Themes

Coming of age in a society dominated by racial injustice is a major theme in the play. Troy is a clear
example of the struggle that can be faced in manhood journey by black people in a community ruled by the
whites. Being raised by a brutal father and living in a society where Black people face a lot of unfairness
shape his worldview, mainly the way to raise his own children. Affected by the racial injustice he
experienced, Troy tries to protect his son, Cory, from the racism he faced but ends up stopping him from
fulfilling his dream. However, Cory represents hope for a better future. He wants to play football because
he believes things can change, unlike his dad whom we see chained in the past. Their clash shows the
struggle between accepting how things are because of racism and having the courage to hope for
something better. While Cory's openness to change shows his belief in his ability to make a difference,
Troy's resistance comes from being hurt by racism for so long. Though in certain parts of his world, Troy
is willing and able to fight for his own rights and for a change like when he gets promoted to be the first
black garbage truck driver. A fight that he cannot allow his son to experience, by dreaming of being a
football player, because the results are not certain. In brief, "Fences" shows how growing up in a racist
world affects people's hopes and relationships, making it hard to break free from the past.

Family and Duty

The theme of family life and duty is depicted through how characters like Troy and Rose see their roles
within the family. Troy sees family as a matter of duty rather than love. For him it is like a contract of
obligation similar to his responsibilities at work. Speaking about providing for the family he says, “It's my
job. It's my responsibility.” His refusal to express love for his son Cory highlights this view as he states it,
“What law is there say I got to like you?” Troy thinks that family ties are based on financial support rather
than emotional connection. His affair with Alberta further confirms his practical view to relationships,
which unfortunately by the end leads to the breakdown of his family. However, Rose's perspective on
family differs significantly from Troy's. She views it as an unbreakable bond built on sacrifices and moral
duty, rather than simple financial obligations. Despite Troy's betrayal, Rose remains unwavering in her
commitment to family unity. She insists on Cory's attendance at his father's funeral as a testament to the
enduring importance of familial ties. Unlike Troy, who thinks that his betrayal is acceptable as far as he
fulfills his contract of obligation towards his family, Rose sees it as a violation of moral responsibility and
an act of ungratefulness to the sacrifices she has made to maintain the purity and unity of their family.
Through their contrasting viewpoints, "Fences" explores the intricate interplay between familial duty, love,
and betrayal within the context of African-American family life.
Family and Duty
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.
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.
Responsibility
Troy spends a lot of time talking about the importance of responsibility. Particularly, he stresses how
important it is to be responsible to both of his sons. Initially, readers will be amazed by his dedication to
responsibility. He works hard to provide for his family and seems to have his sons’ best interests in mind.
However, as the play continues, we see that Troy is anything but responsible. Because of his bad past with
sports, he disapproves of his son’s dream to play football. Though things have changed, he cannot see this
and is still blinded by his past experience.
This shows that he is irresponsible as a father, because he fails in his duty of supporting his son in
achieving his dreams. Other instances further portray Troy as an irresponsible person. For example, when
he uses Gabriel’s brain injury money to buy a house and again when he uses Gabriel’s institution money to
pay for his own expenses, it is clear that Troy is not being a responsible caretaker for this brother. His
affair also shows that he is not responsible as he does not think about the expenses he would have to bear,
and the effect it would have to his family, especially his wife, Rose. Though he is portrayed as a
responsible person at first, the rest of the play offers a contrasting view of his true nature.
The Ideal of Responsibility
Troy Maxson is a man who takes seriously his responsibility for his family. His seriousness also becomes
his greatest liability. Troy is a man caught between his own desire for freedom, embodied in his affair with
Alberta and his fathering of an illegitimate child, and his fierce sense of loyalty to his wife, children, and
brother.
Troy's sense of responsibility comes from his own father's bitter care for him and his siblings. His father's
loyalty to his family can be seen as poisonous; his father's betrayal poisons his own relationship with Cory.
Ultimately, Troy becomes his father. He abandons Rose for another woman and stubbornly refuses to
repent for his sins. He also abandons his own brother and son, severing his relationships in his own quest
for freedom. Troy demonstrates the idea that responsibility becomes as much a liability as a virtue.
