children, according to his account. But Troy, getting into a severe
conflict with his father one day, left his father—like his own son—to go out on his own.
Perhaps as a symptom of his own struggles with leading a stable life as an independent man,
Troy, in trying to protect Cory from similar struggles, seems to ultimately think that Cory’s
desire to make his own decisions fundamentally contradicts their father-son relationship. It’s
as if, in order for Cory to become a man—which would inevitably involve assuming
independence from his father’s command—he must necessarily be at odds with his father.
 26
Further, Wilson seems to be exposing us to one kind of ‘masculinity,’ one way it is
constructed and defined—and how that construction is based in the social world around it as
well as in the characters’ personal history. In this case, the masculinity is that of Troy, and
can be interpreted as something of an archetype of a certain kind of working black father in
the 50s.
This masculinity is defined by having defied one’s father in the past, endured poverty
propped-up by a racist society, and failed to follow one’s dreams—but having nonetheless
survived, stayed alive, and kept going, despite all the odds. In the eyes of their father, then,
Cory and Lyons live comparatively privileged lives having been entirely provided for until
they were grown. But, in the eyes of Troy’s sons—especially Cory—this isn’t enough. Cory
doesn’t feel loved by his father, and can’t see how his father’s harshness is in anyway
symptomatic of something larger than him and beyond his control. The play perhaps
shouldn’t be read as siding with Troy’s treatment of his children and his decisions in raising
them—rather, it tries to show, once again, how two worldviews clash in the father-son
relation.
Wilson doesn’t seem to offer a clean-cut solution to escaping the cycle of misunderstanding,
anger, and stuck-in-the-past-ness characteristic of men like Troy and their fathers. He does
show, however, how they can have such incredible power in shaping the future of their
children—e.g., Cory doesn’t get to go to college—and therefore the future generation.
Additionally, Wilson shows how difficult it is to free oneself from such a father without
totally severing the relationship.
Ultimately, Wilson’s decision to make the conflict between father and son the central pivot
of the play underscores his desire to show how abstract forces of history—particularly white
social and economic power—manifest themselves, through their racist exertion on peoples’
lives, in real, concrete, everyday lived black experience. The microscopic, psychological
relationship between a father and his son is one of the most intimate venues for those more
macroscopic forces, and as such, is very powerful to witness—it’s a venue with an
educational power for white audiences.
Family, Duty, and Betrayal
Fences is a portrayal of family life—of how its characters view their roles as individual
family members, and how they each define their commitment or duty to the family; it also
explores how betrayal can break the familial bond.
Troy refuses to tell Cory he loves him; rather, Troy tells Cory he only acts out of duty towards
him as a son, and that there’s no reason that love necessarily must be involved. Duty, for
Troy, is the foundation of family—but it’s almost indistinguishable from how Troy views
professional duty (as an act one is obligated to perform regardless of one’s personal feelings
towards one’s employer—e.g., he speaks of Mr. Rand in this way). If love isn’t a factor that
distinguishes family from profession—if family is just a contractual obligation—then Troy
must not find much of anything about family life particularly rewarding or unique.
 27
Troy’s affair with Alberta doesn’t conflict with his understanding of family as founded on
duty. Troy largely view his obligation and connection to his family as fiscal, and nothing
more. Further, Troy’s betrayal of Rose ultimately reveals how the ties of families like his are
fundamentally based upon the relationship between the two spouses who create it—in this
case, a black man and woman raising a family in relative poverty—and upon whose union,
which isn’t guaranteed, the survival of those ties depend. Troy’s betrayal therefore reveals a
crack at the heart of family life: the fact that the idea of a family as a stably defined, pre-
existing structure of human experience and development is quite complicated. Dishonoring
his bond with Rose, Troy’s family starts to fall apart.
Further, the idea of what the Maxson family really ‘is’ gets complicated by the addition of
Troy’s baby with Alberta, Raynell, whom Rose lets into the family after Alberta’s death,
becoming her adoptive mother. The family, therefore, is revealed to be a system of pledges
and vows which, as such, can morph and evolve over time. This sense of pledging is
emphasized by Rose’s reply to Troy when he admits to his affair—Rose emphasizes the
intense sacrifices she’s made for her relationship with Troy, saying that there were definitely
times she wanted to pursue more fun and satisfaction by being with other men, but that she
refused because of her vows.
Rose also defends her view of family as essential and unbreakable by insisting that Cory
attend his father’s funeral, despite his wish to skip it. While Cory considers himself separated
from his father, Rose invokes family as something which should surpass personal differences.
Yet, at the same time, this is not an invocation of Troy’s kind of duty. For Rose, family is
more than a fiscal contract. She tells Troy she felt a devotion to him based on a moral sacrifice
of her own, personal longings—a sacrifice which adultery undoes and betrays. Unlike Troy’s
sense of obligation, adultery conflicts with Rose’s sense of moral duty.
Whereas Troy thinks that his adultery is something permissible, and which Rose should be
able to accept and wrap her head around because of all the sacrifices he’s made to support
the family, Rose rejects this. She affirms that she’s made sacrifices too, but they transcend
sacrifices motivated merely by making money and doing one’s job as a provider in getting
food on the table and maintaining the house. Rather, Rose’s ‘duty’ is one of staying together
and protecting the bonds of the family—bonds which she, again, sees as something never to
be broken.
Mortality
The topic of death appears throughout the play in various forms, both in the physical death
of two characters (Troy and Alberta), as well as in the stories told by Troy and through his
brother Gabriel’s obsession with the Christian afterlife.
Troy mentions the grim reaper (“Mr. Death”) several times throughout the play, telling a
story about how they once wrestled. Troy seems to believe that, while death is an unavoidable
fate, one should try to go out with a fight. Troy says that he knew Death had the upper hand
in their battle, but that he nonetheless wanted to make his death as difficult as possible to
achieve. Further, the fence can be read as a barrier to the inevitable onslaught of death. Troy
mentions that the fence he builds is a way of keeping Death out of his life.
 28
Gabriel, always thinking about judgment day, has perhaps just as strong an obsession with
death as his brother. Gabriel’s obsession, however, is more loud and noticeable because it’s
expressed in his manic, psychotic ideas about his supposed spiritual powers. Troy’s obsession
with death is perhaps just as strong, however, for in a way it sustains him: Troy’s pride in
having survived against all the odds—his father, intense poverty, personal failure—relies on
death to fuel itself.
On the day of Troy’s funeral, Gabriel declares that Troy has successfully entered the gates of
heaven. While this declaration may not indicate the opinions of other characters, it
nonetheless ends the play, and is the final word on Troy’s death. Gabriel’s proclamation
therefore has both a punctuality and an ambivalence; the play ends with the gates of heaven
opening onto and usurping Troy’s fenced-off existence. Death ends the play by annihilating
the in/out distinction effected by a fence, and Troy dies in an unfavorable status because of
his adultery.
Wilson therefore seems to speak against Troy’s view of death, and how this view informs his
approach to life and the lives around him. If we take Troy to view death as a force that should
be fought against at all costs, to the extent that one should give up on taking any risks (such
as Cory’s football ambitions, in his mind) and even sacrifice one’s ability to give love and
compassion to one’s family members as a result of that fight, then Wilson seems to speak
against this.
By having Troy die unsatisfied and in low moral standing, Wilson suggests a couple of things.
First, with regard to Troy’s adultery, he did take a risk—but one for himself, and which
endangered his family, rather than a risk at least attempting to invest in his family (like letting
Cory try out football and attend college, despite his uncertainty about its promise). Troy lets
the pressure of death eat at him to such an extent that he seeks to find satisfaction in life (to
defy and thwart that pressure) in an extreme form, somewhere outside the space he’s
cultivated and fenced off for his family. Secondly, Troy is ultimately unhappy because of this
decision to find satisfaction beyond his fence—he ruins his relationship with Rose, and
Alberta dies because of the baby with which he impregnated her. This suggests that Troy’s
constant struggle to defy death and win out against it—or at least his specific methods of
doing so—is something which ultimately fails, and which hurts everyone who’s affected by
that failure.
Summary
Analysis
August Wilson’s written introduction to the first scene informs us that the play takes place in
1957, and that Troy is fifty-three years old. Having a conversation, he and Bono enter the
yard outside Troy’s house. Wilson writes that, of the two friends, Bono is the “follower,” and
that his dedication to their over thirty-year friendship is based on his respect for Troy’s
honesty, work ethic, and strength—all things Bono wants to embody himself. Further, we
learn that it’s Friday night—payday—the one night when, weekly, the two friends get
together to drink and converse. Wilson writes that Troy typically talks the most and, though
he can be quite vulgar, he sometimes becomes highly profound. Wilson also reveals that the
 29
two work as garbage collectors. Wilson explicitly describes Troy as being a black man, and
we get the sense that Bono is as well.
Already, Wilson gives us a feel for the often excessively large nature of Troy’s presence. As
in most of his relationships, Troy takes up most of the space of his friendship with Bono—
and Bono willingly accepts this, viewing Troy as worthy of his devotion. Yet, ironically,
Wilson tells us that Bono values Troy for his honesty, when this is precisely the quality he
seems to fundamentally lack, as we see later in the play, when it’s revealed that Troy has an
affair with Alberta. Bono perhaps sees in Troy something that he’s really not—but rather the
ideal personality which Bono wished he himself had.
Active Themes

The play begins by Bono accusing Troy of lying. Troy is telling a story about a black
man—Troy actually refers to him as a “nigger”—who, when he was carrying a watermelon
beneath his shirt, was questioned about the watermelon by a white man, Mr. Rand. But the
man carrying the watermelon denied having a watermelon on him, and, in response, Troy
says that Mr. Rand said nothing, figuring “if the nigger too dumb to know he carrying a
watermelon, he wasn’t gonna get much sense out of him.” Troy claims that the man carrying
the watermelon was “afraid to let the white man see him carry it home.”
Here, we see how hate speech used against black people is used by people like Troy—a black
man—to describe other people of color. This shows how racism influences Troy’s very
language, despite him also being oppressed by it. Further, Troy’s story about the man
carrying the watermelon exposes an instance, even if it’s not fully explained, of a black man’s
fear and nervousness before the authoritative gaze of a white man.
Active Themes

Troy and Bono’s conversation continues, and Bono says that the same man who was
carrying the watermelon had come up to him and said that Troy was going to “get us fired.”
Bono told him to go away, and the man called Troy a “troublemaker.” Troy implies that the
man was mad because he saw a union representative (likely for the black garbage collectors)
talking to Mr. Rand (Troy and his fellow collectors’ boss). As Troy and Bono talk, we learn
that Troy filed a complaint with Mr. Rand through the union about the fact that all the
garbage-truck-driving positions are filled by white men, while black men are only assigned
to carry garbage. Troy says he wants the owners of the business to give everyone the chance
to be a truck driver.
The man who was carrying the watermelon is afraid that Troy’s complaint with the
commissioner’s office at his workplace is going to get all of the black workers “fixed,” or
fired—this shows how not every person of color working there shares Troy’s sense of
confidence and purposefulness in protesting racial injustice. Further, the fact that Troy is
willing to do such a thing—possibly putting his job on the line—shows how seemingly
devoted he is to asserting himself and struggling for racial equality and equal opportunity in
the workplace.
