Essay Example on Troy Maxson: A Man of Strength, Hard Work, and Imagination

Troy Maxson is a 50-year-old male of African American descent who works in the department of sanitation by carrying garbage into trucks. He also used to play basketball in the league of Negroes. Initially; the big leagues were not enlisting Blacks therefore his athletic abilities weakened before they began accepting blacks into those leagues. He is strong, hardworking and can tell sweet and nice fanciful stories. He also has a very strong ability to twist the truth (Wilson & Lloyd 10). He is the sole breadwinner in the family and he plays a major part in the sanitation department where he works.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

He has been working for that department for more than thirty years and therefore he has a significant influence amongst his colleagues at the workplace. His character is the Centre upon which all the other characters in the play revolve around. He has a wife called Rose and has three children namely; Cory, Raynell and Lyons and a brother called Gabriel. He is a tragic hero in the play and he brags a lot about his role as the breadwinner in the family (Wilson & Lloyd 17-20).. He has worked for the whites for several years but still, his pay was meager and he was mistreated in the workplace simply because he was black. He sometimes abdicates his responsibilities of providing the much -needed love for his family members. His son Cory is in high school and he performs exemplary well in academics by getting good grades. He is respectful and wants to take football as his profession when he leaves school though his father does not buy that idea. His Wife Rose is aged forty-three years and she is a housewife (Wilson & Lloyd 22). His brother Gabriel was a soldier during the Second World War. His son Lyons wants to play basketball which his father does not like.

In the play Fences by August Wilson, there are several characters with different character traits however Troy who is the main character stands out because of the way he relates with other characters. Through Bono who is Troy's best friend, the readers can learn a lot about him. His character is shaped by the effects of racism which he was subjected to in his life. Racism affected him greatly during his youth and it stopped the career ambitions he had including his insatiable desire to be a basketball player. He still lives in the shadow of what should have been and what could. The whole play is about how the actions of Troy and how they are informed and how they are hugely affected by his past. His actions which are shaped by his past have also affected those around him (Wilson & Lloyd 20-37). His shattered hope has affected and distorted the desires and aspirations of those around him.

The major actions which he exhibits are as a result of the racism which he found himself in during his youth. His actions though in an indirect way are shaping the behaviours and actions of the new generation. Due to his racism experiences, he went through he has become the type of a man who at ones embraces and insist on rigidity to protect himself as well as his family from the outside world which he thinks is not conducive. HE does this by engaging in a wild impracticality as a means of o escaping or seeking redress from the unfairness which he believes stopped his life ambitions. He has a big inner contrast with those who are around him and this is exhibited in several ways (Headley 40-46). He is not able to see anything worthwhile or practical in professions such as baseball and music which his two sons Cory and Lyons love and aspire. However, the affair which Troy has with Alberta shows that he is willing to engage in activities that are not practical but rather pure pleasure without the needs of his family. At the same time, his protest towards the mistreatment of Blacks at his place of work shows a progressive view on the existence of race (Headley 46).. At his workplace, the Blacks are only allowed to carry litter while the white counterparts are hired to drive trucks.

His assertions mirror the possibility of what his sons will experience in race relations. However, his son Cory sees this particular that he will not succeed in football as unrealistic. Troy's inner conflict seems to be exhibited in the way he fantastically spins the reality of his past. These fantasies include the stories about his encounter he had with a devilish personified form of a creature. All these fantasies show that his failures and suffering in the past has turned his mind and made him harbor involuntary self-defense and his full of imaginations and fictional tales about his past. The author of the play is trying to highlight the hypocrisy, conflict and inconsistencies in Troy's character though he does not seem to condemn Troy at a personal level for the weakness (Headley 46-50). The writer is trying to show that Troy is a product of the past which was unfair and riddled with racism.

Troy is the son of a sharecropper who was not successful in his work. He acts as a link between the family of Maxson which lived in the south. He also shows the effects slavery had on the Black people. He further shows that the consequences of slavery will continue even to the generations to come. Cory and Lyon who grew up strongly convicted that their dreams will come true are made to lose hope through the stories of desperation narrated by their father.

Troy who is the protagonist in the play seems to be responsible only that the past has greatly affected him to an extent that his life is full of self-created illusions. The book begins by Troy telling Rose and Bono his life story when he met with a devil or what he refers to as a personified death. Another issue that shows that Troy is living in illusions is his denial Bono who is his best friend about cheating with Alberta (Headley 51). The critical analysis of the play shows it is majorly about Troy.

When the other characters are mentioned, they are trying to show the complicated relationship they have with him. In the fences, the character of Troy creates major and minor conflicts with every other character in the play. His inability to believe in the illusions that he created by himself and accepts other choices have made him differ with all the other characters. He does not accept any other philosophy apart from his own. Rose has always been contradicting stories about him regarding his past (Pereira 25). Troy does not also disagree with Lyons' choice for music because it is a type of profession which he does not believe in.

He does not also agree with the decision of Cory to be a footballer besides Rose's love for numbers. Maxson is a mixture of Dixon and Mason which refers to the line called Dixon-Maxson which is a name for a line imagined to separate the free and the slave states. Therefore, when the author gave him the name he had a reason because his name and characters are similar. His name is then a symbol that demonstrates his character as the one who stays in between the line of the opposing states. His history also shows that he is partly Northern and Southern which also shows how he is filled with disappointment and hopelessness (Pereira 30). He once flourished in his career as a top-notch basketball player but at a certain point his career nose-dived.

Conclusion

Another type of duality is the hypocrisy that Troy shows. He demands that all those he loves should live a practical and responsible life while at the same time he is free to have an affair outside marriage. He completely refuses to see life the way it is presented to him. He rather believes in the way he perceives things in his way. He is a tragic hero because when the play begins, he is loved and admired and because of that, he was able to hide his secret affair (Pereira 30). When he dies he leaves negative attributes which his family was going to inherit.

Works cited

Headley, Olivia. "fences" by August Wilson. a Reflective Essay on Conflict, Family, and Family Therapy. Place of publication not identified: Grin Publishing, 2016. Print

Pereira, Kim. `August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey`. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Print.

Wilson, August, and Lloyd Richards. `Fences': A Play, New York: Plume/Penguin, 1986. Print