Race
It is of vital importance to the character of Troy that he is a Black man. Readers are told this in the opening
stage direction, and Troy's first conversation with Bono indicates that he is keenly aware of the presence of
racism in his life and of the unfairness of it. In certain parts of his world, he is willing and able to fight for
his own rights as a Black man; he takes his boss, Mr. Rand, to task over his rule that Black men can only
work on the backs of garbage trucks, not drive them, and is victorious in his appeal. However, in other
areas of his life, he allows the fear of institutional racism to hold him and his family back and does not
accept, as Rose does, that the world is changing—and even that he himself may be part of this change. He
believes that his own opportunities as a baseball player were limited because of his race and that Black
sports professionals are expected to be twice as good as white ones if they expect to be allowed to play. It
is, in part, out of a desire to protect Cory from the effects of systemic racism that he tries to prevent him
from playing college football. He wants Cory to understand that the world he is living in is one which sees
him as a lesser being, but he does not recognize that by insisting upon this, he is preventing Cory from
living a life less curtailed, or fenced-in, by racism than his father's was.
Barriers
The title of the play, Fences, underlines the overwhelming thematic and symbolic importance of the fence
which Troy is trying, and largely failing, to build around his house for the majority of the play. He
questions why his wife, Rose, wants to build a fence at all, and his friend Bono acutely observes that while
some people build fences to keep people out, Rose is doing it to keep people in. She senses that she is
losing her husband and wants to build a fence in order to keep the people she loves within its bounds. Later
in the play, Troy uses the fence as a barrier in a different sense: he says that he will put Cory's things on
the outside of it, suggesting that Cory is now outside of the love of the family. Troy also uses the barrier as
a layer of security between himself and Death: the fence is keeping Death away from Troy.
Other barriers of various kinds are set up between the characters in this play. Rather than turning to his
wife when he feels an emotional need, Troy goes to Alberta—significantly, often instead of building the
physical barrier that Rose believes will keep her family together. He uses Alberta to widen the divide
between himself and Rose. There is also the question of the barriers to entry that Troy believes hampered
his own sports career and will subsequently hamper that of his son Cory. An emotionally shuttered man,
Troy also sets up barriers between himself and his sons, treating them harshly rather than lovingly because
he feels that this will encourage them to become their own men.
Racial Discrimination
One of the most existent issues in this play is racial discrimination. Fences tells the story of a black family
living in an era where segregation and racial bias is existent. This theme is portrayed through many of the
characters in this play. The author chooses to incorporate the idea of racism starting in the first scene of the
first act, when Troy tells his coworker Bono about how he had previously questioned his boss about the
fact that African Americans are only allowed to do heavy lifting, whereas white people are given jobs as
garbage truck drivers. From the start, we can already see that inequality exists between the treatment of
blacks and whites in the workplace. White privilege clearly exists, preventing blacks from receiving the
opportunities they deserve. As the play unfolds, the issue of race becomes more prominent. Troy often
talks about how he was unable to succeed in sports due to his skin color, even though he claims that he is a
good baseball player. This mistreatment leads to him not allowing his son to be in the football team as he
believes that he will ultimately be treated the same way he was. This just shows that racial discrimination
leaves a permanent mark on someone’s life and influences how they think, feel, and act.
Ambitions and Goals
Fences explores various forms of its characters’ goals and dreams, drawing a line between what is
achievable and what is not. Cory’s dream is to be part of the football team in college. However, Troy does
not approve of his dream, drawing on his past experiences which leads him to believe that Africans
Americans are not given equal opportunities when it comes to sports. Though Cory puts in his best efforts
into achieving his goals, his father’s disapproval prevents him from obtaining them. This shows that
sometimes, no matter how hard you try to achieve your goals, there are certain factors that can still prevent
you from doing so.
Lyons is another character who is unable to achieve his dream of becoming a musician. Similar to Cory, he
also does not have his father’s approval. Other characters, like Rose, have simpler goals. Throughout the
play, her dream is only for Troy to build her the fence as she thinks that it can give her protection. She also
wishes for happiness and for her family to be in unity. She represents the ideal goal of a mother and a wife.
Nevertheless, she is also unable to reach this goal. Surprisingly, the only person who does achieve their
goal is Troy, who receives a job promotion and becomes the first African American garbage truck driver.
Unlike the other characters, he does not put in a lot of effort into making this goal a reality.
Responsibility
Troy spends a lot of time talking about the importance of responsibility. Particularly, he stresses how
important it is to be responsible to both of his sons. Initially, readers will be amazed by his dedication to
responsibility. He works hard to provide for his family and seems to have his sons’ best interests in mind.
However, as the play continues, we see that Troy is anything but responsible. Because of his bad past with
sports, he disapproves of his son’s dream to play football. Though things have changed, he cannot see this
and is still blinded by his past experience.