 30
Active Themes
The conversation then shifts to discussing a woman named Alberta. Bono asks Troy how he
thinks one of their fellow co-workers is “making out” with Alberta, meaning if he’s
succeeded in having sex with her. Troy says their coworker is just as (un)successful as Bono
and him—that he’s not had sex with her at all. Bono accuses Troy of eyeing Alberta more
than other women, and of buying her a couple of drinks. Troy says he was just being polite.
Troy gets Bono to admit that, ever since Troy married his wife Rose, he’s never chased after
women. Still, Bono says that he’s seen Troy walking around Alberta’s house more than once.
Troy says that, just because he’s been around there, it doesn’t mean anything. Bono asks
where Alberta’s from, and Troy says Tallahasee. They both comment on how attractive they
find her physique.
Here, we get the sense for the first time that Bono is suspicious of Troy’s fidelity to Rose.
While Bono is usually passive in conversation with Troy, here he takes charge, and fully
persists in pursuing his point, despite Troy’s attempt to deflect it. Bono doesn’t let up, and
says he’s seen with his own eyes Troy’s misdeeds—that he’s seen Troy on Alberta’s
property. Even though it seems like Bono has caught Troy red-handed, Troy still thinks he
can argue his way out. This is a testament to Troy’s distorted sense of reality: he thinks he
can cover up what’s blatantly true with the lies he weaves in his head.
Active Themes

As the two men continue to crudely discuss Alberta’s body, Rose enters from inside the
house, walking onto the porch where Troy and Bono are seated. August Wilson writes a note
in the script describing Rose as ten years younger than Troy, and having a devotion for Troy
based on how she thinks her life would be without him: fraught with abusive men and their
babies, partying and being on the streets, the Church, or being alone and frustrated. Wilson
writes that Rose admires Troy’s spirit while either ignoring or forgiving his flaws, adding
that she only recognizes some of them. Further, he writes that, while Rose doesn’t drink
alcohol, she plays an important role in these Friday night “rituals” between Troy and Bono.
Rose’s entrance into the scene represents the influx of a totally different energy than that
displayed by Troy and Bono. Rose embodies a maternal gentleness and compassion, a strong
character and sense of fortitude, and a solid relationship with truth and reality—which often
clashes with Troy’s storytelling. The fact that Wilson describes Rose’s devotion to Troy as
being based on what her life would be like without him suggests that , in marrying him, she’s
largely “settled,” compromising on her own dreams in order to have the safety of a stable
marriage.
Active Themes

Rose asks the two men what they’re talking about, and Troy responds by saying that
Rose shouldn’t concern herself, since it’s “men talk.” After embarrassing Rose by implying,
in front of Bono, that he’s going to have sex with her later in the evening, Troy talks about
when he first met Rose. He says that he told Rose he didn’t want to marry her, but just to be
 31
her “man,” and that Rose responded by saying that, if Troy wasn’t the marrying type, he
should get out of her way so the marrying type could find her. Troy says that, when he
returned to talk with Rose, he agreed to marry, but told her he was going to put a rooster in
the backyard to act as an alarm system for strangers (other men) coming into their house.
Troy says that, while he could watch the front door on his own, he was worried about the
back door. However, when they first got married, he says, they didn’t even have a yard.
Troy’s treatment of Rose, implying that she has no place in his and Bono’s “men talk” and
making lewd sexual innuendos, suggests that there’s a strict male-female divide in the power
dynamics between the two (and in Troy’s worldview in general). Troy feels he has the right
to tell his wife to butt out of conversation where a woman has no place, and to discuss having
sex with her in front of other people, without her permission. Further, Troy’s mentioning of
the rooster alarm system suggests his sense of possessiveness over Rose; this shows his
hypocrisy, as he ultimately decides to sleep with another woman.
Active Themes
Bono chimes in and says that he and his wife Lucille’s first house also wasn’t in the best
condition, saying that their outhouse let off a foul stench during the winter months whenever
there was a breeze. Bono says that he wonders why he and Lucille remained in that house for
“six long years,” but adds that he didn’t know he could do any better, and thought that “only
white folks had inside toilets and things.” Rose replies by saying that a lot of people don’t
know that they could be doing better than their current living situation.
Bono’s comment about not knowing he was capable of acquiring better living conditions for
himself and his wife—that only white folks could afford to have indoor plumbing and other
such amenities—underscores the economic limitations felt by and imposed upon black
people, and the way those limitations inform how people like Bono view their own potential
for upward mobility.
Active Themes
Rose says that Cory has been recruited by a college football team, but Troy says that he
doesn’t want his son getting involved in football, since “the white man ain’t gonna let him
get nowhere with” it. He then says that Cory should go get recruited in a trade where he can
make a proper living, like being an auto-mechanic. Bono says that, if Cory is anything like
his dad, Troy, then he’s going to be good at sports. He claims that the only two men who
have played baseball as well as Troy are Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson—that they’re the only
two men who have hit more home runs than Troy. Rose adds that “times have changed” since
Troy played baseball—“that was before the war,” she says, and times have changed since
then. Troy asks how they’ve changed, and Rose answers that “they got lots of colored boys
playing ball now.”
Here, Troy’s outdated perspective on race relations makes its first appearance; though it’s
outdated, his view on race certainly isn’t based on invalid premises, since he grew up in a
different time with different circumstances, and experienced discrimination in the sports
world himself. Still, Troy is unwilling to adapt his views and heed Rose’s suggestion that,
 32
indeed, times have changed and that opportunities for black players in the world of
professional sports have opened up; instead of opening up his mind, Troy remains stubbornly
fixed on the idea that Cory should enter a “proper” trade like auto-mechanics.
Active Themes
Troy then explains that, when he played baseball, his batting average was significantly higher
than Seikirk, a player for the Yankees, and he implies that Seikirk enjoyed commercial
success as a professional player only because he was white, while Troy, a better player,
wasn’t hired to play because he was black.
Troy’s wariness about Cory trying to play football professionally is grounded in his own
experience of racial discrimination in the world of professional baseball—where, at the time,
skin color counted more than actual talent.
Active Themes
Rose tells Troy that he’s going to drink himself to death, and Troy responds by saying “death
ain’t nothing,” comparing it to a fastball (a kind of pitch in baseball) that’s easy to knock out
of the park. Rose then says that she doesn’t understand why Troy wants to talk about death.
Troy then tells Rose that she’s the one who brought death up in the conversation, and says
that he’s not worried about death: “I done seen him,” he says, “I done wrestled with him.”
Troy says that he asked “Mr. Death” what he wanted, and looked him “dead in the eye,”
without any fear. Rose then gives Troy’s story a context in real life by mentioning that he
had pneumonia. Troy continues, saying that, right before he fought Death, he grabbed
Death’s sickle and threw it as far as he could, and then they wrestled for three days and three
nights. Troy concludes that Death had grown tired and given up, vowing to return someday
for him. Troy says that, as long as he can keep up his strength, he’ll try to make it as difficult
as possible for Death to take him.
Troy’s tall tale about Mr. Death is the first glimpse we get at his tendency to fantasize and
stretch the truth—and how this contrasts with Rose’s insistence that he tell what really
happened, i.e., that he had simply contracted pneumonia. This tendency to spin elaborate,
fantastical stories shows another element of Troy’s hypocrisy: while he’s unwilling to let his
son Cory pursue his dreams of football, deeming them as unrealistic, he’s perfectly willing
to dream up lies and unrealities in his own mind. Further, Troy’s comment about standing up
to Death—insisting that he’ll make it as difficult as possible for Death to take him—reveals
the toughened and hardened way he approaches living in general.
Active Themes
Lyons enters the scene, and Wilson writes a note in the script describing him as thirty-four
years old, a son by Troy’s previous marriage, and wearing trendy clothing. Wilson adds that,
though Lyons thinks of himself as a musician, he’s more caught up in the idea of being a
musician than in “the actual practice of the music.” Lyons, he writes, has come to borrow
money from Troy, and he is unsure how much his exotic lifestyle will be criticized and
ridiculed, even though he’s certain that he’ll be successful.
 33
We get the sense, just from Wilson’s description, that Lyons view the world from a very
different perspective than Troy, and that Troy likely has great disdain for Lyons’ choice of
profession, since playing music is unlikely to rank among Troy’s list of ‘proper’ trades.
Further, Lyons’ infatuation with the image of being a musician suggests that maybe there is
something superfluous about his professional ambitions.
Active Themes
Lyons rejects Rose’s invitation that he stay for dinner, saying that he found himself in the
neighborhood and thought he’d stop by for a moment. Troy, however, says that Lyons just
came by because he knew it was his father’s payday. “Since you mentioned it,” Lyons then
says to Troy, “let me have ten dollars,” promising to pay Troy back. But Troy says he’d rather
die playing blackjack with the devil than give Lyons ten dollars.
Lyons’ lack of financial stability at the age of thirty-four highlights both the difficulty of his
profession and also perhaps his unwillingness to pursue other options of making money in
order to support himself as a musician—fixated on music, he refuses to be more practical
about his finances.
Active Themes

Troy then claims to have seen the devil, saying that the devil sold him furniture when he
couldn’t get enough credit. The devil, appearing at his doorstep in the form of a white man,
promised to give Troy all the credit he wanted if he’d pay interest on it. Troy says that he
asked for three rooms worth of furniture and that he told the devil to charge whatever he
wanted. He concludes that he’s sent the devil 10 dollars every month for fifteen years; even
though Troy’s probably paid off the interest by now, he says he’s afraid to stop paying. Rose
says Troy’s lying, and that he got the furniture from a local vendor.
More of Troy’s fanciful storytelling emerges here, and we can see that his obsession with a
figure of death—in the form of the grim reaper or the devil—is reoccurring. Once again,
Troy’s recourse to spinning tall tales as a way of explaining his past gets reprimanded by
Rose, who insists that Troy’s diversions from the truth always be corrected—she grounds his
story in reality by explaining the real facts.
Active Themes
Lyons asks Troy again for ten dollars, and Troy hassles him, asking him why he isn’t
working. Lyons tells Troy that he can’t find a decent job as a musician, and Troy says that
he could get his son a job as a garbage collector, but Lyons says that that isn’t the job for
him. Troy then claims that the reason he has money and Lyons doesn’t is because he isn’t
living “the fast life” trying to play music. Lyons replies that he stays with music because it
gets him out of bed in the morning—it’s his passion—and that he and Troy are two very
different people. Finally, Rose convinces Troy to give Lyons the money, and Lyons leaves
shortly after. Troy says to Rose and Bono that he doesn’t understand why his son doesn’t go
out and get a decent job and take care of “that woman he got”—Bonnie, Lyons’s girlfriend.
 34
Here, Troy isn’t being exactly out of line when he criticizes Lyons’ lifestyle—Lyons is thirty-
four, after all, and still relies on Troy financially, and further, he could very well get himself
out of his problems if he’d find at least a part-time job and earn a supplemental income to
support his music. Lyons’ claim that he and Troy are two vastly different people is poignant:
it emphasizes the fact that, not only do the two have different views on what matters most in
life, but that they differ in some very fundamental way, down to their very natures—we can
partly read this difference as the distinct time periods in which they grew up.
Active Themes
The first scene ends with Troy telling Bono that he loves Rose “so much it hurts,” and that
he “done run out of ways of loving her,” so he has to rely on the “basics.” He tells Bono not
to come by his house Monday morning because he’s “still gonna be stroking”—having sex
with Rose.
Troy’s comment about having run out of ways of loving Rose seems to foreshadow the news
we’ll later discover: that he’s been having an affair.
