Fences Act 2 Summary

The play is set in 1957 with two friends, Troy and Bono, talking in the yard. Troy and Bono have been friends for over thirty years. They both work as garbage men picking up trash, while the white folks get to drive the truck. Rose and Roy are husband and wife and the fence is first mentioned in scene two when Troy asks where Cory is and Rose says that he went out. In this play, Troy is the protagonist because he is the leading character throughout this play. In the beginning of the play it says that Troy is in his fifties and that he is a garbage man. He decides to build fences with help from the people in his life whom he loves and cares a lot about. His son, Cory, enjoys playing football and ended up receiving a football scholarship

He even stops talking to his best friend Bono. He also cheats on his wife and ends up putting his brother, Gabriel, in a mental hospital so he can collect his government check. It eventually all catches up to him and he ends up dying. Throughout the play, the reader thinks that the title refers to building literal fences in the yard, but in the final act, Act II, it is discovered that Troy is building literal and figurative fences in order to keep Death, or the Grim Reaper, away. In Act 1, Scene 1, Troy talks about how he met Death and wrestled with him for three days (page 1246-1247). His building of fences can be explained as an allegory. An allegory is defined as a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another. The fences that Troy wanted to build could also symbolize a wall or a barricade that he wanted to put up between himself and everyone who loved him or cared for him. I’m sure that after Troy cheated on his wife she would also want to create a barrier or build a fence in order to protect herself. 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