This shows that he is irresponsible as a father, because he fails in his duty of supporting his son in
achieving his dreams. Other instances further portray Troy as an irresponsible person. For example, when
he uses Gabriel’s brain injury money to buy a house and again when he uses Gabriel’s institution money to
pay for his own expenses, it is clear that Troy is not being a responsible caretaker for this brother. His
affair also shows that he is not responsible as he does not think about the expenses he would have to bear,
and the effect it would have to his family, especially his wife, Rose. Though he is portrayed as a
responsible person at first, the rest of the play offers a contrasting view of his true nature.
The Creation of Order
The overarching theme of the play, alluded to in the title, is the idea of the creation of order - a fence is not
a barrier in this reading, but a way to compartmentalize the world into understandable, manageable
chunks. Troy Maxson is chiefly responsible for this desire for order, though for a different reason his wife
Rose also craves it. Troy is caught in a world in which he feels he does not belong. He carries with him the
scars, oppression, and disorder of his Southern childhood, the abuse of his father, and an unwelcome
Pittsburgh. On the other hand, he is also a part of the growing African American middle class. He is
promoted for a job he feels he does not deserve and he is unable to accept the idea that his children might
have the freedom to create their own lives. For Troy, a fence is a way to section off part of the world as his
own - his desire for a fence is a desire to find his place in the time and culture of twentieth century
America.
The American Dream
Troy Maxson is the embodiment of an African-American generation, growing up in the post-World War II
era that finds itself finally able to realize the American ideal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Troy has become more successful than his father, who remained a poor sharecropper and never owned his
own land or property but, instead, paid all his wages and his life to an unjust land owner. Troy has bought
his own house (though he feels guilty about the methods of payment). And in his sexual relationships he
has embodied the freedom of a man to follow his own desires in a pursuit of happiness. Troy Maxson
embraces his desire to be an individual.
This pursuit of the American Dream, however, is not without conflict. Troy cannot envision a generation
doing more than his own accomplished. He cannot imagine his son achieving an even greater dream, and
he cannot imagine a life unburdened by responsibility to family. In this way, Troy remains chained to his
expectations of what a man can accomplish in the world.
African American Difference
In Fences, as well in his other plays, August Wilson seeks to point out the idea of difference between races
and culture more than the monocultural ideal of sameness. The Civil Rights era of the 1960's and '70's can
be broadly construed as African American's struggle for the same rights as whites. By the 1980's, Wilson
saw this struggle for equality morphing into a culture that was attempting to erase the differences between
races and peoples. African Americans, according to Wilson, were different than whites or any other races.
They have their own distinct culture, history, and society. No people should have to become part of the
majority culture just to enjoy the majority's rights and privileges.
Maintaining this difference is painful, and often destructive, as Fences shows. In his son Corey, Troy sees
a generation that not only aspires for their own success in the world but also seeks to fold themselves into
the white culture of the day. Sports is a metaphor for this; while Troy is bitter at losing his chance to play
in an integrated Major Leagues, he still idealizes the Negro Leagues as symbol of African American pride.
When Corey seeks a college scholarship to play football, Troy fears that his son will lose the difference of
his race in his drive for success. This conflict of difference ultimately, and perhaps necessarily, destroys
their relationship.
The Ideal of Responsibility
Troy Maxson is a man who takes seriously his responsibility for his family. His seriousness also becomes
his greatest liability. Troy is a man caught between his own desire for freedom, embodied in his affair with
Alberta and his fathering of an illegitimate child, and his fierce sense of loyalty to his wife, children, and
brother.
Troy's sense of responsibility comes from his own father's bitter care for him and his siblings. His father's
loyalty to his family can be seen as poisonous; his father's betrayal poisons his own relationship with
Corey. Ultimately, Troy becomes his father. He abandons Rose for another woman and stubbornly refuses
to repent for his sins. He also abandons his own brother and son, severing his relationships in his own
quest for freedom. Troy demonstrates the idea that responsibility becomes as much a liability as a virtue.
Personal Apocalypse
Troy's brother Gabriel is a symbol of the personal apocalypse of Troy Maxson. Apocalypse, in its original
meaning, connotes a revelation, or an understanding of the world that brings about some kind of ending.
In Fences, Troy's struggles with his family and with his sense of purpose reveal to him the nature of death
and the impermanence of his own life. Gabriel, thinking that he is the literal angel Gabriel, foretells this
revelation in Troy's life. He insists that Troy's life is written in St. Peter's book, though his mortality is not
a concept of which Troy can conceive. The tragedies of Troy's life serve as a series of death events; the
abandonment by his father, his own abandonment of his son, the death of his lover, and ultimately the end
of his own life all remind Troy that he is not in control of his own life, even as he attempts to control
everyone around him.