Summary
Analysis
The second scene begins the next morning; Rose is hanging clothes, and singing a song about
Jesus protecting her: “Jesus, be a fence all around me every day.” Troy enters the scene, and
Rose tells him how Ms. Pearl won a dollar on the local lottery the other day. Troy says that
the lottery is a waste of money, saying that he’d be rich if he “had all the money niggers . . .
throw away on numbers for one week.” Rose replies by saying that sometimes good things
result from playing the lottery, and mentions a man named Pope who was able to buy himself
a restaurant with his winnings. Troy tells Rose that Pope, a black man, didn’t want any people
of color to enter his restaurant. He says he saw a white man order a bowl of stew there,
claiming that Pope “picked all the meat out the pot for him.” He calls Pope a fool.
Troy’s condemnation of Rose’s decision to play the lottery is another instance of hypocrisy—
whereas Troy thinks it’s perfectly fine that he dream about his life and tell tall tales, behaving
in a completely irrational manner, he scolds Rose for engaging in behavior that, though
perhaps financially risky, isn’t nearly as divorced from reality, and actually bears some small
chance of success. Further, his criticism of Pope further emphasizes Troy’s commitment to
racial justice—by picking out Pope as an example of a black person catering to white power,
Troy demonstrates his unwillingness to let everyday acts of inequality pass him by.
Active Themes

Troy then asks where Cory is, and Rose says he’s at football practice. This upsets Troy,
since Cory hadn’t finished his chores before going to practice, but Rose says that Cory had
to leave early, since his coach wanted to get in some extra practice. Troy accuses Cory of
never working a “lick of work” in his life. As Troy and Rose bicker, Troy’s brother, Gabriel,
comes by. Wilson writes a note in the script describing Gabriel: he’s seven years younger
than Troy, and has a metal plate in his head—he was injured in WWII. As a result, Gabriel
 35
is delusional, and believes himself to be the Archangel Gabriel. He carries a basket of fruit
and vegetables which he tries to sell.
Troy’s anger over Cory’s desire to play football continues to fester, and he unreasonably
accuses his son of never working—of never having put any exerted effort into anything—in
his life, all because Cory is pursuing a cause with which Troy disagrees. This speaks to the
sensitivity of Troy’s temper. Gabriel’s entrance into the play will add a bit of whimsy (albeit
tragic in its source) to counter the seriousness and drama of Troy’s world.
Active Themes

Gabriel enters the scene singing a song about plums he has for sale. Not seeing any plums
in Gabriel’s basket, Rose asks him where they are, and Gabriel says that he will have some
tomorrow, since he put in a big order to have enough for “St. Peter and everybody.” Gabriel
says that Troy is mad at him, thinking that his recent decision to move out and get his own
place has upset his brother. Troy says he’s not mad at all, and Gabriel explains that the only
reason he moved was to get out of Troy’s hair. When Rose asks Gabriel if he wants any
breakfast, he asks for biscuits, recounting how he and St. Peter used to eat biscuits every
morning before the gates of judgment were opened. Further, Gabriel says that St. Peter has
Troy and Rose’s names in “the book.” He clarifies that, because he died and went to heaven,
his own name isn’t in the book. Gabriel then leaves, singing a song about how people “better
get ready for the judgment.”
Gabriel’s propensity for spinning fantasies offers a match for Troy’s tendency to tell tall
tales—while Gabriel speaks about St. Peter, Troy speaks about the grim reaper or the devil.
Further, while Gabriel has a neurological defect that explains his delusions, Troy doesn’t—
this at least makes us consider that Troy’s fantasizing isn’t really all that different from
Gabriel’s, and that Gabriel isn’t really as deluded as he might seem. Gabriel’s fixation on the
day of judgment will grow to have profound significance in the play, as it becomes intimately
connected with Troy’s eventual death.
Active Themes
Rose re-enters the yard from the house, and implies to Troy that Gabriel should go back to
the hospital. But Troy thinks it would be cruel to lock Gabriel up after all Gabriel went
through during the war. He also feels guilty for assuming ownership of the three thousand
dollars with which the army compensated Gabriel for his injury. Troy claims that the only
reason he has a house is because of Gabriel’s compensation. Rose, however, says that Gabriel
was in no condition to manage his money, and that Troy has taken great care of his brother—
she therefore tells Troy that he shouldn’t feel guilty. Troy recognizes all of this, but says he’s
just stating the facts: if Gabriel didn’t have a metal plate in his head, he wouldn’t have a
house. The scene ends after Troy tells Rose that he’s heading to a bar to listen to the ball
game, saying he’ll work on the fence when he gets back.
Troy’s guilt over using Gabriel’s money to pay for his house, and his empathy for Gabriel’s
condition and right to live freely after his sacrifices in the war display a hint of compassion
which Troy’s actions later in the play will arguably undermine. While Troy clearly rejects
 36
Rose’s proposal to institutionalize Gabriel now, and while he feels guilt over taking his
money (now), he’ll later send Gabriel off to the hospital and take even more of his money.
Active Themes Summary
Analysis
Scene three occurs four hours later; Rose is taking down the clothes she was hanging up at
the beginning of the second scene, and Cory enters the yard with his football equipment. Rose
tells Cory that his father was angry upon finding out that he hadn’t finished his chores before
practice, and that he wouldn’t be around to help Troy with building the fence. Rose then tells
Cory to start on his chores, and he enters the house. Troy then enters the scene, and Rose asks
him what the score of the baseball game was, but Troy brushes the question off, asking “What
I care about the game?” He then tries to kiss Rose, but she resists him, irritated that Troy, so
it seems, didn’t go to listen to the game at all, blowing off building the fence for no good
reason. Troy then chases Rose around, trying to land a kiss on her.
Yet again, Troy has been angered by Cory for reasons pertaining to his commitment to
football; while Cory works hard at and dedicates himself to the sport—which has a promising
future in store for him—all Troy seems to care about is whether or not Cory gets his small,
menial chores done, football not being a valid excuse. Further, when Troy enters the yard and
appears to have not gone to listen to the game, we can infer that Bono’s suspicions about
Troy’s fidelity are justified: where, after all, did Troy go? Alberta’s, likely.
Active Themes

Angry that Cory wasn’t around earlier to help him build the fence, Troy yells at him,
summoning him to the yard. He reprimands Cory for not finishing his chores before heading
to practice, and then puts him to work cutting boards for the fence. After a long pause, Cory
asks his father why he doesn’t buy a television. Troy says he doesn’t see the point in owning
one, but after Cory explains that a TV would allow them to watch the World Series, Troy
asks how much one costs. Cory explains that a TV costs 200 dollars, saying that it isn’t much
money. Troy thinks just the opposite: he tells Cory that it’ll cost 246 dollars to re-tar their
roof before the winter. Cory replies that he’d rather buy a TV, and fix the roof himself
whenever it started to leak. Troy asks him where he intends to get the money, but Cory
suggests that his father has plenty of money. Troy, however, claims to only have 72 dollars
and 73 cents in his bankbook. Finally, the two make a deal, and Troy agrees to pay 100 dollars
towards the TV if Cory can come up with his own 100 dollars.
Troy and Cory’s interactions are always awkward and heated; they never seem to share a
moment of agreement or love proper to a healthy father-son bond. Troy constantly scolds
Cory and has no real interest in the daily events of Cory’s life or in the activities which inspire
or fascinate him. Troy’s dialogue with Cory principally consists in disciplining him, which
largely amounts to cutting him down. Still, Cory’s desire for his father to buy a T.V. does
demonstrate a fundamental disconnect between his and his father’s view of their family’s
economic situation, a disconnect which Troy perhaps isn’t unjustified in trying to get Cory
 37
to acknowledge. Further, Troy’s willingness to meet Cory halfway for the money shows that
he’s willing to reach out and compromise with his son at least on some level.
Active Themes
After Cory returns to cutting the boards, he mentions that the Pirates won the baseball game
that day, making five wins in a row. Troy, however, says that he’s not thinking about the
Pirates, since they have an all-white team. He claims that the Pirates only play a Puerto Rican
boy on the team half the time, but that he could really be something if they’d just give him
the chance. Cory disagrees, saying that the Puerto Rican player has plenty of chances to play,
but Troy means regular play at every game. Cory counters his father, saying that the Pirates
have some white guys who also don’t play every day, and Troy comments that, if a white
man is sitting on the bench, you can be certain he’s not a good player, since black players
“have to be twice as good” to get on the team. He says that this is the reason why he doesn’t
want Cory to get all entangled in the sports world.
Here, the disconnect between Cory and Troy’s views of race relations comes to the fore.
While Troy bases his view of race relations in the world of professional sports on his own
experiences in the past—an era less progressive than the one in which Cory has grown up
(though Cory’s is far from perfect), and in which Troy himself was discriminated against as
a black baseball player—Cory sees the world of sports as much more inclusive. Cory doesn’t
view his future as restricted by racist white power in the way that his father does.
Active Themes
Troy then says that Rose informed him about Cory’s recruitment. Cory explains that a
recruiter will be coming by to speak with Troy and have him sign papers granting Cory
permission to play college football. Troy bickers with Cory, insisting that he keep working
at the A&P (a local grocery store), but Cory says he got his boss, Mr. Stawicki, to hold his
job until the football season ends. Troy insists that there’s no future for Cory, as a black male,
in professional sports, and that he should learn a trade like fixing cars or building houses, so
that he can have something no one can take away from him. When Troy demands that Cory
keep working during the season, Cory says that Stawicki has already filled his position.
Annoyed by this, Troy calls Cory a fool, and orders him to get his job back—if Cory isn’t
working, Troy says, then he can’t play football.
Troy and Cory’s different perspectives on race, as well as what counts as a proper profession,
continue to collide. While Cory works hard at and displays a genuine dedication towards
football, this simply isn’t enough for Troy, who views his son’s pursuits in football as
frivolous, thinking that work at the local grocery store is a more valuable use of his time,
even though football could pave his son’s path towards a higher education. Troy doesn’t care
about any of that, and is concerned with Cory’s immediate ability to make a steady income,
and finds it foolish that his son should give such a thing up for a future in sports.
Active Themes
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 38
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Alarmed by his father’s harshness, Cory asks Troy why he never liked him as a son. Troy
demeans this question, saying that there’s no law demanding that he love Cory. Troy asks
Cory whether or not he’s provided food, clothes, and shelter, and after Cory answers “yessir,”
Troy says that the reason he does all those things for Cory has nothing to do with liking
him—rather, it’s just his job, his responsibility. Troy adds that “liking your black ass wasn’t
part of the bargain.” Troy then compares his relationship with his son to his relationship to
Mr. Rand, saying that Rand doesn’t pay Troy because he likes him, but rather because he’s
obligated to. After Troy tells him to get out of his face, Cory leaves and heads to the A&P.
Once again, Troy’s harsh coldness as a father surfaces, and we see yet another awkward and
confrontational encounter between the two, devoid of any warmth or love that would
characterize a healthy father-son bond. Troy utterly rejects love as something necessary to
his relationship with his son, citing responsibility—duty—as the sole link which relates him
to his son: a relationship born out of contractual obligation and necessity, and not out of any
higher moral, emotional, or psychological forces.
