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Fences By August Willson Character Analysis

706 Words3 Pages

In the story, Fences, by August Willson, we learn about an unhappy and unlawful couple. They go through many struggles. Rose has to stay by her husband through some pretty bad things. She keeps her guard up and pursues through. Her confidence and independence is inspiring. She proves that she is a strong woman and doesn’t need Troy. Rose unhappily dealing with Troy in marriage and his disloyalty reveals that sacrifice comes with marriage. Rose and Troy’s marriage has been very rocky. They have been married for 18 years and they never really got along. Troy is terrible for Rose and holds her back in life and mentally. Troy has also been very disloyal to Rose behind her back. Rose and Troy get into an argument about Troy's disloyalty. …show more content…

After finding out about the baby that he is having with another woman she is furious. Then during the birth the mother dies and heis left to take care of the baby. He learns that he is not a fit father. Rose sees him in this situation and says “I’ll take care of your baby for you…cause…like you say…she’s innocent…and you can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child. A motherless child has got a hard time…From right now…this child got a mother. But you a womanless man”(79) Rose takes charge of the situation and takes the baby from Troy. She knows that she can take better care of it. The baby is “innocent” in this and doesn’t deserve to be poorly raised. She makes sure that he still knows that he is a “womanless man” and she will never go back. Before the baby she gets fed up with his cheating and not coming home. It is hurting her and the relationship. She says “Troy I can’t live like this. I won’t live like this. You livin’ on borrowed time with me. It’s been going on six months you ain’t been coming home”(74) She is sick of all the “borrowed time” between them. She needs to be independent and not have to deal with his unloyal ways in the relationship. Both of these quotes prove to us why Rose left and her sacrifice during all of this. She sacrificed happiness and freedom in life during this

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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.

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Don’t you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me” (70). Rose, rightly so, is enraged when Troy defends his actions by saying he has been stuck his whole life with her, when she has gone through the same thing. The only difference, however, is that Rose stays loyal to her family even when things are not going great, while on the other hand Troy looks out for himself for his own benefit, at the expense of his family.

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Every time Troy stubbornly ignores Rose, patronizes Cory or takes Bono’s friendship for granted, Rose sees it but chooses to ignore it. This is similar to Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” where Linda chooses to skip the confrontation and let Willy continue with his suicidal thoughts. But, Rose's purposeful ignorance also protects her from a “succession of abusive men and babies,” during the 1950s there weren't many ways a woman could make a living on her own. So, even though it's unfortunate that Troy cheated on her, her turning a blind eye indirectly protected her from worse. Not only that

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Even though Rose is a great wife to Troy, he still is so discontent with his life that he cheats on her. Troy tells Rose on page 69, "It ain't about nobody being a better woman or nothing. Rose, you ain't the blame. A man couldn't ask for no woman to be a better wife than you've been" (Wilson, 1986). This shows that Troy was fortunate enough to have Rose as his wife, but he was so unhappy with his life he found someone else to be with and love.

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This meant that she didn't have to go through the stress and hassle of finding a new job if she left him, and she could focus on taking care of their son Cory and Tory’s daughter Raynell. Rose's decision not to leave was undeniably the best financial decision on her part. Throughout many instances in the play, Troy is seen giving Rose a large percentage of his paycheck as well as borrowing his son Lyons money from time to time. Evidence of this in the play is in, Act 1 Scene 1 when Troy states to his son Lyons, “What the hell you looking at me for? I ain’t got no ten dollars.

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“Fences,” by August Wilson is set during an era of extreme racism. In the play there are many underlying messages about certain family dynamics and the idea of true success in careers for African Americans. Growing up Troy Maxson loved baseball and definitely had the skill set to play it professionally. Due to his race he was not accepted to play professionally despite his great talent. This denial leads him to grow bitter and strains relationships in his life later on.

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She did everything in every single way to become what her husband needed, she was loyal to Troy and stayed with him for eighteen years. Eighteen years of making sacrifices, sacrificing herself into making her surrounding better for her family and her husband. She really would try to be everything what her husband needed, as she put it, “I done tried to be everything a wife should be. Everything a wife could be.” She was expected to take care of her family, she minitrated the finances in the house, she was suppose to help her husband out that was her job not another woman's job, Rose is Troy’s wife.

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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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August Wilson faces a lot of difficulties in his life. He begins writing Fences in the twentieth century, and he portrays the African American experience between the 1900s to 2000 (Wilson 11). In Fence August Wilson tells the story of a father, Troy Maxson’s lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Troy was a very talented baseball perspective with hopes to play in the major leagues. Maxson’s had the bad luck of having to grow up when racism was the biggest part of America.

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Troy cheats on his extremely faithful wife with a younger woman and has a baby with her. Wilson seems to set the scene with Rose, Troy’s wife. Even through trials and tribulation with Troy, Rose stays with him. Wilson sets up Rose as almost the model wife of the time period. She is faithful, always has dinner ready, and is available for Troy’s nighttime pleasures when ever he pleases.

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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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