Act One, scene one
Fences by August Wilson was first performed in 1985. This paper will analyze its dramatic rhythm and the techniques that Wilson uses to tell his story, give it tension, expatiate on his themes and develop his characters. It will also address this central question: what is the significance of the title?
The set is conventional in one sense: it is the yard that fronts the Maxson household. It remains unchanged until the addition of some props in the final scene. This is Wilson’s basic space and characters enter and exit at carefully timed moments to introduce variety, or move the plot forward, or reveal something new. At the beginning of the play the significance of the title ‘Fences’ is unclear to the audience. Its significance does become apparent as do many other things – Wilson uses exchanges between characters to reveal information about the distant past, the recent past and sometimes he uses direct monologue such as when Troy tells the story of why he left home (69-71). Wilson cleverly reveals the past very slowly, so that it shows light on the play’s present, and he also uses anticipation of events in the future (in the play’s future, that is) to keep tension for the audience alive. It also becomes apparent in the opening scene that the father, Tory Maxton, is the chief protagonist – most of what is revealed has to do with Troy, and it could also be argued that he is the character who changes the most in the course of the action – or at least, the audience’s perception of him changes radically the more we find out about him.
So Wilson uses exits and entrances, interaction between characters and some off-stage action to gradually reveal the play’s central themes and to vary the dramatic rhythm of the play.
The play begins with two men walking on stage talking light heartedly about things that have happened at the workplace. There is some mention of racism at work and mention is made of a meeting that Troy has next week with his boss – and some speculation that he might be fired. The chat turns to talk about women, some of it ribald, until the mention by Troy of his wife Rose – who then enters. The couple seem perfectly happy: there is some light-hearted comment about food and their relationship. Bono, Troy’s friend and work colleague, mentions the changed living conditions he now has got used to – “I thought only white folks had inside toilets and things” (25) – and there is a little tension apparent between Troy and Rose about shopping at Bella’s. Rose prefers to shop at the A & P because it is cheaper; Troy prefers to shop at Bella’s, because Bella is an African-American and she has given him bread in the past when he had no money. This is a seemingly tiny disagreement, but Wilson uses it to foreshadow the bigger disagreements that the couple will have later in the play.
Someone called Gabe is mentioned, but at this stage all we know is that he has just moved out of the Maxson house. More tension is introduced when Rose mentions that Cory has been “recruited by a college football team” (26) – news which Troy is dismissive of because he knows that American sport is dogged with racism. He then starts to reminisce about his own baseball playing days with a sense of pride (he was good) and regret (it did nothing for him because of his colour). This section of the play, as Troy and Bono get drunker, is interesting too, because Wilson allows Troy to dominate the conversation. Rose only has occasional and relatively brief interjections. Rose actually rebukes him for for drinking so much (28) and for talking about death (29). Bono and Troy are both getting drunker, but Troy hogs the conversation, until Wilson introduces Lyons (31). Tory’s response to his greeting – “Why you come ‘Hey, Popping me for?” – suggests that he does not have a close relationship with his son – and Troy’s past in relation to Lyons is not revealed until later in the act and the audience might wonder at it, especially since Lyons is in his thirties. It is clear that Rose is not his mother – he calls her ‘Rose’ and not ‘Ma’. It is clear that Lyons has only come to see his father in order to borrow money, which Troy initially refuses, but he gives in after a fairly lengthy exchange of words with Lyons. This exchange reveals that Lyons is trying to scrape a living as a musician – something which Troy clearly disapproves of, just as we have seen him disapprove of Cory’s football playing ambitions. However, at the end of this scene Rose breaks the tension by persuading Troy to lend Lyons the money. The scene ends on a high note: Bono leaves and Troy is looking forward to making love to Rose.
Act One, scene two
Scene two begins with Rose being criticized by Troy for wasting money “playing the numbers”. He once again brings up the question of racism in connection with a black man they know of who won “playing the numbers”, used the money sensibly to buy a restaurant, but treats his white customers better than his African-American ones. Troy’s appointment next Friday with his boss is mentioned by Rose as a possible source of anxiety, but Troy dismisses her fear. He wants to know where Cory is because he wants his son to help him repair the fence – the first direct reference in speech to the title of the play.
