August Wilson Quotes

In Fences by August Wilson, the protagonist Troy has a rough adolescence and attempts to do more for his children by not being similar to his father, but with fate the inevitable occurs. Growing up Troy felt that his father did not care about him and was selfish, for example when Tory recounts his childhood to Bono, he says “sometimes I wish I hadn’t known my daddy. He ain’t cared nothing about no kids.When it come time for eating...he ate first. If there was anything left over, that’s what you got” (Wilson, Fences). With this quote the author goes to show how selfish and inconsiderate Troy felt his father was, as well as, the reader can observe the hatred Troy has for his father. The same way Troy’s father was mentally absent for Troy’s childhood,

Throughout majority of the book, Troy was married to his wife Rose (18 years). At the beginning of the book Troy expresses how much he loves Rose and says “See this woman, Bono? I love this woman. I love this woman so much it hurts. I love her so much...I done run out of ways of loving her” (Wilson, Fences). So the reader can tell that Troy truly is invested in his marriage and Rose. However,even though he tried, Troy slipped into being just like his father, to enumerate, by the end of the play Rose had to tell him“From right now...this child got a mother. But you a womanless man” (Wilson, Fences). Which goes to show, the evilness of cheating broke up Troy and Rose. A similar situation occurred in Troy’s father’s life, according to the play “My mama couldn’t stand him. Couldn’t stand that evilness. She run off when I was about eight...All his women run off and left him” (Wilson, Fences). So, by the end of the book both Troy and his Father were sadly partnerless.According to Toni Arnold, “Troy struggles with how similar he is to his father, and the ways in which he tries to be different. Troy refuses to be like many of the men of his father’s generation who were “searching out the New Land …woman to woman” with a bad case of the “walking blues”(Arnold,Struggle). Though Troy excruciatingly tried to avoid being like his father,fate had its way and he died

Once the prophet Teiresias began helping Creon, Oedipus accused him of being untruthful. The last prophecy Teiresias gives is that “He will be blind, although he now can see.550 He will be a poor, although he now is rich. He will set off for a foreign country,groping the ground before him with a stick”(Sophocles, Oedipus). Unbenoiscent to Oedipus, this prophecy was towards him, thus it was inevitable. After finding out that Oedipus was her son, Jocasta, Oedipus's wife hangs herself. After finding his mother, Oedipus blinds himself and begs to be banished, which he is. Thus the prophecy became fulfilled. According to litcharts.com, “Oedipus, a man of action, describes blindness as an inability to see. Tiresias, the seer, describes it as an inability to see the truth. In calling Tiresias a false prophet, Oedipus shows his willingness to fight against any prophecy he disagrees with” (Study Guide). So even towards the end of the play, Oedipus still refuses to live according to his fate, and thus fights it any chance that he