Changing African American Culture
August Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle" portrays African American life in Pittsburgh during each decade of the
twentieth century. Fences resonated with audiences partly because it so accurately captured the unique
situation of African Americans during the 1950's and '60's. This was a time of great change for African
American culture. The Civil Rights movement was in its emerging stages. African Americans were slowly
moving into a respectable middle class and out of the destitute poverty of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. The post-World War II generation was first embracing the ideal of personal freedom.
There are several instances of this changing culture in Fences. One is Troy's own advancement in his job.
Troy is a trash collector, a seemingly undesirable job, yet his promotion to truck driver bestows on him a
level of authority and purpose that he feels he has otherwise not achieved in his life. His discomfort with
his own advancement is seen in his desire to retire shortly after getting his raise. This changing culture also
creates bitterness in Troy. This is seen in his love/hate relationship with the game of baseball. On the one
hand, Troy loves the game for the identity that it once gave him; on the other hand, he despises the game
for its segregation and for robbing him of his chance at greatness. Troy is caught in the changing culture
and represents a generation lost in their understanding of the world around them.
Freedom vs. Protection
The fence in August Wilson's play serves as a symbol of conflicting desires. In one sense, Troy and Rose
seek to build a fence to keep the world out of their lives. Rose's desire for a fence symbolizes the way in
which she seeks to protect her family. She knows that Troy's checkered past is always there and that he is,
perhaps, only moments away from making decisions that forever affect her and her child. Rose's fence
seeks to keep the family in and the dangerous world out. It is a symbol of protection.
Though Troy seeks to protect his family and his way of life, the fence also becomes a symbol of discontent
in his own life. In his confrontation with Rose, Troy exclaims that he has spent his whole life providing for
the family. He has been the protector and defender of a quiet, normal life. The fence, therefore, does not
protect Troy but instead keeps him from achieving his ultimate desire for individuality and self
actualization.

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 growing 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.

Symbols
The Fence
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”
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.

Themes
Coming of Age within the Cycle of Damaged Black Manhood
Both Troy and Bono relate stories of their childhood in the south and tales of their relationships with
difficult fathers to Lyons in Act One, scene four. Their often-painful memories provide a context for
understanding the similarities and differences of the generations separating Troy and Bono from Lyons and
Cory. Troy's father, like many Black people after the abolishment of slavery, was a failed sharecropper.
Troy claims that his father was so evil that no woman stayed with him for very long, so Troy grew up
mostly motherless. When Troy was fourteen, his father noticed that the mule Troy was supposedly taking
care of had wandered off. Troy's father found Troy with a girl Troy had a crush on and severely beat Troy
with leather reins. Troy thought his father was just angry at Troy for his disobedience, but proving Troy's
father was even more despicable, his father then raped the girl. Troy was afraid of his father until that
moment.
At that moment, however, Troy believes he became a man. He could no longer live under the roof with a
man that would commit these unacceptable acts, so he left home to be on his own, though he was homeless
and broke, with no ties or family elsewhere. Manhood, to Troy, meant separating from his father because
of conflict and abuse. The one attribute Troy respected and proudly inherited was a sense of responsibility.
Troy's father provided for eleven children, and Troy too became the sole breadwinner for his family.
Bono however, remembers a different type of father. Bono's father was equally depressed about life as
Troy's father, but unlike Troy's father, Bono's dad never provided a fathering or providing role to Bono and
his family. Bono describes his father as having, "The Walking Blues," a condition that prevented his father
from staying in one place for long and moving frequently from one woman to the next. Bono could barely
recognize his father and knew little about him. Bono says his father, like many other African Americans of
his father's generation, were "searching out The New Land." As Black people were freed from slavery and
wanted to escape the often slavery-like conditions of sharecropping, many walked north in what history
calls The Great Migration, to pursue a better life in the north, particularly in urban centers. Because of
Bono's father's unreliable personality, Bono chose not to father children, to insure he would not abandon a
child like his father. But, contrary to Bono's fears, his father's personality was not a family trait, but a
choice he made to cope with his particular circumstances. Bono has been loyal to his wife, Lucille for
almost eighteen years.
Lyons and Cory had very different upbringings, though their development into men does not fall too far
from the tree of their father's experience. Lyons spent his entire childhood growing up with only one
parent, his mother, while Troy was in jail. Lyons feels he has the right to make his own life decisions and
pursue his own dreams in music because he had more familial support and fewer hardships than Troy.
Troy was not around to mold him into a responsible person, so Lyons tends to need to borrow money,
though he does pay Troy back respectfully. Cory ends up leaving home in a similar conflict with Troy that
Troy had with Cory's paternal grandfather. To Troy and Cory, becoming a man comes to mean leaving the
man that raised you because of a violent conflict. This painful process of coming of age is confusing. For
both Troy and Cory, the creation of their own identity when their role model is a creature of duality—part
responsible and loyal, the other side, hurtful, selfish and abusive, proves a difficult model with which to
mold their own identity as grown men with a more promising future than the father who threatens their
livelihood.

