When Bono finds out about his affair with Alberta, he tries to convince Troy to stop before it is too late. Bono views the fences as a symbol of Rose’s mother like and wife like qualities. Bono states, “Some people build fences to keep people out and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you" (Wilson 79) .
In act one scene 4, Cory is conversing with his father, Troy. Cory talks about why his father took him off the football team. His father addresses what make made make this choice. The reason why Troy he took him off the team because Troy discovers that Cory was never working at the A&P and Troy learns that his son been lying to him. Cory said to Troy, "(Bono starts to exit as Cory enters the yard, dressed in his football uniform.
Despite the challenges she faces as Troy's wife and the strains in their relationship, Rose draws strength from her own past experiences. Reflecting on her difficult upbringing, Rose reveals her resilience and the wisdom she gained from her past. She states, "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". Rose's past struggles inform her decision to find strength within herself and create a better life for herself and her family.
At the start of the second act, Troy is in a heated argument with Rose after he reveals his hidden affair with Alberta. He resorts to his old ways of violence by “hurting [Rose]” (71), to which Cory responds in his own way. Cory “comes up behind Troy and grabs him” (72), which seems to be Cory responding to violence with violence. This would mirror what happened to Troy and his father and would signal the generational trauma truly being passed down. But, while they are fighting each other, the reasons behind them so fiercely defending certain people are completely different.
Throughout the play, Troy would threaten Cory with strikes like in baseball and say a big punishment would await Cory when three strikes were hit. This was a way to control and manipulate Cory. When Cory and Troy got into an argument, Troy became exactly like his father by hitting Cory and threatening him. Cory counteracts by saying every time he heard his father's footsteps and name, he would tremble, and Rose was scared of him too. Troy says Cory can't live there anymore, and now Cory is in his father's position from many years ago.
His relationship with Bono shows this clearly. For it always appears as though Bono only listens and comments in their conversations. It is rare that he brings up a new topic, and when he does Troy is sure to make it go in a direction he wants it to. Rose has to be the worst victim of Troy’s selfishness because Troy never even considers her feelings or how he might hurt her. He also ignores the responsibility he owes her in being her husband, all because he wanted to indulge himself with another women.
In Fences, by August Wilson, Troy’s selfishness makes him a tragic hero because it causes him to make decisions that hurt not only himself but ultimately the people who he loves most. Troy’s inner selfishness is the sole reason for his affair with Alberta, and it is what eventually triggers the split in his family. When trying to stop the metaphorical bleeding caused by his affair, Troy characterizes himself with Rose as “we”, to which Rose responds with, “All of a sudden it’s ‘we.’ Where was ‘we’ at when you was down there rolling around with some godforsaken woman?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Since 2005, the year Birmingham was claimed to be the ‘murder capital’ of the United States, over 889 homicides have occurred (DeSilver). Birmingham this year alone, is estimated for 47.5 homicides per 100,000 residents, more homicides than what granted them the ‘murder capital’ of the United States in 2005 (BHAM Wiki). Most, if not all, of these homicides are whitewashed as rapes, drugs, guns, robberies, and domestic violence, as the cause, but the question is what lead up for these homicides to happen? What happened that caused Birmingham to go from a record with low amount of homicides in 2014 to a 26% increase, placing it in the FBI’s most homicidal cities in 2015 & 2016? Birmingham is embedded with strain and tension built up over years of history, which derives from economic inequality and fractured race
Brother, Gabriel. He shows the father and son complex in the relationship between Troy and Troy’s son, Cory. And finally he shows true friendship in the relationship between Troy and Troy’s best friend, Bono. Wilson masterfully crafts the novel to show many different types of relationships in a short three acts.
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.
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?.”