Active Themes
Rose enters the yard, having been listening to Troy and Cory’s conversation from behind the
screen door on the porch. She asks Troy why he won’t let Cory play football, and Troy
exclaims: “I don’t want him to be like me!” He tells Rose that she’s the only decent thing
that’s ever happened to him, and that he wishes Cory will someday find a woman like her,
but he wishes nothing else from his life upon his son, and that he decided when Cory was
born that he would not get involved in sports, after what happened to Troy. With strong
conviction, he’s assured that sports will only bring his son harm; when Rose tries to tell him
that the world has changed from Troy’s youth, Troy diverts from her comment, and just says
that he’s done everything he could for his family, and that he can’t give anything else. He
exits into the house.
Here, we see that Troy perhaps really does only mean to do his son some good—that he has
Cory’s best interests in mind when he downplays football as a future that isn’t viable for a
young black man. Yet, it still seems like Troy is fundamentally wrong in his stubbornness,
and his refusal to give up his outdated perception of race relations in the world of professional
sports. It therefore seems that August Wilson is more interested in portraying Troy’s views
as products of historically racist forces—of racism that has shaped his mind—than as
someone who, in-and-of-himself, is a force of anger wanting to hold his son back from a
good future.
Active Themes
Summary
Analysis
 39
The fourth scene takes place two weeks after the third, on another Friday, when Troy and
Bono engage in their payday ritual of drink and conversation. It begins as Cory gets a call
from a teammate, who asks him if he can borrow some cleats. From within the house Rose
calls for Cory, who is standing in the doorway on the porch, telling him not to leave. Cory
hangs up and tells Rose he needs to go to his team’s game, but Rose insists that he clean his
room first, so Troy won’t see it when he gets home. With a certain confidence, Cory continues
to leave, telling Rose he’ll clean his room when he gets back.
Cory displays a sense of drive and autonomy that seems distinctly confident and uniquely
mature, even if it’s a bit disrespectful of Rose’s kind requests that he clean his room. Still,
Cory’s determination to get to the football game on time—regardless if this means
postponing cleaning his bedroom—demonstrates that he is, on some fundamental level,
committed to his team and to the sport: a commitment which suggests a kind of maturity
itself.
Active Themes
After Cory leaves, Rose goes back into the house, and Troy and Bono enter the yard. Troy is
carrying a bottle of alcohol, and they’re talking about Mr. Rand. Bono says he couldn’t
believe the look on Rand’s face, earlier that day, when he told Troy something (that he’d
been hired as a truck driver).
Once again, Bono and Troy engage in their weekly ritual of drink (total drunkenness, for
Troy) and conversation (dominated by Troy). The success of Troy’s complaint about the lack
of black truck drivers shows Troy’s bravery and dedication to social justice, despite his other
flaws.
Active Themes

Troy claims that Rand thought the office where he filed his complaint would simply
fire Troy, based on Rand’s expression as he delivered him the good news. Troy calls out for
Rose several times, and when she enters the scene she asks Troy what the result of his
complaint was. Troy dismisses her question, telling her that she’s supposed to come to him
when he calls, but she firmly replies that she’s not a dog. Her remark reminds him of a dog
he once had, named “Blue,” and he starts singing a song about him which his father made
up. Rose tells Troy that no one wants to hear that song, but he continues, and eventually
announces the news about his new position, which pleases Rose.
Troy’s comment about Rand—that he thought Rand anticipated firing Troy—speaks to the
willingness of Troy to lay his livelihood on the line for the right cause, to risk his job for his
higher principles: principles which he actually doesn’t see as “higher,” but rather as integral
to his everyday experience. Further, Troy’s continued debasement of Rose—this time
treating her like a dog—shows just how deep and constant is his refusal to acknowledge her
as an equal participant in their relationship.
Active Themes
 40
Lyons enters the scene, and Troy is surprised to see him, since he thought Lyons had been
jailed after reading that one of the clubs he frequents was raided for gambling. Lyons defends
himself, saying that he doesn’t gamble, and that he only attends that club to play music with
his band. Bono then lets Lyons know about his father’s new job, adding that all Troy will
have to do is sit and read the newspaper. Lyons says his father’s illiteracy will get in the way
of his job, if that’s the case—but Bono says there’s a bigger problem: Troy can’t drive, and
doesn’t have a license.
Troy’s fundamental distrust of Lyons is revealed here even more than it was previously. Upon
hearing about the raiding of a club Lyons plays at, Troy automatically assumes that his son
was somehow involved in the crime. This speaks to Troy’s association of Lyons’ lifestyle
with debauchery and illegality, while Lyons only claims to be trying to act on his passions—
on his love for music.
Active Themes

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Lyons then reaches into his pocket, saying “Look here, Pop,” and Troy thinks he’s going to
ask to borrow more money. But Lyons takes out ten dollars, intending to keep his promise
from the first scene and pay his father back. Troy downplays Lyons’s sincerity, telling him
to just keep the money for the next time he wants to borrow some. Rose argues with Troy,
telling him to take the money, and Lyons eventually hands it to her.
Troy’s distrust of Lyons continues, as he assumes that Lyons is going to ask for more
money—that he doesn’t intend to keep his promise, which he made in the first scene, to pay
his father back. Further, Troy’s refusal to accept Lyons’ payment suggests that he wants to
keep his son in a kind of limbo, where he can’t get the gratification of keeping his promise—
paying Troy back.
Active Themes
Gabriel then comes by, singing his usual song about preparing for Judgment Day. He gives
Rose a flower—a rose—and says he’s been chasing hellhounds. Lyons commends him,
saying that someone has to chase them, and Gabe (Gabriel) says that, even though the devil
is strong, he has his trusty trumpet ready for the judgment time. When Lyons asks him if he’s
waiting for the Battle of Armageddon, Gabe replies that it’s not going to be much of a battle
when God starts using his “Judgment sword.”
Gabe’s delusional obsession with Judgment Day reemerges here, and Lyons actually seems
to play into his uncle’s fantasies, perhaps out of sympathy for his condition, whereas Troy
and Rose seem to always avoid acknowledging Gabe’s comments about spirituality and the
afterlife. This perhaps speaks to the larger imagination and consequent empathy of Lyons.
Active Themes
 41

As Lyons goes to leave, Gabe says Troy is mad at him, and Lyons asks Troy why. Rose
explains that, because Gabe moved out of Troy’s house to have his own place (paying rent
to Miss Pearl), he thinks Troy is angry.
Gabe seems fixated on this problem—of worrying that Troy is mad at him—since he keeps
repeating it. But Troy and Rose keep playing into it, explaining that Troy isn’t mad—perhaps
in an attempt to assuage what they view as Gabe’s perpetual, irreversible madness.
Active Themes

After Troy and Rose bicker about why Gabe left to live on his own, Rose tells Troy that
she wants him to sign Cory’s football papers when the recruiter visits him next week. Troy,
however, says that he found out that Cory hasn’t been working down at the A&P, as they
agreed—Cory’s been lying. Lyons, trying to get Troy to empathize with Cory, says that
Cory’s only trying to fill out his dad’s shoes—but Troy doesn’t care, and thinks that, since
Cory has reached the point where he wants to start disobeying him, it’s time for Cory to move
on and become his own man.
Troy’s continued refusal to empathize with Cory’s passion for football—to see in his son a
genuine aspiration for the sport, an aspiration informed by a world of race relations which
greatly differs from Troy’s growing up—surfaces here yet again. Troy sees Cory’s dedication
to football as a fundamental act against his authority as a father, and not as a rightful
expression of Cory’s individuality—Troy thinks Cory’s assertion of his own desires
fundamentally goes against the father-son bond.
Active Themes
Bono then talks about his own father, saying how he never knew him, since his dad was
always moving around, “searching for the New Land,” going from one woman to the next.
Troy chimes in, and says sometimes he wishes he never knew his father, since he didn’t really
care about his kids, only wanting them to learn to walk so that they could help work on his
farm. Lyons responds, saying that Troy’s father should have just left and moved on, but Troy
says he couldn’t because of his eleven kids. With a bit of pride and a change of mood, Troy
adds that his father felt a responsibility for his children even though he mistreated them, and,
if he hadn’t felt that responsibility, he could have just walked away.
We get the sense that there’s been a cycle of bad fathers repeating generation after generation,
and we’re simply witnessing the effects of this cycle in the parenting style of someone like
Troy. Though Troy’s father was difficult to deal with, Troy says he was nonetheless a caring
person who worked very hard to provide for all eleven of his children—and perhaps we can
say the same thing of Troy. Though Troy is often cruel to Cory, he nonetheless works a very
grueling job day-in and day-out to provide for his son; perhaps, then, caught up in the cycle
of toughened and harsh fatherhood, Troy is just following in his father’s footsteps.
Active Themes
 42
Bono adds that a lot of fathers back in his and Troy’s childhood used to just leave their
families behind, and says that they’d get the “walking blues” from traveling on foot so much
from place to place.
Bono’s comment about the walking blues underscores the harsh realities felt by those brave
black men who chose to emigrate North from the sharecropping South (like Troy) seeking a
better future.
Active Themes
Troy then starts to talk about his past with a new level of detail. He says that his father never
had the walking blues, since he stayed with his family—but, he adds, his father could be
“evil,” and that was why his mother left. One night, Troy’s mother sneaked out of the house
after his father had gone to sleep, and never came back—even though she told Troy she’d
return to take him with her.
Troy’s tale about being abandoned is not merely another one of his tall tales; Troy, in a very
rare circumstance, is telling what appears to be the whole truth of his past, even though it’s a
very painful memory. (Perhaps Troy is inspired by the alcohol he’s drinking.)
Active Themes
Troy then tells the story of the day he left home (at the age of fourteen). One day, when his
father sent him out to plow the fields of his farm, Troy, instead of obeying his father, tied up
their plowing mule (“Greyboy”) and went to see a local girl he was attracted to. Troy and the
girl ended up settling by a nearby creek, and started having sex. Greyboy, however, had
gotten loose and wandered back home, and so Troy’s dad went looking for his son. Finding
Troy with the thirteen-year-old girl, Troy’s father started whipping him with straps off
Greyboy’s harness. Troy then ran to get away, only to see that his father wasn’t mad because
he hadn’t done any farm work, but because he wanted the little girl for himself.
Troy’s spree of seeming truth-telling continues, and this story about the mule and the little
girl gives us a greater insight into the violent and base character of his father. The fact that
Troy’s father wasn’t mad at his son for shirking his duty at the fields, but for taking an
incredibly young, prospective suitor away from him, speaks to his father’s intense aggression
and lack of any stable sense of conscience or moral judgment—we can therefore empathize
with the difficulty of Troy’s youth.
Active Themes
Seeing his father rape the girl, Troy says that “right there is where I become a man,” and he
started whipping his father with the reins that were used on him. The girl ran off, and Troy
says his father was so angry that he looked like the devil. All Troy remembers after that is
waking up lying by the creek, with his dog Blue licking his face—Troy says his face was so
swollen that he thought he’d gone blind. The only thing he knew to do, he concludes, was to
leave his father’s house.
The extreme violence and sheer disregard for the health and safety of his own son (not to
mention the girl) is shocking, and shows the bitterly distorted and cold character of Troy’s
 43
father. Yet it also might give us a bit of sympathy for Troy—compared to the ogre of his own
dad, Troy seems like a model father; thought trapped in a cycle of mediocre fatherhood,
perhaps Troy believes himself to be doing the best he can in steering Cory down the right
path to adulthood.
