Data+Sheet-+Fences


 * Title:** Fences
 * Author:** August Wilson
 * Date of Publication (First Performance):** 26 March 1987
 * Literary Period:** Post-Modernism
 * Genre:** Social Commentary

The play takes place in Pittsburgh in the years 1957 and 1965. Most scenes occur in front of the Maxson household, a small house in a poor black neighborhood, with the exception being the final one in 1965, which occurs at Troy's funeral. This home is where the Maxson family interacts and where each major dialogue takes place. The poverty demonstrated in the small building is a key theme in Fences, in which the class where the Maxson family is "stuck" causes a great sum of frustration for Troy, the principal character of the play. This frustration leads to many short-sighted decisions, including his choice to escape through cheating on his wife, Rose, ultimately leading to his downfall as he dies with broken relationships.
 * Describe the setting and then explain the relevance of the setting.**

Temporary Escapes Lead to Permanent Consequences- Troy, feeling as though he is unable to progress in life through his frustration from the ability to receive a decent income, chooses to cheat on his wife with Alberta. When Rose finds out, every relationship Troy has with his family and Bono crumbles, and he discovers that despite his feeling of the lack of achievement in his life, he still has value in his family bonds once he loses them.
 * Themes (These statements should be complete sentences and completely developed ideas)**

Abuse is a Cycle- Much of Troy's beliefs throughout the play (that he doesn't need to like his son, that Cory should move on and get his own house) stem from the treatment he receives from his father at a young age. The abuse from his father leads him to move out of his house at age 14, and he believes that it should be the standard to develop independence at a young age as a result. Cory's joining of the Marines is a direct repetition of the process Troy experiences in his childhood.

The play features a central character, Troy, and his interactions and conflicts with his family and his friend, Bono, under the oppression of a society which does not allow him to fully exercise his potential in baseball and earn a livable wage. Near the beginning of the play, Bono is suspicious of Troy's interactions with a girl named Alberta, and Troy constantly lies to his wife about where he is. A conflict escalates with Cory as Troy wants Cory as he wants him to quit football to be able to spend more time working, but Cory continues to play football despite what his father tells him. In a talk with Bono, Troy details his past and abusive father. Troy reveals that when he is a child, he is forced to leave the house at age 14 after his father beats him and rapes his 13 year old girlfriend.
 * Plot Summary (Please do not copy and paste. Simply list the high points of the novel) - Consider creating a visual flow chart or graph and posting it here. (Beginning, Middle, End)**

The play escalates when Troy tells Bono that he has been cheating on Rose with Alberta, and that Alberta is about to have a baby. Troy shares this with his wife as well, and Gabriel is institutionalized when Troy signs a paper allowing a mental hospital to take him in. Alberta has a baby but passes away, and Cory loses respect with his father, gets in a fight with him, and leaves the house to join the Marines.

The play closes seven years later with Troy's funeral. Cory is originally planning on not attending, but Rose convinces him to stay, claiming it won't make him any more of a man to miss it. After the funeral, Gabriel blows his trumpet, and when no sound comes out, he performs a ritualistic dance to open the gates of heaven for Troy.

"I stood on first base for eighteen years and I thought...well, goddamn it...go on for it!" In this quote, Troy explains to Bono how he feels the need to sleep with Alberta against his marriage with Rose. He states that he has "stood on first base" as a metaphor for his static position in life without the ability to progress any further through the racism he has experienced throughout his life. He is unable to recognize that he cannot move forward because he has already reached home. Troy's frustration with his position becomes the need to escape with Alberta, and as a result he loses respect from most of his family, and all his relationships become broken long before the time he dies eight years later.
 * Memorable Quotes and their SIGNIFICANCE.**

“I done learned my mistake and learned to do what's right by it. You still trying to get something for nothing. Life don't owe you nothing. You owe it to yourself." Troy is heavily influenced by his childhood and the treatment by his father in his younger years, which is the origin of a large portion of his life philosophies and values that he demonstrates throughout the course of the novel. The abuse of his father drives him out of his home by age 14, and as a result he very early on establishes a feeling of independence. He strongly believes that his own children need to carry this same value of independence, and this is the reason in which Troy tells this to Cory. This quote demonstrates the manner in which his past influences his behaviors throughout the course of the play.

"If my brother didn't have that metal plate in is head...I wouldn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of." A large source of anger for Troy is his inability to make a decent income for his family. This quote embodies Troy's plight as it highlights his poor financial position as a result of the low income he receives from the negro leagues and his job in loading garbage into a truck. If Gabriel had not been wounded in World War II, Troy would not have enough money to afford his current house, and his family would be forced to rent a residence with another member of their neighborhood. The dependence on the check Troy receives from the government absolutely violates his value of independence, and as a result, Troy's feeling of being "stuck" is amplified greatly.