Troy and Bono share stories with Lyons about their past, showing the challenges faced by Black men in
different times. Troy's dad was cruel, which led Troy to leave home when he was young. He believed
becoming a man meant getting away from his father. Despite his dad's flaws, Troy learned responsibility
from him and provided for his family. Bono's dad wasn't reliable, so Bono chose not to have kids to avoid
repeating his father's mistakes. Lyons and Cory had different upbringings but still faced struggles defining
their manhood. While Cory left home due to conflicts with Troy, Lyons didn't. They both found it hard to
shape their identities while avoiding their father's negative traits.

Interpreting and Inheriting History

Much of the conflict in Wilson's plays, including Fences, arises because the characters are at odds with the
way they see the past and what they want to do with the future. For example, Troy Maxson and his son,
Cory see Cory's future differently because of the way they interpret history. Troy does not want Cory to
experience the hardship and disappointment Troy felt trying to become a professional sports player, so he
demands that Cory work after school instead of practicing with the football team. Cory, however, sees that
times changed since baseball rejected a player as talented as Troy because of the color of his skin. Cory
knows the possibility exists that the professional sports world will include, not exclude him. In Act One,
Scene Three, Cory provides examples of successful African American athletes to Troy. Cory says, "The
Braves got Hank Aaron and Wes Covington. Hank Aaron hit two home runs today. That makes forty-
three." Troy responds, "Hank Aaron ain't nobody." Cory's sport, football, integrated its players years
before baseball. For Troy to accept this change in the world would cause Troy to accept the death of his
own dreams. Troy refuses to see Cory's potential because it would mean accepting his own misfortune.
Troy and Cory see history in a way that benefits their worldview. Unfortunately this conflict pushes father
and son away from each other. Troy, who learned a responsible work ethic from his otherwise abusive
father, means well when he insists that Cory return to work at the A&P because he sees the job as fair,
honest work that isn't at the mercy of powerful whites' sometimes arbitrary decisions, as in Major League
baseball. But by attempting to insure Cory of a harmless future, Troy stifles his son's potential and
prevents Cory from having a promising future.
Troy's perception of what is right and what is wrong for Cory, based on Troy's refusal to perceive a
historical change in the acceptance of Black people, tragically causes Cory to experience a disappointing
fate similar to Troy's. Troy passes his personal history on to his family in other ways throughout the play
with sayings that represent his philosophies of life like, "You gotta take the crookeds with the straights."
His children also inherit Troy's past by learning songs he sings like, "Hear It Ring! Hear It Ring!" a song
Troy's own father taught him. Cory tells Rose in Act Two, scene five, "Papa was like a shadow that
followed you everywhere.” Troy's songs and sayings link his family to the difficult life in the south that his
generation was free to run away from, though penniless and without roots in the north. Troy's purposefully
and inadvertently passes on his life experience to his children and family, for better and for worse.

The conflict in Wilson's plays, like Fences, often arises from characters disagreeing about the past and
their future plans. For instance, Troy Maxson and his son Cory see Cory's future differently because of
their interpretations of history. Troy, based on his own struggles as a Black athlete, doesn't want Cory to
face similar disappointment, so he pushes him to work instead of pursuing sports. Cory, however, believes
times have changed and sees opportunities for Black athletes. This clash leads to tension between father
and son. Troy's refusal to accept these changes ultimately limits Cory's potential and mirrors Troy's own
disappointments. Throughout the play, Troy passes on his life experiences to his family through sayings
and songs, connecting them to their shared history, both good and bad.

The Choice between Pragmatism and Illusions as Survival Mechanisms

Troy and Rose choose divergent coping methods to survive their stagnant lives. Their choices directly
correspond to the opposite perspectives from which they perceive their mutual world. In Act Two, scene
one, Troy and Rose say that they both feel as if they have been stuck in the same place since their
relationship began eighteen years ago. However, Rose and Troy handle their frustration and
disappointment with their intertwined lives differently. This difference in their viewpoints is evident early
on in the play. In Act One, scene one, Troy proves through his story about his battle with Death that he is a
dreamer and a believer in self-created illusions. To Troy, his struggle with Death was an actual wrestling
match with a physical being. Rose, on the other hand, swiftly attempts to bring Troy back to reality,
explaining that Troy's story is based on an episode of pneumonia he had in July, 1941. Troy ignores Rose's
pragmatic, realistic perception of his fight with death. Troy brags about his wrestling match with Death.