Active Themes
Gabriel re-enters the yard with a sandwich Rose made him, and Troy says that he doesn’t
know what happened to his father, just that he hopes he’s dead and found some peace. He
says he lost touch with every sibling of his except Gabriel. Lyons, hearing this story for the
first time, is surprised by how young Troy was when he left home.
The tragedy of Troy’s decision to leave home comes full circle: it meant the desertion of
nearly his entire family, and a radical independence divorced from the life he had grown to
know. While it meant leaving his abusive father, it also meant years of loneliness and
hardship.
Active Themes
Troy then explains that he walked two-hundred miles from his home to Mobile, but Lyons
doesn’t believe him—Bono chimes in, and adds that walking was the only way to get around
in those days, in 1918. Troy says that, once he got to Mobile, he realized it was impossible
to find a job and a place to live, and that blacks were forced to live beneath bridges on
riverbanks in makeshift shacks of sticks and tarpaper.
The fact that Lyons doesn’t believe his father when he talks about his two-hundred mile trip
he made on-foot to Mobile immediately tells us that Troy has never revealed this personal
history to his thirty-four-year-old son. It’s as if Troy has been holding all of this inside for
his whole life, allowing it to fester, and telling tell tales to ward off the harsh reality of his
actual past.
Active Themes
Troy says he started stealing food to survive, then money, and that, after one thing led to
another, he met Lyons’ mom (different than Rose). When Lyons was born, Troy had to start
stealing three times as much—he says that, when he tried to rob a man one day, the man shot
him in the chest, but as he pulled the trigger, Troy jumped at him with his knife, killing him.
Troy explains that this got him fifteen years in prison, where he met Bono and learned how
to play baseball.
The full extent of Troy’s tragic past continues to be revealed, and here we can see how the
effects of racism at the economic level propelled him to commit crime just in order to
survive—to feed himself and his family. We can see how a structurally racist society
propelled him into a future of imprisonment.
Active Themes
After Troy’s story, Lyons asks him to come see his performance later that evening, but Troy
says he’s too old to hang out in the clubs Lyons frequents. Lyons leaves soon after, and Troy
 44
asks Rose if supper is ready, implying—in front of Bono—that she should hurry, since
they’re overdue to have sex. Embarrassed, Rose objects to Troy’s crudeness, but Troy says
he’s known “this nigger,” Bono, for a very long time, and tells Bono he loves him. Bono
reciprocates Troy’s affection, and leaves to get home to his wife, Lucille.
Troy continues to be crude to Rose in front of Bono, and Troy’s justification—that Bono is
like a member of the family—seems inadequate. Troy has consistently refused to heed his
wife’s wish that he not debase her in front of their friends. Further, Troy’s disinterest in his
son’s career as a musician suggests that he’s unjustified in criticizing Lyons so harshly, when
he seems to know nothing about what he actually does and how well he does it.
Active Themes
Summary
Analysis
The second act begins the following morning. Cory is in the yard swinging a baseball bat,
trying to imitate his father’s swing, but, Wilson writes—in a note in the script—that Cory’s
swing is awkward and less sure than Troy’s. Rose enters the yard from the house and asks
for Cory’s help with a cupboard, and Cory says that he refuses to quit the football team,
despite what his father says.
Cory’s swinging of his father’s bat is a gesture which symbolizes his attempt to fill his
father’s shoes—though he struggles, and isn’t sure in his swing. Whereas Troy exudes almost
obnoxious confidence, Cory isn’t able to muster up such hubris, as evidenced by his awkward
swing.
Active Themes
Rose replies that she’ll talk to Troy when he returns, explaining that he had to go to the police
station to check on Gabe, who was arrested for disturbing the peace. Troy returns, with Bono,
and says that he bailed Gabe out by paying fifty dollars. Troy tells Rose to go inside the house
and get Cory, since he wants his help building the fence.
Rose continues to be a staunch ally of Cory’s, remaining committed to his future as a football
player. The arrest of Gabe raises our suspicions since, though he’s a bit odd and aloof, Gabe
is nevertheless peaceful and well-meaning.
Active Themes
Bono starts to help Troy with sawing wood for the fence, and Troy says that all the police
wanted, in arresting Gabe, was money—that they’ve arrested him six or seven times now,
and they “stick out their hands” whenever they see Troy coming.
Here, we see the real reason behind Gabe’s arrest—a racist scapegoating of a mentally-ill
black man as a dangerous threat to the public in order to make a profit. It seems that this
happens frequently, and that Troy always pays the price.
Active Themes
 45
Bono agrees with Troy that all the police care about is money. Bono then criticizes Troy for
using hard wood to build the fence (probably because he finds it difficult to cut), saying that
all he needs is soft pine—but Troy insists that he knows what he’s doing, and that pine wood
is used for inside purposes only. But Bono counters that a fence built with pine wood would
last the rest of Troy’s lifetime. Troy, however, asks how Bono knows how long he’s going
to live, and adds that he may just live forever.
Troy’s questioning of Bono—about how he could possibly know how long he’s going to live,
since he might just live forever—is yet another instant of Troy’s fantasizing, and it’s clear
that Troy is no longer in a place to speak the truth about the reality of his past. Further, Troy’s
insistence on using hard wood can be read as a symbol for his unnecessarily tough and
hardened nature, and mistreatment of Cory.
Active Themes
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Bono then tells Troy he’s seen where he and Alberta “all done got tight.” Troy asks what
Bono means, and Bono explains that he’s seen how Troy laughs and jokes with Alberta all
the time (where they meet for their romantic encounters). But Troy insists that he laughs and
jokes with all the women in his life—yet Bono says that he means a different kind of laughing
and joking.
Here, Bono officially confronts Troy with the reality of his affair with Alberta, and (typical
of Troy), despite facing the truth of his actions, Troy continues to believe he can live a lie,
and persuade Bono that he’s not doing anything out of the ordinary with Alberta.
Active Themes
Cory then enters the yard from the house, and Troy tells him that Bono is complaining that
the wood’s too hard to cut. Wanting to show off Cory’s strength, Troy tells Cory to show
Bono “how it’s done” and cut some wood. Bono admires the sense of ease with which Cory
works with the hard wood.
This is a very rare moment in the play—a moment where Troy actually expresses pride in his
son, Cory, for doing something properly. It seems that Troy is only ever proud of his sons
when they perform manual labor to his liking.
Active Themes
Frustrated with building the fence, Cory questions why Rose even wants it built in the first
place. Supporting Rose, Bono replies that, while some people build fences to keep people
out, some build them to keep people in, and that Rose just wants to hold on to her family
because she loves them. But this irritates Troy, who says that he doesn’t need anyone to tell
him that his wife loves him.
 46
Knowing that Troy is having an affair with Alberta, Bono is trying to make comments that
subliminally convince Troy he’s making a mistake by betraying Rose. Troy, however, can
tell that Bono is fishing for something, and is probably irritated that he can no longer keep
up his fantasy and/or ruse of fidelity.
Active Themes
Wanting a private moment with Bono, Troy tells Cory to go into the house to get a saw. Troy
asks Bono what he meant by his comment about Rose wanting to hold on to her family, and
Bono, believing Troy to be cheating on Rose, tries to appeal to Troy’s better judgment and
love for Rose. Bono says he’s known her and Troy for nearly his whole life. He remembers
when they met, and adds that a lot of women were interested in Troy at the time, but Bono
knew that, when Troy picked Rose, he made the right decision—that he was a man of sense.
Bono, inspired by Troy’s decision, decided to start following him, thinking that following
Troy’s mindset might take him somewhere in life. Troy, Bono says, taught him a lot—to
“take life as it comes along and keep putting one foot in front of the other.” Bono finishes by
telling Troy that Rose is a good woman.
Here, we see the seeds of Bono’s desire to follow Troy—the seeds of his role as a follower,
as August Wilson writes at the beginning of the play, in their relationship. Troy’s decision to
commit himself to Rose inspired Bono, who deemed Troy’s commitment as an act of high
sensibility and mature judgement. Still as equally committed to Troy as a friend many years
later, Bono now feels the need to intervene in Troy’s misdeeds and steer him towards the
path that most reflects the sensibility he witnessed in Troy as a younger man.
Active Themes
Seeming still agitated by Bono’s comment, Troy wonders what motive Bono has in saying
all of this about Rose, but Bono denies having anything particular on his mind. Troy is still
unsatisfied by this, however, and pushes Bono for an explanation, but Bono has nothing to
add—he just insists that Rose loves Troy. Troy thinks Bono is trying to say that Rose is too
good for him—that he doesn’t measure up because he’s seeing Alberta. Bono responds by
saying he knows how important Rose is to Troy, explaining that he just doesn’t want to see
him mess their relationship up.
Bono’s awkwardly obvious sauntering around the elephant in the room—that Troy is sleeping
with Alberta—continues, as he refuses to cite Troy’s affair as the reason for his comments
about Rose. Yet Troy finally names his misdeed, confessing to having an affair with Alberta,
and tries to fault Bono for accusing Troy of being a lesser man for committing adultery. But
Bono assuages Troy’s reactionary response, and says that all he cares about is the health of
Troy and Rose’s relationship.
Active Themes
Troy says that he appreciates Bono’s sentiments, and claims that, while he didn’t go out
looking for anything, and thinks that no woman compares with Rose, Alberta has nonetheless
stuck onto him, and that he can’t shake her off.
 47
Finally, the tension between Troy and Bono is resolved, and Troy fully acknowledges that he
has gotten attached to Alberta—even though he seems to be honest when he says he never
fully intended to.
Active Themes
Bono replies that Troy is ultimately the one responsible for his actions, but Troy explains that
he’s not ducking any responsibility, claiming that, “as long as it sets right in my heart,” then
he’s okay, and further, his heart is all he ever listens to. His heart, Troy says, will always tell
him right from wrong, and that he won’t ever mistreat Rose, adding that he loves and respects
her for all she’s added to his life.
Troy’s faith that his heart will never steer him wrong—that his visceral feelings about things
are the ultimate guides for his moral judgement—testify to his narcissism, and the fact that
he is ill-equipped to distinguish between reason and emotion, morality and his own fantasies.
Active Themes
While Bono doesn’t doubt Troy’s love and respect for Rose, he says he worries about what
will happen when Rose finds out, since sooner or later it’s going to happen if he doesn’t drop
Alberta and continues juggling both relationships. Troy replies that he’s been trying to figure
out how to work it out, and Bono, while he doesn’t want to get caught up in Troy and Rose’s
personal business, encourages Troy to “work it so it come out right.”
Bono continues trying to pinpoint the irrationality to Troy’s thinking, insisting that there’s
no way he can keep up his high-wire act of juggling both relationships without Rose finding
out, and that he had better drop Alberta if he wants to keep up his relationship with his wife.
Active Themes
Troy replies that he gets involved in Bono and Lucille’s business all the time and, confirming
this, he asks Bono when he’s going to buy Lucille the refrigerator she’s been wanting. Bono
replies that once Troy finishes building the fence for Rose, he’ll buy Lucille her refrigerator.
Bono then leaves to get back to Lucille, saying that he wants to see Troy put the fence up by
himself in order to save his money, since it will take Troy another six months to finish it
without him.
The two friends ultimately leave on a friendly note, as Bono turns the gravity of their
conversation into a not-so-serious betting game. The fact that Bono leaves to get home to
Lucille—whom he usually leaves the Maxson household for—underscores his dedication to
his wife (a dedication modeled, as we have learned, after how he views Troy’s relation to
Rose) in opposition to Troy’s adultery.