In the opening scene to the play, it is Friday, and Troy and his friend Bono are out in his front yard drinking. Their conversations highlight the race issues that Troy experiences in the time period in which the play takes place. In the dialogue, Troy outlines the situation in the sanitation industry with the whites driving and the colored lifting and his time in the Negro Leagues in which he couldn't join major league teams despite players like Selkirk playing right field for the Yankees. It is these racial issues around which Troy's frustration is centered, and his "stuck" feeling places his character in a position in which he is highly prone to making mistakes.
 * Describe the significance of the opening scene.**

The final scene of the play is defined by Gabriel's performance in the closing lines. In this show, Gabriel blows his trumpet, and when no sound comes out, he begins to dance in "frightful realization." Wilson's inclusion of this scene is to redeem Troy's actions posthumously in a spiritual performance despite his wrongdoings that landed Cory in the marines and broke his relationships with his family and Bono before his death.
 * Describe the significance of the closing scene.**

As "Fences" is a play, Wilson's writing is largely in the dialect of the mid twentieth century Pittsburgh family since all of the content of the play is dialogue between characters, apart from the scene transitions and scripted actions. The dialogue is riddled with ellipses where logical pauses in the characters' speech should take place, and many lines ae written as fragments.
 * Describe the author's style and provide examples from the text.**

Troy Maxson- Main character of the play around whom each event is woven. Troy is a former baseball player in the negro leagues and a current garbage collector. He experiences his downfall through cheating on his wife, ruining every relationship he has. Jim Bono- Bono is Troy's most loyal friend, with their friendship lasting for 30 years. Bono has the same job as Troy, but becomes disconnected from Troy once Troy moves on to driving the truck instead of lifting the garbage. Bono highly advises against Troy's visiting of Alberta; however, Troy sees her anyways. Rose Maxson- Wife of Troy, Rose has been with him for eighteen years. She spends most of her time in the play as a standard housewife, doing chores and cooking, but her strength and independence shows when she confronts Troy with his infidelity. Cory Maxson- Cory Maxson is the son of Troy and still in high school, spending his time after school working in the local A&P. He aspires to begin a career in football, but Troy takes this from him once he calls off the recruiter. Cory ends up running away from his family and joins the Marines. Lyons Maxson- Lyons is Troy's older son and a musician. He moves around Pittsburgh and plays for events and only ever comes back home to ask to borrow money from his father, who doesn't yield until Rose steps in. Gabriel Maxson- Gabriel is Troy's brother who is wounded critically in World War II, leaving him mentally impaired. He believes he is the archangel Gabriel and carries with him a trumpet that he claims he will blow to open up the gates on judgment day. He ends up institutionalized when Troy, as he claims is an accident, signs a form to send him to a mental hospital. Alberta- Alberta is a woman from Tallahassee with whom Troy sleeps while in a relationship with his wife Rose, Alberta has a child under Troy named Raynell, but she does not survive through childbirth, and Raynell is left with the Maxson family. Raynell- Troy's daughter and only child with a woman other than Rose.
 * List importance characters and their significance.**

Baseball: Strikes- As a skilled player in the Negro Leagues, Troy is heavily influenced by the sport baseball and uses it as a metaphor for almost every aspect of his life, largely in the aspect of strikes. When Cory pulls him off of his mother, Troy tells him, "that's strike two ... don't strike out," and when talking to Rose about life he states, "you born with two strikes before you come to the plate." A strike is, of course, the metaphor for a mistake with three being an "out," whatever that means in the context of the situation. In terms of his conversation with Cory, the "out" is removing him from his house, and in terms of the conversation with Rose, in which Troy means that a single mistake can cost you everything, an "out" is a ruined life.
 * List important symbols from the work and their significance**

Baseball: Bases- Along with his heavy use of the metaphorical strike, Troy also employs the image of of bases to relate the progression of baseball to life. In the sport, bases represent steps to the objective of scoring a run, and to Troy this means everything. When he feels as though he is stuck on first base, he makes the attempt to "steal second," which is a large mistake as it causes him to distance himself from everyone with whom he has a relationship. Since in the sport the base a player is on doesn't matter when he is tagged out, Troy feels a large compulsion to make it home, and this faulted metaphor for life costs him everything in the end.

Religion- Troy's brother Gabriel is struck in the head in World War II, causing a mental impairment which gives him the delusion that he is actually the archangel Gabriel. Gabriel walks around with a trumpet that he claims he will blow on judgment day, and in his mind spends time "chasing away hellhounds." Gabriel is crucial to the message of the closing scene of the play, in which he blows his trumpet, but no sound blows out. He then proceeds to dance in order to open the gates of heaven for Troy. The final scene of the play conveys a postmortem redemption for Troy, and Gabriel is needed in order to communicate this message.