In August Wilson's play Fences, the author skillfully utilizes the literary technique of metaphor to develop the characterization of Troy Maxson. The metaphor of baseball serves as a recurring motif that illuminates Troy's personality, struggles, and ambitions. Throughout the play, Troy compares various aspects of life to the game of baseball, drawing parallels between his experiences and the sport he loves. For instance, when reflecting on his past and the racism he faced, Troy states, "I was standing on first base waiting for the next man to hit me home" (Wilson 16). This metaphorical comparison portrays Troy as a man constantly striving for advancement and seeking opportunities to overcome the barriers he encounters.
August Wilson’s play Fences was written in 1983. Fences is the sixth play in Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle. Pittsburgh is important because it represents a better life for blacks; it provides them with jobs and helped them to escape the poverty and racism of the south after the civil war. It represents promises and promises that were broken. I feel like Fences represents the struggles Troy and his family faced because of their complexion and their constant disappointments as black people.
In the play Fences, Wilsons (1986) mentions baseball a significant amount. The sport is a huge part of main character Troy Maxson’s life. He uses the sport to relate to the world around him. To help him understand what things mean, and what is the best way to interpret them. Troy never makes it big in the major league as he always hopes.
In 1985 American playwright August Wilson wrote and produced a play by the name of Fences which was later adapted into a movie in 2016. The play is about the Maxon family living in 1950s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania struggling to make ends meet. It explores the aspects of family and what makes a father a good father to his family. The author of this play uses multiple formal elements throughout the play such as language, structure, and style to tell an emotionally impactful story about the struggles of a family trying to overcome the racial barriers of society and their struggle to come together. One formal element Wilson uses to contribute to the play’s aesthetic and emotional impact is the use of flashbacks and motifs.
The hardships that people face, coming from racial and gender injustice, can sometimes affect not just those directly concerned, but their families as well. These injustices, such as the treatment to Troy in Fences during his younger years, change the ways he acts to his sons and the rest of the characters and is the source of much of the conflict they face. Many of the conflicts in the play arise because the characters disagree with the way they see the past and what they want to do in their respective futures. For example, Troy and Cory see Cory's future differently because of the ways they have been treated in their pasts.
) The name “Rose” is symbolic in showing how Rose continues to love Troy. Rose, like the flower, is continuously caring and loving. For example, when Troy broke the news to Rose about the affair and child he is having.
Everyone makes mistakes and deserves a second chance, except those that never learn from their mistakes constantly repeating the same mistakes. In the play, “Fences” by August Wilson, the main character Troy Maxson grew up in a harsh environment full of racism and with no family. All these factors contributed to Troy’s personality, which is full of resentment for the world around him. Later in his life, he meets Rose, who shines a light onto Troy’s dark path and guides him to a new life. Troy and Rose get married and have a son named Cory.
Bernadin 1 Patricia Bernadin Mrs. Noel English II 4 April 2017 Literary Analysis: Fences A Fathers Sins The notion of loyalty is something that is valued in a family trying to survive a stressful life. Fences is a play written by August Wilson about an African American Family having a hard time with a man due to his refusal of acceptance and loyalty.
Around the early 1900s, racism was prominent and wasn't sugarcoated either. African Americans had to deal with many obstacles around this period because of the discrimination involed in their lives. These actions effected many African Americans because it forced some of them to hate the world and limit many of their opportunities in life. Racism is sad reality in our nation that affects all types of people and it continues to shake and alter lives. People use racism as a sort of way to detect the differences with their peers and spike bias towards a group of people.
The obsession with dominance over others is a negative trait with terrible consequences. Troy Maxson, a father of two children and a friend of few, goes through his life, compulsed to assert his superiority over the people he knows. This leads to a downward trend with negative repercussions and eventually strips him of everything he ever loved. In Fences by August Wilson, Troy Maxson’s desire to be dominant with his two sons and his friend, Bono causes his life to be arduous, pushes his family away and creates a lack of sympathy. One method Troy employs to be dominant is by making people indebted to him.
Most titles are significant to the story it is portraying. This is the case in the play Fences by August Wilson. The title of this play has both a symbolic and literal interpretation to the play. The character that shows this interpretation the most is Troy. Other minor characters show this interpretation also.
Fences by August Wilson is truly a phenomenal and well written play about the hard times for African Americans and the struggles between a family. Throughout the play Troy, the protagonist, is building a fence under the wish of his wife, Rose. Troy doesn't understand why she wants him to build the fence but his friend Bono does. The fence symbolizes many things in life like love, separation, and protection. Bono describes this as “Some people build fences to keep people out… and other people build fences to keep people in.
The thickness of the fog consumed the sun’s beams of light leaving nothingness in it’s path. There was a cloak of gray and darkness lying gently over the barren meadow. The barren meadow was silent, the atmosphere would cause a normal human brain to become nebulous and cold. There was no movement or sound, other than the shrikes of a striking, young fawn letting out her final breaths on a deathbed made of dead flowers, brown grass and sharp rocks. The only two living creatures in the barren meadow were a slender, pale, man dressed in all black and a elementary school age girl, with blonde gleaming hair and bright warm brown eyes in a plain white sundress.
Fences is a play written by the playwright August Wilson, who dedicated himself to writing plays capturing what it was like to be an African American in the United States during every decade of the 20th century. Fences was a play that was specifically written to provide an outlook into the lives of African Americans in America during the 1950s, during the process of demarginalization. Each character of the novel provides a unique perspective to capture different aspects of the “African American Experience” during this time period. In Fences, it was very important to August Wilson to truly capture “The African American Experience” and he was able to do so through the portrayal of the Maxson family, with his representation of African Americans during the 1950s in Fences, and with the multiple perspectives of African Americans captured
In August Wilson’s playwright Fences, the narrator portrays racism in a social system, in the workplace, and in sports, which ultimately affects Troy’s aspirations. Troy Maxson is constantly facing the racism that is engraved into the rules of racial hierarchy –– fair and unfair, spoken and unspoken. Troy suffers many years of racism when he plays in the Negro major Baseball League; therefore he decides to protect Cory from ever experiencing those blockades in his drive for success. In the end, although Troy is always driving to obtain agency, Troy always succumbs to the rules of racism because those racist ideologies are too hard to overcome. Throughout the play, Troy is perpetually confronting the racist social system that displays unspoken