Active Themes
Rose then enters the yard from the house, and asks Troy why the police arrested Gabe, and
what’s going to happen to him. Troy tells her he was arrested for disturbing the peace, and
that a judge set up a hearing for him in three weeks. Rose adds that she thinks it would be
 48
good for him to be put in the hospital, but Troy says Gabe should be free—that it wouldn’t
be right for anyone to lock him up, since his life was ruined by fighting a pointless war.
Rose continues to harp on Troy about Gabe being institutionalized, but he refuses to heed her
arguments. He still seems to believe he has some fundamental responsibility to Gabe, at least
at this point in the play, both because of Gabe’s activities in the war and for the money he
(inadvertently) provided Troy.
Active Themes
Rose then tells Troy to come inside for lunch, but he says he has something to tell her—he
confesses that he’s going to be a father. Shocked, Rose cannot believe that Troy is telling her
this, and—suddenly—Gabe enters the scene, with a rose in his hand. He offers Rose the
flower, and she thanks him; he then asks Troy if he’s mad at him since “them bad mens come
and put [him] away.” Troy denies being mad at Gabe, and tries to continue his conversation
with Rose, but she says there’s nothing he can say to explain his actions.
Leading up to perhaps the most powerful moment of the entire play, just as Troy informs
Rose of his adultery, the gravity of his declaration gets intersected by the ignorant whimsy
of Gabe’s presence, who, unknowingly, offers Rose a timely dash of comfort with a rose.
Troy and Rose’s heated moment is nerve-gratingly suspended by their momentary dialogue
with Gabe.
Active Themes
Rose tells Gabe to go inside and get a piece of watermelon, and after he leaves, Rose begins
questioning Troy. She wonders why, after all these years, Troy’s just now bringing this upon
her—she could have expected this ten or fifteen years ago, she says, but not now. Troy says
that age has nothing to do with it, and Rose starts to stand up for herself. She says she’s tried
to be the best wife possible, and that she’s never wanted anything “half” (like Troy’s new
baby) in her family, since her whole family growing up was “half,” and she finds it frustrating
when she tries to talk with her brother and sisters about their parents. Troy tells Rose to stop
making a fuss, insisting that she ought to know what’s going on, but she exclaims that she
doesn’t want to know.
Beginning the most dramatic exchanges of the entire play, Rose confronts Troy’s confession
face-to-face, and stands her own ground to the man who frequently talks down to and debases
her, and who has now admitted to the greatest betrayal of her dedication. Rose is not oblivious
to such philandering tendencies in Troy, claiming that she would not have been surprised to
have heard such a confession earlier in their marriage, but she had faith that Troy matured.
Active Themes
Troy adds that he can’t make anything go away—that he’s already done the deed and he can’t
wish it away—but Rose counters by saying that he doesn’t want it to go away. Maybe, she
says, Troy wants to wish all their eighteen years together and their boy, Cory, away—but he
can’t do that, she says, because her life is invested in him. She adds that he ought to have
stayed in her bed, where he belonged.
 49
Rose not only insists that Troy can’t simply renounce his actions—that he can’t wish them
away--but also that he likely doesn’t want them to go away. This is powerful: Rose sees
through Troy’s lies and rhetoric. She knows Troy probably doesn’t feel much remorse, and
that he has little regard for the life he’s built with Rose.
Active Themes
Troy insists that “we”—he and Rose—can get a handle on their dispute, but Rose asks where
this “we” that Troy is bringing up was when he was sleeping with Alberta. Troy responds by
saying that Alberta gives him a different idea about who he his—that Alberta lets him get
away from the pressures and problems he feels in his own home. With Alberta, he says, he
doesn’t have to worry about such mundane things as paying bills—he just gets to be “a part
of myself that I ain’t never been.”
Here Troy’s narcissism explicitly rears its head again, when he speaks about how Alberta
gives him a different sense of himself, a freedom of expression which he feels is hindered by
his family at home. Instead of being bogged down with the everyday tasks of being a father
and husband, with Alberta, he can let loose and be someone else.
Active Themes
Rose replies, wondering whether Troy intends to keep seeing her or not, and he says that he
can’t give up the laughter and joy which Alberta helps him to feel. After Rose suggests that
Troy leave her for Alberta, since she’s apparently a better woman than her, Troy tries to
defuse her. He says that a man could not ask for a better wife than Rose, but that he locked
himself into a pattern where, being so concerned with taking care of her, he forgot to take
care of himself.
This narcissism which steers Troy away from his commitments to his family continues to
show itself, as Troy says he can’t possibly give up his relationship with Alberta. Troy,
however, tries to cover up his selfishness by insisting that he took so much care of Rose that
he stopped taking care of himself.
Active Themes
After Rose proclaims that it was her job, as his wife, to take care of Troy—and that she’d
tried to all her life—Troy says that he always tried all his life to be decent, and that he tried
to be a good husband, the best he could. But also, he adds, one is born with “two strikes”
before you arrive in the world, and one must guard this very closely—for you cannot afford
another strike. Troy adds that, with everything lined up against you, you must “go out
swinging.” He concludes that, when he left the penitentiary, nothing could make him strike-
out anymore—that he was going to look after Rose and the boy they had.
After Rose firmly asserts that it was her duty to take care of Troy, and that she tried with all
her energy to do so, Troy starts spouting more of his euphemisms about “striking out,” which
suggests a fundamental divorce on his behalf from the gravity of Rose’s feelings. Content
with explaining his actions in obscure metaphors about the necessity of living life to the
fullest, Troy seems detached from Rose’s real pain.
 50
Active Themes
Rose tells Troy he should have stayed in her bed, and Troy responds that, when he saw
Alberta, “she firmed up my backbone.” Arguing that, after eighteen years, Rose should
understand that he’d want to “steal second”—to have sex with Alberta—Rose shuts Troy
down, exclaiming that he should have held onto her.
Troy’s insensitivity comes to a pinnacle here, when he claims that Rose should understand
why he went for Alberta—but Rose won’t budge, rejecting Troy’s excuses by powerfully
affirming that his duty as a husband was to hold onto her, and no other woman.
Active Themes
Troy responds by saying that he’d stood on first base for eighteen years with Rose, and,
finally thought that, “well goddamn it . . . go on for it!” But Rose counters, saying that nothing
they’re talking about has to do with baseball. Troy continues to argue with Rose, and insists
that she’s not listening to him. But Rose maintains that she’s been standing with Troy for
eighteen years and, further, she has a life of her own. She tells Troy that she has eighteen
years of her own life—of her own dreams and hopes—and suggests to Troy that, though
she’s had her own fantasies with other men, she’s never played-into them, always putting her
responsibilities to her family first. She concludes that, ultimately, she planted herself inside
of Troy to bloom, despite her most intimate needs. She says that, though she knew the soil of
Troy’s world was rocky, she nonetheless gave everything to his world in order to love and
support him.
Troy keeps deploying his odd, emotionally detached baseball metaphors, and finally Rose
denounces them, saying that they have nothing to do with Troy’s betrayal of their
relationship. She affirms her commitment to Troy and hard work and devotion as a wife once
more—this is perhaps the most powerful moment of the play. Finally, after all this time of
Troy’s excessively, undeservedly large presence in all of his relationships, Rose takes a stand
against his daunting stature, and affirms that she has her own hopes and dreams, and her own
needs to be fulfilled—but that she did her duty as a wife by putting her husband and family
first.
Active Themes
Troy responds by telling Rose that she says he takes and never gives—and he grabs her,
painfully, by the arm. Rose tells Troy that he’s hurting her, but he doesn’t care—he only says
that she has falsely accused him of taking and not giving, concluding that he’s given her
everything he’s got. Before they get into an even nastier fight, Cory enters the scene and
wrestles with his father, ultimately gaining the upper hand. In response, Troy tells Cory that
he’s “struck out” for the second time—and that he better not provoke him again.
Troy shows his brutality and abusive nature as he—threatened by Rose’s assertion of her
independence—tries to quell the fact that she has the upper hand in their argument, though
he postures his anger as being motivated by Rose’s inability to understand him. Cory boldly
asserts himself against Troy, showing his love for his mother at the same time.
 51
Active Themes
Summary
Analysis
The second scene occurs six months later; Troy enters the yard from the house and, before
he can leave, Rose appears from inside, and says she wants to talk. Troy asks her why, after
months of not communicating, she suddenly wants to speak with him. Rose, wanting to reach
out to her husband, responds by saying that she wants Troy to come home tomorrow,
Friday—straight home, to her, and not anywhere or anybody else. But Troy dismisses her
sincere plea, saying that he always comes home after work, and further: since Friday is his
payday, he’ll want to cash his check and hang out at the local bar with his friends.
Rose tries to reach out one last time to Troy, and see if he’ll re-commit himself to her and
their relationship with fidelity. We can assume that, for the past six months, Troy has
continued his relationship with Alberta, refusing to re-cultivate his monogamy with Rose. By
asking Troy to come straight home to her, Rose is simply asking for his devotion again, his
sincere commitment to the cause of their relationship, but Troy, as usual, disregards her
concern.
Active Themes
Rose tells Troy that she can’t keep living like this—alone, distanced from her husband,
always wondering where he is (and imagining that he’s always with Alberta). But he
continues to reject her concerns, and insists that he comes home every night, missing Rose’s
whole point (that she wants him to prioritize coming straight home, to her and her alone).
She then asks him, powerfully, “What about me? When’s my time to enjoy life?”
Rose is reaching her wit’s end in being able to tolerate Troy’s continued relationship with
Alberta, and Troy persists in his utter disregard for Rose’s feelings, dashing over the nuance
of what she’s saying by insisting that he always comes home (eventually). By asking the
powerful question about her own enjoyment, Rose continues to affirm herself in the face of
Troy’s disregard.
Active Themes
Troy, still resisting any genuine communication with Rose, says that he’s on his way to see
Alberta at the hospital, since it looks like she’s going to have the baby early. Rose then tells
him that Gabe has been institutionalized—locked up in a psychiatric ward—and that she read
in the newspaper that Troy arranged it all. But Troy denies any involvement in Gabe’s
detainment, and says that the newspaper is lying. Rose accuses Troy of treating Gabe just
like he treated Cory—he betrayed them both. Whereas Troy wouldn’t sign Cory’s
recruitment papers, he was willing to sign the papers for Gabe’s hospitalization. Rose adds
that Troy will profit from sending Gabe away, since he’ll get half of his brother’s money.
Troy’s hypocrisy emerges again here: after all the time he spent defending Gabe against
Rose’s opinion that it would be good for him to be institutionalized, Troy has finally caved
in on his advocacy for Gabe’s freedom—the motivation being money. Troy, at this point,
 52
seems to have just about betrayed everyone around him except Bono. Troy’s signing of
Gabe’s hospital papers is ironic, as it signs Gabe into a lack of freedom, whereas not signing
Cory’s recruitment papers had something of a similar effect: of limiting Cory’s future
horizons.
Active Themes
The telephone inside Troy and Rose’s home rings, and Rose goes to answer it. She returns,
and we learn that it was the hospital calling: Alberta died during childbirth. The baby—a
girl—is okay, and healthy. Rose says she wonders who will bury Alberta, and Troy accuses
her of being petty, caring only about whether Alberta had insurance. But Rose denies
meaning anything of the sort. She then asserts herself, telling Troy, “I am your wife. Don’t
push me away.”