Gabe (Gabriel) who was mentioned in the first scene enters. We now become aware that he is Troy’s brother and from his actions we can tell he is mentally unstable. His singing and trumpeting vary the pitch of the play whenever he appears, but, in contrast to the reticent behaviour of the other characters, shows his insanity. In dialogue at the end of the scene Wilson allows Troy to reveal that Gabriel has had half his head blown away in an unspecified foreign war. Troy again expresses his resentment at the paltry compensation Gabe received given the severity of his injury - $3000. Miserably Troy leaves to “listen to the ball game.” (46)
After the first two scenes the audience can tell that the main focus of the play will be on Troy. Despite his apparently happy marriage to Rose, they do argue. Troy seems very resentful and very aware of racism. He is the only character who has mentioned it so far. He doesn’t seem to have a very affectionate relationship with his grown up son or his brother – neither are embraced when they meet and this physical distancing is a sign of his distance from them in emotional terms too. What is there to be resolved? At this stage there is Troy’s problem at work and the possibility of conflict with Cory – whom the audience have heard of but never seen.
Act One, scene three
Rose is taking the washing in when Cory enters and we see him for the first time before he goes into the house. Troy returns in an amorous mood, but when he is told that Cory has returned, he calls him out to help him with the fence. The conversation that ensues between father and son is very revealing of the conflict in their values. Rose overhears most of this conversation –a silent presence at the back of the stage. It begins with Cory badgering his father about buying a TV, which Troy refuses – he is careful with his money and after a lengthy exchange, the conversation turns to football. Cory seems to be trying to find an area that they can talk about without controversy, but the team he mentions – the Pirates – are dismissed by Troy as “an all-white team.” (51) They then begin to argue in earnest over Cory’s job at the A& P and the ways it conflicts with football ambitions. It becomes clear in the course of the conversation that Tory has never watched Cory play, and he is totally opposed to his son pursuing his dream of playing professional football. The conversation gets more and more hated until Cory asks his father – “How come you ain’t never liked me?” (55) – this is shocking as it is such a d direct and explicit question. Troy’s answer is interesting – he talks a lot about parental responsibility, being careful with money and finally orders his son back to the A & P to try and get his part-time evening work back. Rose intervenes once Cory has exited – playwrights tend not to have silence for long – and tries gently to persuade Troy to allow Cory a little more freedom. Troy says, “I don’t want him to be like me..... I decided seven teen year s ago that boy wasn’t getting involved in no sports. Not after what they did tome in the sports.” (57) Rose’s reply “Troy, why don’t you admit you were too old to play in the major leagues?” is the first hint we have had that is was age, not race, that stopped Troy playing baseball.
Act One, scene four
The scene begins with Cory rushing out to get the game on time, leaving Rose to worry about the untidy state of his room and what Troy might say. Then Bono and Troy enter, just as they did the previous Friday, talking about work and Troy’s meeting. Troy is in a good mood and calls Rose to him as if she were a dog which she resents. He has in fact been promoted at work and will be the first black driver. Then Wilson starts to pack the stage with people for this important scene which will end the act. Lyons enters and repays the money he borrowed from the previous week. He and Bono tease Troy about his promotion. Gabe then enters and we see how well Rose and Lyons interact with him despite his mental problems – something that Tory cannot be bothered to do. Lyons is also used by Wilson to give an alternative response to Cory’s potential recruitment by a college _ “Cory got recruited? also What school he going to?” showing interest and enthusiasm.
It is at this point that Wilson changes the entire mood of the scene by allowing Troy to tell the story of how he left home, having first revealed that he has found out that Cory has lied to him about working at the A & P. Again Wilson allows Troy to dominate the dialogue and his revelations about the past are genuinely shocking. He left home with nothing at the age of fourteen. His father was a vicious and violent man. Troy explains show he got involved in crime and ended up in prison for fifteen years which as when he lost contact with Lyons. This is an emotional account of Troy’s past – which none of the characters present have heard before, so it is especially emotional. However, the veracity of what he says about his father is called into question by Lyons. (68) We remember that Rose in the previous scene had questioned his honesty over his baseball anecdotes. His anecdote about the day he left home portrays his father as sex-crazed bully.
But Wilson manipulates the action so that the act ends on a threat of future grief, not regret for the past. Cory enters and reveals that his father has contacted the football coach to tell him that Cory cannot play anymore., father and son are both very angry. In the closing seconds Troy calls Cory to him – and Cory reluctantly approaches. The audience may well be expecting Troy to hit his son – but the act still ends on a note of verbal violence and threat.
Act Two, scene one
Wilson begins the second act with a huge impact. He prepares the audience for it by giving Bono a very long speech extolling the virtues of Rose. As soon as he has gone, troy tells rose that he has fathered a child by another woman. Before rose has much chance to react (and also to let the audience reflect on Troy’s revelation and anticipate Rose’s full response) Gabe enters as a distraction. When he exits the couple have a long and bitter exchange which ends with Troy seizing Rose’s arm and Cory striking his father to the floor. Rose prevents Troy from further retaliation, but Troy ends the scene with another verbal threat to Cory.