Rose unsuccessfully refutes his story by mentioning that every time he tells the story he changes the
details. Troy is unmoved by Rose's evidence against his illusion. Rose, as pacifier of the Maxson family,
relents, making a final comment, "Troy, don't nobody wanna be hearing all that stuff." Later, when Troy
weaves a story about encountering the devil, Rose buttons his long account with two simple words, "Troy
lying."
The one impractical activity Rose takes part in is playing numbers. She has dreams and hopes for the
future, like Lyons who also plays the numbers and wants to be successful in a difficult profession, jazz
music. In Act One, scene two, "Troy says to Rose, "You ain't doing nothing but throwing your money
away." And when Cory proposes that they buy a television in Act one, scene three, Troy makes an excuse
that they need to spend the money on a new roof. When it comes to other characters' impractical decisions,
Troy suddenly becomes a realist, selfishly reserving the right to dream for him only. This response comes
across hypocritically from a man who later, in the same scene, will refuse to admit Hank Aaron gets
enough playing time or when Cory proves a point about Sandy Koufax, Troy's futile response is, "I ain't
thinking of no Sandy Koufax," as if not thinking about him will make Koufax nonexistent.
Later, in Act Two, scene one, Troy admits his affair with Alberta to Rose, excusing his behavior by
expressing to Rose that spending time with Alberta allowed him to provide an illusion of accomplishment
and escape from responsibility. Troy says, "Then when I saw that gal...I got to thinking that if I tried...I just
might be able to steal second." Troy perceives his relationship with Alberta as a laudable move in a
baseball game, as a personal accomplishment. Rose sees Troy's lies and deception about the affair as
simple and straightforward self-absorbed betrayal. She says, "We're not talking about baseball! We're
talking about you going off to lay in bed with another woman...[w]e ain't talking about no baseball." In the
final scene, Rose copes with the death of Troy with her typically pragmatic view: "I do know he meant to
do more good than harm." Troy dies, swinging a baseball bat, still attached to unfulfilled dreams of his
past while Rose serves as peacemaker and practitioner of love with her family while they grapple with
Troy's confrontational legacy.
Motifs
Death and Baseball
In Act one, scene one, Troy Maxson declares, "Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner."
With this line, the former Negro League slugger merges his past experience as a ballplayer with his
philosophy. Troy, Bono, and Rose argue about the quality of the Major League Black ballplayer compared
to Troy when he was in his prime. A fastball on the outside corner was homerun material for Troy. Though
Troy feels beleaguered from work and deeply troubled by coming along too early to play in the Major
Leagues because they were still segregated when he was in top form, Troy believes he is unconquerable
and almost immortal when it comes to issues of life and death. Troy knows he overcame pneumonia ten
years ago, survived an abusive father and treacherous conditions in his adaptation to surviving in an urban
environment when he walked north to live in Pittsburgh, and jail. Baseball is what Troy is most proud of
and knows he conquered on his own. In this first scene of the play, Troy is afraid of nothing, values his
life, and feels in control. Troy's attitude toward death is proud and nonchalant. Troy says, "Ain't nothing
wrong with talking about death. That's part of life. Everybody gonna die. You gonna die, I'm gonna die.
Bono's gonna die. Hell, we all gonna die." He has not recently experienced a personal loss so great that it
humbles and weakens his spirit. In the same scene, Troy compares Death to an army that marched towards
him in July, 1941, when he had pneumonia. He describes Death as an army, an icy touch on the shoulder, a
grinning face. Troy claims he spoke to Death. Troy thinks he constantly has to be on guard against Death's
army. He claims he saw Death standing with a sickle in his hand, spoke to Death and wrestled Death for
three days and three nights. After the wrestling match, Troy saw Death put on a white robe with a hood on
it and leave to look for his sickle.
Troy admits, "Death ain't nothing to play with. And I know he's gonna get me," but he refuses to succumb
to Death easily. Troy follows the Bible quotation, "Be ever vigilant," in his attitude towards Death. In his
perception of Death, Troy mutates the form of Death many times, from fastball, to a sickle-carrying, devil-
like figure and finally composting the devil into a Ku Klux Klan member in his white hood ceremony
regalia. His image of Death being composed of a marching army or leading an army transforms into this
KKK leader image that has camp followers.
