Metaphors In Fences By Thomson

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. He believes it was because he is black, and the white man never gives black men a chance at anything great. Regardless, he holds that against others whenever he references something in life to baseball. Troy never accepts the fact that he is no longer athletic, instead, he just complains to others that he should play. Alongside Troy’s inability to accept the truth, he tries to relate baseball back to life lessons

He proclaimed, “Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner” (p.10). A daring and symbolic metaphor, baseball often occurs throughout the play, as well as many other different metaphors. Maxson, the main character, a former convict, who works as a garbage man with his best friend Bono. He is also an ex-baseball player who could have gone pro if he was not in jail for 15 years, which he always holds a grudge against. The head of the Maxson family lives with his wife Rose, who Wilson writes as a typical Southern Baptist woman and has two sons from two different women. Troy believes in the firm foundation that one must work hard in order to get somewhere in life. When his second eldest son Cory comes to his father about a potential scholarship offer to play D1 football, Troy immediately turns down the boy and goes on a lecture about how the white man will never give the black man a chance. Troy repeats to his son over and over that if he wants to make a living from himself, he should forget about this dream of football, and find himself a job. Cory does not obey this rule, so Troy takes matters into his own hands and pulls Cory’s recruiting papers and his one chance to possibly make a name for himself with a future in football. In the second act, Troy and Cory continue to resent each other, and Cory attempts to actually confront his father by saying that he is an old man who

He tries to cope with that misery by relating his life back to baseball in order to make him happy. Troy eased the pain in life with baseball and convinced himself that he could still compete against the current major leaguers, even though he was fifty three years old (Wilson, 1986). Because he never makes it to the major league, Troy reminds other characters often about how athletically talented he is. However, he does not acknowledge his own old age and can not comprehend he is no longer good enough. Wilson (1986) wrote many motifs on the American Dream in Fences; Troy’s failed American dream of baseball repeated constantly throughout the play. Since Troy never makes it big in the league as he hopes, his dream fails. Now, as he works as a garbage man, and looks after his kids, the thought of baseball and the glory days allows him to forget his sorrowful life. Troy used the metaphor of baseball to show how he turned his life around when he declared, “Couldn’t nothing touch me. I wasn’t gonna strike out no more. I wasn’t going back to the penitentiary. I wasn’t gonna lay in the streets with a bottle of wine. I was safe” (Wilson, 1986, p.70). Baseball is very important in Maxson’s life, he misses out on his dream of playing because he ends up in jail. He now uses the sport as a reference to show how he has changed, and how he will never go back to his old life. Not only does he use this sport as a