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August Wilson Troy Character Traits

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Troy Maxson is an African American man who has a wife and three kids who is raising a family in the middle of 1957. Being an African American during the 1957’s was hard due to the racism and the judgement. Troy wants to be closer to his family but never does due to his arrogant and aggressive ways. In a way, Troy was like a baby bird. He was pushed out of his nest young and lived through many struggles. As a father he doesn't want his kids to be pushed out of the nest like he was so he protects them and even though it's the opposite of what his kids want. August Wilson characterizes Troy as a serious straight edge guy. Troy only provides for his family and doesn't give much in return. He seems to only be there as there father because it's …show more content…

Troy is only in his house with his family because he has too. Troy is also characterized as aggressive and can lose his temper quick. With the stress of keeping his family up and running and taking care of work and building a fence for his wife he gets overwhelmed a lot. Even with this stress there is deep down a little compassion for his family. Troy resorts to drinking a lot of the time with all of the stress. In page 88 Cory and Troy are having a disagreement and Cory is using a bat for defense. The quote from the narrator shows Troy drunk: “Cory and Troy struggle over the bat. The struggle is fierce and fully engaged. Troy ultimately is the stronger, and takes the bat from Cory and stands over him ready to swing. He stops himself.”. Even though Troy was very mad at Cory and wanted to hurt him, he stops himself not wanting to hurt his son like his Troy’s dad hurt …show more content…

Troy is characterized as a tragic hero because he is destined to fail, has basic human flaws and has an overwhelming amount of pride. Troy with his aggressiveness and being a very arrogant man he is destined to flail. Troy cheats on his wife Rose with a woman name Alberta and has a child. This adds fuel to the fire that has been burning between Rose and Troy. He also went behind Cory’s back telling his coach to stop him from playing football. All of these things is making his family slowly fall apart making him destined to fail. Troy also has basic human flaws such as aggression and stress from taking care of his family and building the fence. Troy also has a overwhelming amount of pride. For example, on page 45 Bono criticizes Troy for being promoted to a driver but how he doesn't even have a driver's licence Troy replies: “Driving ain't nothing. All you do is point the truck where you want it to go. Driving ain't

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Social Group: Fathers During this time period, fathers were the “breadwinners” and expected to work and provide for their families. However, black fathers in the 1950’s particular had to work long hours because the only jobs available to them were often low paying. This directly correlates with African-American’s low place on the social ladder during this pre-Civil Rights era. It was also extremely difficult for African-American women to find work during this time, placing the financial buren solely on the father.

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895 Words | 4 Pages

70) Troy’s only way of really expressing himself is through baseball as a metaphor in order to try and explain what is on his mind. Baseball is his way of expressing what's on his mind, but the people around him do not understand what he is trying to say. This causes there to be a lack of understanding and communication and it leads to Troy damaging connections with the people around

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914 Words | 4 Pages

Troy’s life is a symbol of the game of baseball, with starts, stops, and lost opportunities. He may not have been able to control his life through the days of the Jim Crow laws and couldn’t get into the major leagues, but baseball still followed him throughout his life. Baseball harmed his relationship with his family throughout his life. He missed many opportunities to fix what his mistakes in his life, but never realized he had a chance to fix them. He made so many mistakes that they probably won’t ever be able to forget.

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508 Words | 3 Pages

Often people build walls in order to protect themselves from getting hurt, but in Troy’s case, he builds fences. An individual usually builds a fence in order to keep people out. A landowner will build a fence to keep his/her neighbors from seeing and

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1528 Words | 7 Pages

Although Troy wants nothing to do with his father, that was the only figure that he looked up to and in some ways has shaped him. Due to his upbringing, Troy feels that the only good a man can do is work and support his family, just like his father taught him before leaving him to fend for himself. With this, Troy expects that Cory needs to do the same and to leave football alone. Nevertheless, as a result of Troy's behavior, Cory is being pushed away, forcing him to carry out Troy's childhood trauma. It is assumed that Troy is having an affair with a young woman named Alberta throughout the play.