Troy’s accusation of Rose—that she’s petty—is ironically hypocritical, and another
demonstration of his ability to fundamentally sever himself from the reality around him, and
proclaim himself to be the one in the right—the one who’s worked the hardest and been the
most virtuous.
Active Themes
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Troy responds by saying that he’s not pushing anyone away, and asks Rose to give him some
room to breathe and process Alberta’s death. Rose leaves, and Troy addresses Mr. Death.
Speaking to his own personified phantom of death, Troy challenges Mr. Death, saying that
he’s going to build a fence around his yard to keep him out, and that Death had better bring
his army and wrestling clothes. Troy says that their fight is between them, and nobody else,
and that when Death is ready for him, he should come and knock on Troy’s front door.
Troy’s tendency towards fantasizing about death resurfaces here—unable to accept that
Alberta died due to chance circumstances pertaining to childbirth (and also that, by
impregnating her, Troy played some role in her death), Troy projects a sinister, personified
form onto a figure of death who has personal motivations and consciously interferes in Troy’s
life to make it more difficult.
Active Themes
Summary
Analysis
The next scene occurs three days later, in the evening. Rose is inside the house, listening to
the ball game, awaiting Troy. When Troy enters the yard, he’s carrying his newborn child
(Raynell), and calls to Rose. She enters from the house, and stands on the porch. Egging her
on to help him raise his child, Troy tells Rose that his daughter is motherless and doesn’t
 53
know anything about “grownups’ business,” meaning his own affair with Alberta. But Rose
rejects him, and asks, “What you telling me for, Troy?” She then re-enters the house.
It seems that Troy really will stop at no end, and will—despite having basically ignored Rose
for the past six months in favor of Alberta—nonetheless ask her to mother his and Alberta’s
daughter. It seems that Rose has reached her limit, that she’s given up on Troy entirely, and
her refusal to give in to Troy’s pleas seems like a powerful desertion of him.
Active Themes
Troy then sits down on the porch with his infant daughter (Raynell), and says that he isn’t
sorry for anything he’s done, since it felt right in his heart. He asks Raynell why she’s smiling,
saying that he’s scared since they don’t have a home at the moment. Rose then enters from
the house again, and Troy begs her to help him take care of Raynell. Rose agrees to help,
since Raynell is innocent, and tells him “you can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child.”
She then adds: “From right now . . . this child got a mother. But you a womanless man.”
Rose’s kindness and empathy ultimately lead her to give in to Troy’s plea—but she qualifies
her willingness to take care of Raynell as having nothing to do with her love for Troy. Rose
feels bad for Raynell, who she knows is innocent, but she does not show any sympathy for
Troy. Ultimately, she does desert Troy.
Active Themes
Summary
Analysis
The fourth scene occurs two months later. Lyons enters the yard from the street, and knocks
on the door of the Maxson household, calling for Rose. He asks her where Troy is—he wants
to pay his father back twenty dollars. Rose says Troy will be back any minute, but Lyons
replies that he has to pick up his girlfriend, Bonnie, so Rose tells him to put his money on the
table.
Even about a year from the beginning of the play, Lyons is still borrowing money from Troy,
suggesting his continued failure to really launch his career as a musician.
Active Themes
As Lyons heads to leave, Cory enters the scene, and Lyons apologizes for not making Cory’s
graduation, explaining that he had a gig during it. Cory says he’s trying to find a job, and
Lyons empathizes with him about how much of a struggle it is to find work. Lyons tells Cory
to talk to Troy, saying that he’ll be able to get Cory a job. Lyons leaves, and Cory goes over
to the tree in the yard, and picks up his father’s baseball bat.
Lyons’ failure to make his brother’s graduation seems like another example of his lack of
maturity and ability to successfully organize his life. Further, Lyons’ suggestion that Cory
get a job through Troy is ironic, since he’s consistently refused to do so himself.
Active Themes
 54
Troy enters the yard, and he and Cory eye one another; Cory puts the bat down, and exits the
yard. As Troy goes to enter the house, Rose exits it with Raynell, carrying a cake. Troy says
to her: “I’m coming in and everybody’s going out.”
One of the most significant moments of the play, Troy’s statement about everyone ‘going
out’ speaks to the failure of the fence he built to keep his family together.
Active Themes
Troy then reaches into his pocket and grabs some money to give Rose, and she tells him to
put it on the table. Troy then asks her when she’ll be coming back home, but she disregards
his concern, saying that he shouldn’t bother asking—it doesn’t matter when she comes back.
This angers Troy; he tries to demand an answer, but Rose just tells him that his dinner is on
the stove, and all he needs to do is heat it up. Rose then exits the yard, and Troy, sitting down
on the steps, takes a bottle of alcohol out from his pocket, and commences drinking and
singing.
Here, we see that the tables have turned—whereas Troy used to pursue his own life and
disregard Rose’s, now it’s the other way around. By refusing to tell Troy where she’s going,
and telling him that his dinner is on the stove, it seems that Rose now only feels obligated to
Troy in the way he used to with her: as strictly a provider, and nothing more. Rose continues
to carry out what she must think to be her minimal duty as someone who lives with Troy—
and later she will affirm to Cory that familial bonds shouldn’t be disregarded.
Active Themes
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As Troy sings the song about his old dog Blue, Bono enters the yard. Bono says he wanted
to visit with Troy, since he barely sees him anymore, ever since Troy got the promotion.
Bono says he’s going to retire in two years, and Troy agrees that he’s considering it too. But
Bono challenges Troy, saying that he could easily drive for another five years—Bono’s stuck
hauling heavy garbage.
Even though Troy got hired as a truck driver, we can infer that he’s the only black worker at
his company to do so—further, he hasn’t used his confidence and rhetorical powers at work
to help Bono get hired as a driver. It’s as if he’s only advocated for equality at work in order
to serve himself, not really in the service of justice at all.
Active Themes
Troy says that driving the garbage truck isn’t the same as hauling garbage, since you have no
one to talk to, and then he asks how Lucille, Bono’s wife, is doing. Bono says Lucille is doing
alright, despite her arthritis. Troy then offers Bono a drink of his gin, but Bono resists, saying
he just wanted to stop by and say hello—he has a dominoes game to make at a friend’s house.
But Troy argues with Bono, saying that Bono can’t play dominoes—that he always used to
 55
beat Bono at the game. Yet Bono says he learned from Troy, and is getting better. He tells
Troy to stop by his house sometime, and Troy says that he learned from Rose that Bono
finally bought Lucille a refrigerator. Bono affirms this, saying that—since Troy finally built
the fence—he figured he ought to keep up the deal the two made earlier, and buy his wife the
fridge. Bono exits, after Troy tells him to take care and promises to “stop over” some time.
Troy and Bono’s interaction seems to reveal that a distance, has grown between the two. Yet
despite Troy’s ultimate refusal to rectify things with Rose—which was his advice—Bono
still remains committed to the friendship. Further, Bono seems to be becoming more
confident, probably because of witnessing his hero—Troy—devolve into a less than ideal
person. Like Bono challenging Troy (in the previous paragraph) by suggesting he work five
more years, Bono asserts himself here against Troy’s taunts that he can’t play dominoes. Also
of note is that Bono is just ‘stopping by,’ now—he doesn’t hang around to drink with Troy
as he used to, and insists that he has to get to a meeting with other, perhaps new, friends.
Active Themes
Cory then enters the yard, and, once again, he and Troy eye each other. Cory tries to go into
the house, but Troy is blocking the entrance; after accusing Troy of blocking him, Troy
reprimands Cory. Troy says that the house is his, since he bought and paid for it—he tells
Cory that he ought to say “excuse me.” But Cory persists in trying to get past Troy, and Troy
grabs his son’s leg, shoving him back. Troy then accuses Cory of trying to walk over him,
and Cory asserts that the house belongs to him as well, and that he’s not afraid of Troy. The
two get into a heated argument. Cory resists Troy’s accusation that he was walking over his
father, and declares that he was simply trying to walk past Troy as he sang drunkenly to
himself. This infuriates Troy, who’s in disbelief that Cory didn’t say “excuse me.”
Troy seems like he’s itching to get into an argument with Cory, just because. Troy gets
incredibly irritated over what probably counts as minor disrespect on Cory’s part—though
it’s unclear, from the text, who is in the right (though Troy’s judgment is impaired because
of alcohol)—and blows something trivial into a big fight. This speaks to Cory’s evolved sense
of confidence and autonomy in the face of his father, from whom he used to shrink in fear—
but now, however, he’s declaring that he has an equal right to live in the house, and also,
crucially, that he’s not afraid of his father.
Active Themes
Troy then tells Cory that he’s out of line—that, because he’s grown up, he suddenly thinks
his father doesn’t count, and so Cory doesn’t have to say things like “excuse me” anymore.
Cory says “that’s right,” and criticizes Troy for “always talking this dumb stuff,” and asks
Troy to get out of his way. When Troy accuses Cory of being ungrateful for all he gave to
his son, Cory argues back, saying that Troy never gave him anything—that all Troy ever did
was try to make his son afraid of his authority. Cory explains that, growing up, he was
terrified of his father, and that Rose—though she tries to stand up to Troy—is afraid too.
Cory’s assertion of “that’s right,” and his comment that his father is always talking about
such “dumb stuff” as how and to what extent his son does/does not comport with his
 56
authority, suggest that he’s begun to see through Troy’s ways of manipulating him and
making him feel unequal and subservient as a person. Further, Cory’s bold claim that Troy
never gave him anything shows that Cory has psychologically evolved to realize his own
self-worth, and how his father failed to nourish it.
Active Themes
Troy tells Cory to leave Rose out of their argument, and advances towards his son in rage.
Cory exclaims: “What you gonna do . . . give me a whupping? You can’t whup me no more.
You’re too old,” and Troy shoves him. Troy yells at Cory, telling him to get out of his yard,
but Cory corrects him, saying that it’s not really his father’s yard, since Troy stole Gabe’s
money to pay for it. Even more infuriated, Troy advances on Cory, telling him to get his
“black ass” out of his yard. Cory picks up the baseball bat.
Cory continues to talk back to Troy, which truly demonstrates his lack of fear and the
intensity of his anger. Cory’s assertion that Troy doesn’t really own the yard is the last straw
for Troy, probably because it hits at the core of his hypocritical ways, such that Troy has no
defense against it. All Troy can do is tell Cory to leave.
Active Themes
Cory says that he isn’t going anywhere, and swings the bat at Troy, who backs across the
yard. Cory misses, but then swings again—and Troy says that, if Cory wants to draw the bat
on him, that he’s only going to succeed in hitting his father if he swings with the intent of
killing him. Troy then sticks his head out as a vulnerable, bare target, but Cory can’t execute
the would-be fatal swing, and Troy wrestles him for the bat. Threatening to hit Cory with the
bat, Troy stops himself, and orders Cory to leave his house. Cory tells him to let Rose know
that he’ll be back for his things, and Troy responds that all of Cory’s possessions will “be on
the other side of that fence.”
Perhaps more significant than the action of Cory and Troy’s fight is Troy’s declaration that
Cory’s possessions will be on the other side of the fence when he returns for them. Once
again, the fence has failed to hold the Maxson family together—it’s instead come to serve as
a reference point for their division. Troy invokes the fence in order to express that Cory has
been expelled from the territory within it, and that, from now on, his home is outside the
fence.