As the play progresses, Troy repeatedly merges his baseball metaphors with his Death rhetoric. In the last
lines of numerous scenes Troy speaks to Death out- loud, taunting Death to try to come after him and/or
warns Cory that his behavior is causing him to strike out. Cory makes three mistakes in Troy's eyes and
when he strikes out, Troy kicks him out of the house. Troy's death and baseball metaphors are inextricably
linked. Admitting that he was too old to play baseball when the Major Leagues integrated would kill Troy's
belief that he was directly cheated out of a special life that he deserved and earned. To Troy, it is enough of
an injury that the Major Leagues were segregated during his prime. He sees baseball as the best time of his
life, but also the death of his dreams and hopes. When Cory was born, Troy promised he would not allow
his son to experience the same disappointment he was subjected to in baseball. So, Troy equates Cory's
pursuit of a dream as strong as his father's as mistakes worthy of warning and punishment or "strikes" that
Troy believes will prevent Cory from reaching the same fate as Troy did.

Seeds and Growth

Characters in Fences literally and figuratively employ the motif of seeds, flowers, plants, and related
actions like growing, taking root, planting, and gestation—in both their language and actions. Like August
Wilson's mother whose name is Daisy, Rose has the name of a flower. Rose is a typical African American
1950's housewife and, as the caretaker of the family and home, she represents loving care and nurturing,
attributes also frequently used to grow plants. Like the characteristics of the flower after which she is
named, Rose is a beautiful soul who protects her family and protects herself when Troy hurts her. In Act
Two, scene, five, Rose demonstrates to Raynell that seeds take time to grow. Rose says, "You just have to
give it a chance. It'll grow." She exemplifies patience and generosity in her relationships with everyone in
the play. For instance when she sides with Cory on his decision to play football, her compassion and
concern for Gabriel when he is arrested and her acceptance of Raynell as her own child when Alberta dies.
When Troy complains in Act Two, scene one that he needs to escape to Alberta's bed because he feels as if
he has been in the same place for sixteen years, Rose replies, "I been standing with you! I been right here
with you, Troy." Rose is sedentary, like the flower, growing upward in the same spot. She relates her
decision to live life invested in her husband's life even though she knows he will never be as successful as
they once hoped. In Act Two, scene one Rose's description of her life is a metaphor of planting. She says,
"I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and
watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me no
eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom. But I held on to
you, Troy." Rose lessens the rocky and hard nature of Troy with her love and compassion, providing
shelter to her children from their father's destructive behavior and legacy. She has raised Cory lovingly and
teaches Raynell about loving, a hopeful future and forgiveness.
Blues
August Wilson says he uses the language and attitude of blues songs to inspire his plays and play
characters. The blues is a melancholy song created by Black people in the United States that tends to repeat
a twelve bar phrase of music and a 3-line stanza that repeats the first line in the second line. A blues song
usually contains several blue, or minor, notes in the melody and harmony.
Fences is structured somewhat like a blues song. The play all takes place in one place like a key of music
and the characters each have their own rhythm and melody that Wilson riffs off of around the common
locale. Characters repeat phrases, or pass phrases around, like a blues band with a line of melody. Similar
to the role of repeated lyrics and melody of a blues song, Wilson's characters display changes in their life
and a changed attitude toward life by repeating scenarios in which they act. For instance, Friday, Troy's
payday, is the setting of three scenes. By mirroring the situation in which events in the play take place, we
can observe the change that occurs from one instance to the next. For instance in Act One, Scene one, Troy
and Bono come home after payday as best friends worried about Troy's future. In Act One, Scene Four,
Troy and Bono celebrate after payday because Troy won his discrimination case, but Bono is more
concerned that Troy will ruin his life with his extramarital affair. Troy comes home after payday in Act
Two, Scene Four, estranged from Bono and his family. He drinks and sings to comfort himself. By now,
the good days of the play's first scene seem far-gone. This is a way playwrights manipulate the sense of
time in a play, but for Wilson in particular, the repeated events and language of the play are in keeping
what he calls a "blues aesthetic."
Wilson's plays are extensions of the history of blues in African American culture, and thus, in American
culture in general. Troy sings two blues songs, one, in Act Two, scene three, "Please Mr. Engineer let a
man ride the line," and in Act Two, scene four, "Hear it Ring! Hear it Ring!" Rose also sings a song in Act
One, scene two, "Jesus be a fence all around me every day." Wilson invented these lyrics but based them
on themes and symbols in African American traditional, spiritual, gospel, and blues songs. Rose's song is a
religious song so hers might have more roots in the gospel tradition. Troy's songs are truly from the blues
tradition. His song, "Hear it Ring Hear it Ring!" was passed on to him by his father and in the last scene of
the play, we witness Cory and Raynell singing the song together after Troy's death. The blues
in Fences connects generations together and keeps alive a family's roots and history beyond the grave.