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527 Words | 3 Pages

There is no understanding in why Troy would go behind the one woman who stayed with him after all he have

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1174 Words | 5 Pages

Yet in the end, his son's demand for safety causes their relationship to crumble. For

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1222 Words | 5 Pages

Troy chose to escape his reality by having an affair that gives him some laughs and good time every now and then. However, despite the flaws in Troy’s character, he was a providing family man who wants to insure a better life of his sons than the one he had. Based on the play’s time period, which took place at the 50’s, apparently the main problem of Troy Maxson’s character was racism against African Americans at the time that had prevented him from achieving his dreams. Throughout the play, Troy expresses his dissatisfaction in several scenes with the other characters.

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1775 Words | 8 Pages

Dark Girls, Dear White People and The Black Power Mixtape all share similarities and have similar messages just portrayed in a different ways, from different point of views, from ones anguish to another’s very own. Dark Girls is from many different African American women point as it relates to colorism, whereas Dear White People is told from the perspective of many African American college student as they make an attempt to escalate racial tension throughout campus, and lastly The Black Power Mixtape is told from behind the lens of a group of Swedish journalist covering The Black Power Movement in the United States. Dark Girls focuses on black women and their experience in the real world, how they get through each day without completely losing it. Colorism is something that is proliferated in the African American community and white in the upper bracket in society, of a larger caliber. In the film there was powerful moment when Dr. Cheryl Grills, President of The National Association of Black Psychologists said "Beauty is just a small piece of a much bigger animal.

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883 Words | 4 Pages

It additionallyconveys the emotional barrier that Troy puts between them. Furthermore, Troy ruins his marriageby cheating on his wife, Rose, by having an affair with another woman named Alberta. Howeverunlike Rose, who strives to build a fence around her family, Troy attempts to evade capture in thefence. He doesn't have the capacity to understand that Rose wants to keep the family close becausehe never truly had a close family. As a result, Troy ends up driving everybody away just like hisfather.

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884 Words | 4 Pages

Troy wants to control his family. When the Scene 1 Troy’s elder son Lyon’s has come to borrow some money as a loan, but troy criticizes him badly, but his sons rememorized him that in his childhood, his father is not there to complete his needs in his youth now he is too old. He wants him to get a good job, but Lyon’s think that nothing wrong with his music and he doesn’t want to get any jobs. ‘’ Troy offers Lyon’s sound advice, but Lyon response reminds Troy and witnessing the exchange that, as Lyons said ‘’ You and I are two different people, Pop,’ and that Troy’s prescription about life and work are a ‘’day late and the dollar short’ (119)(Wilson 19).

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702 Words | 3 Pages

The play describes the life of Troy Maxson a middle age Africa-American man who was raising his family in time of racism. Troy is married to Rose and the father of three children. Troy has two sons Lyons and Cory, and a daughter named Raynell. August Wilson describes the life of Troy as someone who feels he is being oppressed and how different the culture was when his was a child growing up compared to his children’s lives.

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1010 Words | 5 Pages

He has a softer tone in the dialogue with Rose which shows that he does care about Cory. He is tough on Cory because he doesn’t want his son to experience the same things as he, as a black male in the mid-century, endured. He believes that a sturdy hand will lead his son in the right direction and prepare him for a harsh world. Troy tells Rose, “He’s got to make his own way. I made mine.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

Troy is controlling and often verbally abusive to his family members because he lacks a sense of control in other areas of his life, he is unable to achieve his dream of becoming a pro-baseball player or advance in his career and this makes him feel inadequate. Troy’s wife Rose represents a stereotypical mother and dutiful wife role. Rose has two disadvantages in her life because she is not only African American, she is also a woman and in some ways she is the wife you would expect during the 1950s era. Rose however, is not weak minded because she recognizes how times have changed and this what makes Troy and Rose so drastically different throughout the play. Their contrasting ideologies represent two different aspects of the “African American Experience” by showing a major question many African Americans faced during the 1950s and that is: “are times really changing?.”

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1457 Words | 6 Pages

In the epigraph, August Wilson states that we do not always have to act out the sins of our fathers and that it 's possible to banish them with forgiveness. While Troy may not have forgiven his father, after he marries Rose, he doesn 't act on the sins of his father. Troy 's father didn 't teach Troy any positive traits directly, instead Troy adopted them in order to differentiate himself from his father and to live a better life. Troy learned the value of hard work from his father and all the time he spent working on the farm when he was younger and he lives by that trait. He takes care of his family because he knows it 's the responsible thing to do no matter what.

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