Fences: A Traditionally Constructed but Touching Drama - Essay Sample

Introduction

Fences is a traditionally constructed, but infinitely touching drama about life in the urban outbacks, preaching conservative values. It is beautifully written and has a special aura of theatre magic around it. Written back in 1985 by American playwright August Wilson, this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is still popular both among readers and theatre-goers. In 2016, a film adaptation of Fences, directed by Denzel Washington, was released and immediately won fame and critical acclaim. The secret to the play's popularity is the character of its protagonist, Troy Maxson. Troy is the central character around which the whole play is built. He possesses a strong charisma and a complex personality. Troy's character is so interesting because the reader first encounters him as an endearing, outspoken and respectable man, but as the story progresses new less attractive sides of his personality are revealed, which makes the reader feel rather strongly towards him, both pitying and judging him.

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At the beginning of the play, Troy is represented as a family man, a talkative dreamer and a fighter for the racial equality. He used to be a successful baseball player, who could not make his way up in the biased white world. So, after completing his career, Maxson has to collect trash in the streets of Pittsburgh to support his family. Having worked for many years at the back of the truck, he finally manages to become the first black truck driver in Pittsburgh. He dreams of a better future for his son and wants the young man to get a good college education and find a good job in a prestigious company. The tensions start when it turns out that his son Cory does not share the father's dreams. Cory is dreaming of a baseball career and wants to prove to his father that he can surpass him. Rose, Troy's wife, is trying to reconcile both, but to no avail. Moreover, Troy cannot put up with his elder son's career as a musician. The conflict with the young men reveals the complexity of Troy's personality, shedding light on some of his less appealing features.

As the play progresses, the reader learns that Troy's personality is, in fact, rather ambivalent. While he, indeed, sincerely cares for his wife and sons, he is also a grouchy, eternally displeased, arrogant type. He is impudent and always right. He is still full of the bitterness of the past. Having experienced in his life poverty, wandering, betrayal, resentment and racial injustice, he can neither forgive nor forget. The negative sides of Troy's life are gradually revealed in conversations throughout the play. His unhappy childhood and the difficulties he faced as a young man have shaped his personality and his attitude towards his family. So now, Troy stubbornly keeps stirring up the old wounds and persistently reminds his sons of them. The house and the back yard turn into a field of contention over and over again. The strict father declares that it is necessary to work, the family is a duty, and dreams are for fools. So, finally, the reader comes to see Troy as a power-hungry husband and a tough father, judicious and loyal to his proletarian views, for whom caring for the family is a chore.

The reader's sympathy for Troy rises and falls. His personality is constructed as the opposite of Rose's character, who is a wise, loving and genuine woman always speaking from the heart. The key changes come in the middle of the story when the reader is instantly obliged to decide on whose side he is. When Troy's secret affair is revealed, he suddenly crumbles under the pressure of the moment, turning from a confident man into a weak and miserable one. The reader realizes that he is not the man his family, friends, and neighbors have thought him to be admiring his "honesty, capacity for hard work, and his strength" (Wilson, 1986, p. 1). His respectability has been built upon a lie. It becomes obvious that his expectations for his sons which the boys could not live up to were not only unreasonable but also hypocritical. And yet, at the end of the play the readers are gently brought to a conclusion that even Troy deserves forgiveness, not because he earned it, but because one needs to forgive and let go to go on living and looking into this future. This is a simple truth that Troy could not understand. His failure to forgive, forget and move on cost him a happy life and a harmonious relationship with his sons. Rose understands Troy's complex nature better than his sons, she tells them, that he wanted them to be what he was and what he was not at the same time, but all in all he meant to do more good than harm (Wilson, 1986) So, at the end of the play, Rose's generosity of spirit teaches the young men to be wiser and not to repeat their father's mistakes.

The image of the fence that also appears in the title of the play is a metaphor that can help the reader understand the character of Troy. The fence is being built for several years and appears completed only closer to the end of the play. It was conceived by Troy as a symbolic way to restrain death and to protect his family and way of life. But as the plot develops, the readers learn that the fence also reflects the emotional barriers that Troy builds between himself and his sons. As the fence grows, Troy's estrangement from his sons also grows. In the title of the play, the word "fence" is in the plural, which symbolizes the fact that Troy gradually builds many walls. He separates himself from his sons by not believing in them and not supporting them in pursuing their dreams. He builds a wall between himself and Rose by having an affair with Alberta. He constructs a wall between himself and his co-workers by becoming a truck driver and spending less time with them. Finally, one of the walls that he builds separates him from the present and the future. His wife Rose says, "The world's changing around you and you can't even see it" (Wilson, 1986, p. 40). The future is dangerous and uncertain, so, Troy prefers to live in the past, disappointed but safe.

In his play Fences, Wilson managed to create a memorable and complex character of a man who aspires to be a good person but makes too many wrong decisions to succeed. As the readers learn new sides of Troy's character, their attitude to him changes dramatically, but ultimately at the end of the play, he is forgiven and the gates of heaven open for him. The play teaches the readers that human beings are too complex and ambivalent to be taken at face value and judged too strictly.

Reference

Wilson, A. (1986). Fences. Retrieved from http://azactorsacademy.com/uploads/plays/fences.pdf