Symbols
Trains
Troy brings his illegitimate baby, Raynell home for the first time at the beginning of the Act Two, Scene
Three of Fences. Troy sits with his motherless baby on a porch where he once reigned, but now is an
unwanted presence. Then, Troy sings the song, "Please Mr. Engineer, let a man ride the line," which
echoes the pleas of a man begging a train engineer to let him ride, in hiding, for free. Especially during the
Harlem Renaissance (the flourishing of African American artists, writers, poets, etc. in the first half of the
Twentieth Century) and during slavery times, respectively, trains were common literary devices in African
American literature and music. A character that rides a train or talks of trains, or even goes to a train
station came to represent change. Trains represent the coming or arrival of a major change in a character's
life.
In Fences, Troy identifies with the blues song about riding the train. By singing this particular song, Troy's
acknowledges that his actions caused the upheaval in the lives of his loved ones. Troy sings, "Please Mr.
Engineer let a man ride the line," but in other words he is crying out to his wife, Rose to let him back into
her home. Like the voice in the song, Troy is homeless and has nothing to offer the one he needs
something from in order to keep going. Especially with a baby in hand, Troy has no future without his
wife. In order to come back into her life, Troy knows he is asking Rose to give him a free ride of
forgiveness. If she does take him back, Troy knows life with her will never return to the life they once had
together because he lost her trust and respect when he committed adultery. The train song also connotes
the time Troy and many other men of his generation spent wandering North during the Great Migration.
He sings, "I ain't got no ticket, please let me ride the blinds," which represents the poverty the released
slaves and the failed sharecroppers experienced in Troy's father's generation. Troy sings the song to his
newborn daughter, passing on a song that tells an important story of her past and links that past to the
present. Troy's song exemplifies the tradition in African American history to make something from
nothing-like the song. Troy hopes his love for his daughter and her innocence will change Rose's heart and
allow Troy another chance at fatherhood and marriage.
Fences
August Wilson did not name his play, Fences, simply because the dramatic action depends strongly on the
building of a fence in the Maxson's backyard. Rather, the characters’ lives change around the fence-
building project which serves as both a literal and a figurative device, representing the relationships that
bond and break in the arena of the backyard. The fact that Rose wants the fence built adds meaning to her
character because she sees the fence as something positive and necessary. Bono observes that Rose wants
the fence built to hold in her loved ones. To Rose, a fence is a symbol of her love and her desire for a fence
indicates that Rose represents love and nurturing. Troy and Cory on the other hand think the fence is a drag
and reluctantly work on finishing Rose's project. Bono also observes that to some people, fences keep
people out and push people away. Bono indicates that Troy pushes Rose away from him by cheating on
her. Troy's lack of commitment to finishing the fence parallels his lack of commitment in his marriage.
The fence appears finished only in the final scene of the play, when Troy dies and the family reunites. The
wholeness of the fence comes to mean the strength of the Maxson family and ironically the strength of the
man who tore them apart, who also brings them together one more time, in death.
The Devil
Troy casts the Devil as the main character of his exaggerated stories that entertain, bewilder and frustrate
his family and friends. Eventually, Troy's association of the Devil as a harbinger of death comes to
represent his struggle to survive the trials of his life. Many scenes in the play end with Troy speaking a
soliloquy to Death and the Devil. In Act One, Scene One, Troy spins a long yarn, or tale about his fight for
several days with the Devil. The story of the Devil endears Troy to audiences early on by revealing his
capability to imagine and believe in the absurd. In another story, Troy turns a white salesman into a Devil.
Troy calls a man the Devil who tried to sell Troy furniture in exchange for monthly payments by mail.
Again, providing the pragmatic version of the story, Rose explains why Troy invents stories about the
Devil. "Anything you don't understand, you call the Devil." Troy observes door-to-door salesmen and the
process of layaway for the first time and in his ignorance, turns a modern occurrence into a mythical story.
Troy also describes the Devil's appearance as a man in a white hood. Wilson conjures the image of KKK
members in KKK regalia with this description. Troy imagines the Devil, not just as an airy spirit from hell
but also as a living human being. To Troy, the Devil sometimes symbolizes the aggression and cowardice
of bigotry. Troy's stories about the Devil show that Troy sees himself as a man winning a fight against
injustice and hatred. Troy's courage in overcoming racism is also suggested by Troy's complaint against
the Sanitation Department that eventually hires Troy as the first Black man to drive a trash truck. However,
as the play progresses and Troy loses the love of his family and inadvertently betrays his brother, Gabriel,
the less we believe in Troy's ability to win in his struggle to overcome the bad luck of his fate and the
demons he carries within that become even greater forces than the racism that curtailed his dream s.