Buy an essay on Summary and analysis of “Fences” by August Wilson

At the beginning of the play the audience is faced with the protagonist Troy and his friend Bono. On Fridays they usually gather to have a talk and drink. Troy and Rosa have a son Cory, who was selected for a college football team. Troy played for the Negro Leagues and never had a chance to be called up to the Major Leagues, because he got too old to play when the Major leagues started to accept black players. Later on when Cory and Troy are building a fence Cory tells his father that he has left his job in a local grocery store because of the football season. Cory begs his father to let him play, because a coach from North Carolina is coming to see his play. But in spite of the son’s burning desire to become a professional player a father refuses and expects him to come back to his job. Troy likes baseball and considers it to be the best time of his life, but at the same time he does not want his son to experience the same disappointment. As the play progresses we see Troy gained a suit at law and was appointed as the first colored garbage truck driver in the city. As in the first scene Bono and Troy met and recall their childhood, fathers and their migration from the south to the north, when infuriated Cory comes back home after he has found out that his father has met a coach and told him that Cory may not play football anymore. A father calls his son’s insubordination a “strike one” against him. Bono and Troy continue working on the fence and Troy elucidated that Rose wants the fence because she loves her family and has a wish to keep them closer. Troy tells Bono that he has an affair with Alberta. Bono promises Troy that if he finishes the fence for Rose, he in his turn will buy a refrigerator to his wife, Lucille because he has been promising to do that for a long time. Troy confides his romance to rose. Rose blames him on taking but not giving. After Troy has grabbed Rose’s arm, Cory steps for his mother. Men fight and Troy wins. After the accident Troy pointed “strike two” on Cory. Six month later, Troy prepares to visit Alberta in the hospital. She gives a birth to a baby girl but dies during childbirth. Troy challenges Death to come and take him after he ends to build the fence. Rose accepts a child called Raynell as her own: “You can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child”, but refuses to remain dutiful wife any more. Troy and Cory fall out with each other again, Cory reminds his father about abominable actions towards his mother. Then Troy asks his son to leave the house and provide himself. They could not get along with each other and Cory leaves his father’s house forever. Mocking at Death, Troy swings a baseball bat in the air. Eight years later Troy dies from hart attack and Cory returns home to his funeral. At first Cory refuses to give the last glories to his father, but Rose says that not attending his father’s funeral does not make him a man. Later Cory and Raynell sing a blue song of Troy’s father’s. Suddenly Gabriel appears and tries to play the trumpet. But unfortunately the trumpet does not play, that fact disappoints him. He cries and the Heavens open wide. He says, “That’s the way that goes,” and the play ends.
In this play Wilson reveals several important themes deserving meticulous attention. The theme of maturity in the light of hurt black manhood runs through the entire play. Both Troy and Bono narrate stories which provide a context to emphasize the generation gap.

buy an essay

Troy recalls his father, who was rude and evil and made him left home early enough. However, Troy respected and inherited his father’s sense of responsibility, because he took care of eleven children. Bono describes a different type of father who he never provided his family and like many other Afro-Americans was forced to start “searching out The New Land”. Lyons and Cory were brought up in different ways, but their development into men resembles their fathers’ experience. Heroes come into a conflict because they look differently on the past and have no similar opinions about their future. Growing in maturity for Cory means leaving home in a violent conflict and become a provider for himself.
Motif of Death passes through the play with stories Troy tells about his struggle with the Death. Despite his pragmatism in many situations, here Troy is a dreamer, he creates illusions: “Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner”. Rose tries to bring her husband back to reality. Troy and Rose manage distressed events and frustration of their intertwined lives in different ways and both feel as if they have been stuck in the same place since the beginning of their relationships eighteen years ago. Though Troy is disappointed that he had no chance to play in the united Major Leagues, he fells almost unconquerable and immortal concerning to life and death issues. He overcame pneumonia, survived under his father abuse, adapted himself in severe conditions of migration, faced jail and after those ordeals is afraid of nothing and keeps everything under his tight control. Troy says, “Ain’t nothing wrong with talking about death. That’s part of life. Everybody gonna die. You gonna die, I’m gonna die. Bono’s gonna die. Hell, we all gonna die” emphasizing his nonchalant attitude toward death. He claims he spoke with the Death and is ready to be on the watch against the Death army.
The play is filled with symbols, which help us to reveal deeper meaning if it. By means of language and deeds all heroes of Wilson’s play literally and figuratively embody the theme of seeds, flowers, plants, and related actions like growing, taking root, planting, and maturing. It is no accidental that Troy’s wife is called Rose. She is a loving person, taking care of her family and trying to surround it with warmth. In her words to Raynell she emphasizes that seeds need time to germinate: “You just have to give it a chance. It’ll grow.”
Wilson calls his play Fences not because his characters build up a fence. For Rose to have a fence means to keep people she values together. Bono, however, says that “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.” He notices that Troy pushes Rose away of him when he deceives her. The fence is finished only in the last scene of a play when Troy dies and the family unites again. The wholeness of the fence signifies the family’s strength and the strength of a man who once broke the relations but united them after his death.