The Driving Conflict in August Wilson’s Fences
Introduction
Fences (1985) is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winning play by the American playwright August Wilson. The play is set in the 1950s at the peak of the civil rights movement in the US and presents a realistic image of the African-American experiences with racism and poverty at the time. In the play, the events revolve around the conflicts in an African-American family pursuing the American Dream, particularly conflicts between Troy, the protagonist, and his family members. In the play Fences, August Wilson uses the conflict of Troy vs. Family to drive the other conflicts and elements of the story, as evidenced by Troy’s strained relationship with his father, sons, and wife.
Troy vs. Family
Troy and his friend Bono tell their different childhood experiences with their fathers, and Troy’s story provides the context in which readers can understand his parenting style and how these experiences affect his relationship with his sons, Lyons and Cory. Troy explains that his father, a failed sharecropper, was an evil man who could not be tolerated by any woman he married. As a result, most of the time, Troy did not have a mother growing up. His major conflict with his father happened when he was fourteen years old. His father had beaten him up for letting a mule he was supposed to wander off while he with a girl. His father went on to even rape the girl driving the last nail in his relationship with Troy, who left home the following day. Troy cites this event as when he became a man because he alienated himself from his despicable father and started to feed for himself. “Right there is where I became a man… at fourteen years of age” (Wilson, 1985,1,4,109). He became a firm believer in hard work, and he is the sole breadwinner of his family. The conflict between Troy and his father ingrained in him a sense of responsibility, which explains why he always chides Lyons about his music career. Troy does not believe that the music can put food on the table. He also wants Cory to keep his job at the grocery store rather than play professional baseball.
The biggest conflict in the play is between Troy and his son Cory. They disagreed on Cory’s career path and Troy’s leadership in the family. Cory, who is a good baseball player, leaves his job to train and professionally venture into professional sports. Upon hearing this, Troy is livid and demands that Cory get his job back, for he will not allow him to play baseball. Troy’s reservations stem from his early experiences in the same sport. Troy argued that despite being a star player in the Negro Leagues, he was denied the chance to play in the major leagues because he was black. He fears that his son might too face this kind of institutional racism and not get much from professional sports. “I decided seventeen years ago that boy wasn’t getting involved in no sports. Not after what they did to me in the sports.” (Wilson, 1985,1,3,110). On the other hand, Cory believes that times have changed, and his color should not be the reason why he cannot play; he even cites several successful African-American baseball players to convince his father (Gantt, 2015). Troy is not convinced that times have changed after all he had just recently confronted his boss about black employees being relegated to lifting garbage only and not promoted to drive the garbage trucks. “Why? Why you got the white mens driving and the colored lifting?” (Wilson, 1985,1,10). Through this conflict, Wilson foregrounds the reality of racial discrimination at the time and the optimism shared by the younger generation about better days of equality ahead (Joodaki 2014). In a similar recreation of Troy’s conflict with his father, Cory leaves home and enlists in the military after a fight with Troy over his failings as a husband and brother. Cory cites Troy’s affair as a betrayal to his mother. He continues to mock his father, arguing that the house they are living in should be owned by Troy’s brother Gabriel whose military compensation money paid for the house (Wilson, 1985,2,3,80).
Troy’s relationship with his son Lyons is similarly stained. Lyons is from a previous marriage and grew up without his father Troy, because he (Troy) was serving a sentence in prison. This narrative parallels Wilson’s childhood, for as Sandra G. Shannon writes, Wilson’s plays are also intensely personal, reflecting his experiences, particularly a complete disconnect with his biological father, who was absent during his childhood (Forsgren 2016). Therefore, when Troy chides Lyons over his musical career, stating it was not good enough, Lyons feels that his life decisions are his own to make.
Lastly, Troy has a conflict with his wife, Rose, over his affair with Alberta. Rose accuses him of betraying her and taking and not giving. “You take…and don’t even know nobody’s giving” (Wilson, 1985,2,2,110). Rose, however, accepts Alberta’s daughter Raynell as her own after Alberta dies in childbirth but refuses to accept Troy back into her life. She states, “From right now . . . this child got a mother. But you a womanless man.”
Conclusion
The conflicts between Troy and his family are the driving force in the play Fences. Through them, Wilson highlights the biases in society, particularly the systemic racism and socio-economic inequalities that black folk have to endure racism and how these vices affected their life in general. In doing so, Wilson succeeds in his endeavor to paint a realistic picture of the historical experiences of the African-Americans in the 1950s.
References
Forsgren, L. D. (2016). August Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle: Critical perspectives on the plays ed. by Sandra G. Shannon. Theatre Topics, 26(2), 267-268. https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.2016.0027
Gantt, P. M. (2015). Putting Black culture on stage: August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. College Literature, 36(2), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.0.0046
Joodaki, A. H. (2014). Ethnic identity: Negro’s double-consciousness and ethnic Independence in August Wilson’s fences. Journal of Language and Literature, 5(1), 61-69. https://doi.org/10.7813/jll.2014/5-1/10
Wilson, A. (2017). Fences. In L. Kirszner & S. R. Mandell (Eds.), Portable literature: Reading, reacting, writing, 2016 MLA update (9th ed., pp. 1270-1331). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.