Active Themes
Cory exits, and Troy assumes a batting stance, and starts to taunt Mr. Death. Troy shouts at
Death, egging him on: “Come on! It’s between you and me now! Come on! Anytime you
want . . . but I ain’t gonna be easy.” The lights go down, ending the scene.
Troy once again addresses his invented figure of death immediately following a personal
tragedy—whereas last time it was in response to the loss of Alberta, now Troy is responding
to the (less lethal) loss of his son.
Active Themes
 57
Summary
Analysis
The last scene of the play occurs in 1965, eight years after its beginning. Troy has died, and
it’s the morning of his funeral. Rose, Bono, and Raynell (now seven years old) are gathered
at the Maxson household. Raynell is in the yard, next to a garden which she’s planted; Rose
calls her to get dressed for the funeral, and Raynell wonders why her garden hasn’t grown.
Rose responds by saying that it isn’t going to grow overnight.
August Wilson’s decision to not make Troy’s death an actual, real-time moment of the play
has the effect of making Troy’s death seem almost trivial or superfluous—like an after-effect
of something larger and more important. Further, with the sudden, off-stage vanishing of
Troy and the now on-stage gathering of all his family, the distance between Troy and his
family/friends before his death is amplified.
Active Themes
Cory enters the yard, dressed in a Marine corporal’s uniform, and August Wilson describes
his posture as being distinctly militant, adding that Cory speaks with a “clipped sternness.”
Cory says “hi” to Raynell—Raynell doesn’t remember him—and asks if her mother is home.
Rose comes to the door to see Cory, and is shocked to see him—we get the sense that it’s
been several years since they were united.
The marks of his father’s anger and stubbornness seem to be written across Cory’s evolved,
matured self—he’s become the disciplined and no-nonsense man which his father never was.
Active Themes
As Rose and Cory embrace, Bono and Lyons enter the yard—they’re both impressed by
Cory’s accomplishments in the military. Rose says she’s very glad that Cory made it to the
funeral, and adds that Gabe is still in the hospital, and she’s not sure if he’s going to be
allowed to attend Troy’s funeral or not.
Cory’s new stature and military garb must impress Bono and Lyons, who knew the uncertain
and unstable atmosphere of his youth—despite all of that, Cory has made something of
himself (although not what he originally wanted to), whereas Lyons has seemingly failed.
Active Themes
Bono leaves to go help at the church where Troy’s funeral will be held, and Rose re-
introduces Raynell to Cory. Rose then tells Raynell to get ready for the funeral, and they both
exit into the house. Lyons mentions that he’s heard Cory is thinking about getting married,
and Cory affirms this, saying he thinks he’s “found the right one.” Lyons adds that he and
Bonnie have been split up for four years, and that he always knew Cory was going to make
something of himself. Cory says he’s been with the army for six years, and Lyons says he
was sentenced to three years in jail for cashing other people’s checks.
The juxtaposition of Lyons’s failure to make something of his future and Cory’s success is
further amplified, as we get new information: Lyons no longer struggles just to launch a failed
 58
music career, but has followed in the footsteps of his father and turned to crime in order to
make ends meet, despite being in circumstances where other opportunities are available
(unlike in his father’s time). Lyons has refused still, to this day, to get any job outside of
music.
Active Themes
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Cory asks if Lyons is still playing music, and Lyons says that he and some of his inmates
have formed a band, and that they’re going to try and stay together when they get out—he
says that music still helps him to get out of bed in the morning. Lyons then exits to eat the
breakfast which Rose has prepared, asking, briefly, if Cory is doing alright—Cory nods, and
August Wilson writes that they “share a moment of silent grief.”
Lyons’ continued commitment to music raises the question if, over the years, he’s developed
a more authentic appreciation for it—or whether he’s still caught up in the image of being a
musician. Further, it’s remarkable that the two do not discuss their father’s death
whatsoever—they grieve in silence, and whether it’s Troy’s death which they grieve is
debatable: they might just be grieving their own childhoods.
Active Themes
Raynell re-enters the yard from the house, and says “hi” to Cory, asking him if he used to
sleep in her room. Cory says yes—it used to be his room—and Rose comes to the door, telling
Raynell to put on her good shoes for the funeral. Raynell exits into the house, and Rose tells
Cory that Troy died swinging his baseball bat. Then, with great hesitation—mirroring his
father’s reluctance to tell Rose that he’d had an affair with Alberta—Cory tells Rose that he’s
not going to Troy’s funeral. Rose, however, won’t accept this, and insists that Cory attend.
Even if he and his father didn’t always see eye to eye, she says, Cory needs to put it aside.
Rose adds that disrespecting Troy won’t make Cory a man.
The fact that Troy died while swinging a baseball bat ironically harks back to his “striking
out” anecdote, his career as a baseball player which was cut short, and the fact that he would
swing his bat at “Mr. Death” when addressing “him.” Further, Cory’s unwillingness to go to
Troy’s funeral speaks to his desire to wash himself of his father, of the stains Troy made on
Cory’s life—and this suggests that Cory feels he hasn’t fully escaped the grips of his father.
Rose’s insistence that Cory attend speaks to her opinion that there’s something permanent
about familial bonds.
Active Themes
Cory responds by saying that, growing up, Troy was a shadow that “weighed on you and
sunk into your flesh”—a shadow that tried to crawl into him and live through him. He says
that, everywhere he looked, Troy was looking back at him, and that he just wants to find a
 59
way to get rid of his father’s shadow. Rose replies: “You just like him. You got him in you
good.”
Rose’s comment that Cory is just like Troy, and that he has Troy deeply embedded within
his personality, seems to suggest that she thinks Cory’s attempts to outrun the imprint Troy
left on his life is futile—that he should accept Troy for who he was, and acknowledge his
massive influence.
Active Themes
Rose continues, saying that the shadow Cory mentioned was just Cory growing into
himself—that it had nothing to do with Troy. She adds that Troy wanted Cory to be
everything he wasn’t, but, at the same time, Troy tried to make Cory into everything he was.
She says that she doesn’t know whether Troy was right or wrong, but that he at least meant
to do more good than harm.
Rose pivots somewhat around her previous point, though, clarifying that the reason Cory’s
attempts to outrun Troy are futile is that what Cory imagines Troy to be is really Cory
himself—not actually Troy in reality. Her advocacy for Troy—that Troy truly wanted more
good than harm—suggests that, with time and age, she’s grown to have empathy for Troy’s
actions.
Active Themes
Rose then goes into a long description of her own relationship with Troy. She says that she
married him in order to fill the emptiness in her life—she thought his energy would fill her
to the point of bursting. However, once they were married, she didn’t make enough room for
herself—Troy, with his hefty presence, took up all of her life and her home. All Rose did was
sacrifice herself for Troy, “give up little pieces” of her life, and watch Troy grow from it. She
adds that, by the time Raynell was born, she and Troy had lost touch with each other. The
phone rings, and Rose concludes that she took Raynell under her wing in an attempt to relive
part of her life—to have one of the babies she always wanted but never had.
Rose’s beautiful and heartfelt description of why she married Troy, and the problems which
unfolded in their marriage, demonstrate that she’s come to a decisive conclusion about why
she and Troy lost touch with each other. Rose, in retrospect, regrets sacrificing herself so
much for the marriage—for not voicing her own opinions, desires, and values, and for
constantly catering to Troy’s demanding and overbearing nature. Never met halfway by Troy,
Rose eventually became detached from her own sense of self.
Active Themes
Raynell enters the yard, and tells Rose that the reverend is on the phone. Rose exits into the
house, and Raynell once again says “hi” to Cory. She asks Cory if he knew Blue—Troy’s
dog—and they both begin singing the song Troy’s father created about him. Whenever
Raynell can’t remember the lyrics, Cory fills them in for her. Rose then comes to the door,
and announces that they’re going to be ready to leave for the funeral soon.
 60
When Cory fills in the words which Raynell doesn’t remember, it’s as if he’s playing the role
of a guardian and teacher to Raynell in a way that’s unique to himself, untouched by Troy’s
brooding authority. Though they sing Troy’s favorite song, and though he lives on through
their singing, Cory takes the song over: by filling-in the words, he actively permits its oral
history to last, while taking over his father’s place.
Active Themes
Gabriel then enters the scene, and Rose, Cory, and Lyons are delighted to see him. Gabriel
announces that “it’s time to tell St. Peter to open the gates.” He then asks Troy’s spirit if he’s
ready, and pulls out his trusty trumpet of judgment. Gabriel braces himself, ready to produce
a glorious sound with his instrument, but no sound comes from it. August Wilson describes
“a weight of impossible description” befalling Gabriel—“a trauma that a sane and normal
mind would be unable to withstand”—a painful realization of some kind, likely that Troy
failed to enter heaven. Gabriel then begins to dance hysterically, and when Lyons attempts
to embrace him, he pushes him away. Ending the play, upon finishing his dance, Gabriel
announces: “That’s the way that go!”
Gabriel’s last, rather apathetic expression is a testament to his devotion to the order of God
as being the prime executor of judgment—of whether Troy does or does not deserve to enter
heaven. While Gabriel seems initially shocked at the moment when, we can infer, he
witnesses Troy’s sentencing to hell, he ultimately shrugs it off in a strange and gleeful but
simultaneously serious sense of rapture—that’s just the way, he concludes, God and
judgment work. Though Gabriel appears as an insane man, this ability of his to think about
judgment from an unbiased perspective suggests he isn’t entirely without wisdom.
Active Themes
=====================

Character Analysis of Cory in the Play “Fences” by

August Wilson
All of the characters in the play by August Wilson Fences experience a personal
transformation over the course of the play. While the characters of Troy and Rose in “Fences”
by August Wilson may seem to be the characters whose experiences of change are most
profound, Cory’s changes provide a richer subject for analysis because his personal
transformation reflects the transition between generations that is characteristic of all
adolescents. As such, the changes that the character of Cory in the play “Fences” by August
Wilson experiences have universal relevance; whereas, the changes of the other characters
are more personal. Cory must negotiate the limitations of his father’s generation and the
challenges of forging his own unique identity, and when he does so, he is able to overcome
the limitations that have bound him, destroying the metaphorical fences that exist between
himself and others.
As “Fences", the play by August Wilson opens, Cory is optimistic and enthusiastic about his
future. He views possibilities for himself that were not available to his father; in a certain
 61
sense, he has the opportunity to live the life his father wanted to live but could not because
of the racism that plagued society. Cory is a headstrong character in “Fences” by August
Wilson and wishes desperately to be independent, and he makes the decision to quit his job
in order to pursue his dream of playing football at the college level. In any character analysis
of Cory in the play “Fences” by August Wilson, it is important to note that Cory faces his
first major adolescent battle to forge a unique identity separate from his father, but his father
is resistant to these efforts at individuation, which are characteristic of the adolescent
experience.
Throughout the play “Fences" by August Wilson, the character of Troy is constantly trying
to shape Cory into the person he wants Cory to be, rather than permit Cory to explore
possibilities and make his own decisions. These dynamics compel Cory to take drastic
measures in an attempt to create the change that he wants to experience and to become the
person that he envisions. The drastic measures Cory employs involve verbal and physical
violence against his father. Each episode of violence changes the dynamic between father
and son, but also changes Cory himself. He begins to think that aggression is the only means
of creating meaningful change. While he may be correct in thinking that violence changes
situations and people, he does not fully understand the implications of change for everyone
touched by the conflict and this shapes his character