Act Two, scene two
Wilson conveys a lot of information very quickly in this scene. Troy still lives in the house, but he spends a lot of time with his new lover who is in the hospital about to give birth. Rose accuses him of signing his brother Gabe into a mental hospital for half his war pension, but before that can be resolved the telephone rings (brilliantly timed by Wilson). It is a message from the hospital: Troy’s baby daughter is alive and well, but his lover Alberta has died in childbirth. The scene ends with a soliloquy with Troy shouting out his defiance to death and using imagery from baseball as he has done when arguing with Cory and when excusing his adultery to Rose.
Act Two, scene three
A very brief scene. Troy is fussing adoringly over his new baby. At the end of the scene Rose takes the bay from him but says: “From right now...this child got a mother. But you a womanless man.” (97).
Act Two, scene four
Wilson establishes through conversation with Lyons that Cory has graduated from high school but is looking for a job. Troy enters and he and Cory stare at each other, but it is clear they are no longer talking. On page 102 a confrontation between Cory and his father begins which ends in a physical fight. At one point Cory says, “I ain’t got say excuse me no more. You don’t count around here no more.” (103) He also reveals that he has felt held back by his father all his life. At the climax of the fight Cory cannot bring himself to hit his father with the baseball bat and, disgusted by his own failure, leaves home.
Act Two, scene five
Wilson establishes that time has passed because the baby girl Raynell is now seven, It is Troy’s funeral and Cory returns home, a corporal in the US marines. Bono is there, unchanged, and Lyons, still trying to make a living playing music. Cory interacts very well with Raynell, the seven year old, but tells his mother that he will not be attending the funeral: he wants to be able to say “No” to his father at least once in his life. However, Rose tries to persuade him to come to the funeral, but it is only his singing the song that his father used to sing with Raynell and once upon a time with Cory that changes his mind. The play’s defiant air of reconciliation is furthered by Wilson’s decision to bring Gabe back on, released from hospital, to end the play with an anti-climax of silence.
The Play as a Whole
The main theme of this play is the the conflict between fathers and sons: this is shown in Troy’s relationship with his own father and with his son Cory. There are minor themes: racism in the USA; the struggles of blue collar urban life; the effect that infidelity can have on a marriage. The title Fences relates to all these themes: Troy erects fences around himself so he becomes distanced from his loved ones; the ‘fences’ are the barriers between Troy and others, but also the barriers that black Americans faced in society.
The main action of the play shows Troy’s decline and eventual lonely death, unloved by all except his daughter. Other events occur but the main dramatic action is Troy’s gradual isolation from his own family and his facing up to death. Everything that Tory says or does, or that is revealed about the past, after the first scene, contributes to making him more isolated. Tory is a man who eants to rule his own home, but ends up powerless and alone, because of the fences that he has created.
Wilson constructs his play skilfully. Apart from the opening scene and the closing one, every scene is written to end a high point of verbal or physical tension. Act One revolves around the conflict over Cory’s football; Act Two around Troy’s adultery with Alberta – although the conflict with Cory is ‘resolved’ in the sense that Cory moves out and is not reconciled with his father. But football and Raynell are merely external devices to fix some tension and conflict on. The real subject of the play is Troy, his past and his psychology. That is the over-arching subject of the play. There are strong hints that he is a disillusioned character: he is very aware of racism in a way that the other characters are not; he is regretful of his failed baseball ambitions; he has a distant relationship with all his close male relatives. The reaction of the other characters suggest that he is also delusional: that he was too old when he left prison to play professional baseball; that he is exaggerating his father’s cruelty.
Part of Troy’s self-delusion is shown by Cory who, Wilson reveals, is just as frightened of Troy as Troy was of his own father. Couples with his bitterness aboiut lost opportunities in baseball is his attitude to Cory and football: Troy cannot admit this to himself, but Cory is surely right when he says:
You ain’t never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was going to be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me scared of you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. (104)
Part of the point of this is that Troy would deny this, but he is deluding himself. For all his bitter talk about his father, he has replicated his father’s way of parenting – even dow n to his father’s lascivious behaviour which he reproduces with Alberta. Troy is a self-delusional, dictatorial man who wants to control everyone – hence his annoyance that Gabe has moved out. His low opinion of his own worth has made him bitter and he takes it out on those closest to him. The revelation of Troy’s character is the real subject of this play.
The Significance of the Title
The title works on so many levels. It is a symbol of the conflict between Cory and Troy because it never is repaired. It also has a physical significance: when Cory agrees to leave home Troy says his things will be on the other side of the fence; when Tory is taunting death if invites him to cross the fence to get him when he wants him to die. However, form all that this paper has revealed about Troy the fences are really the metaphorical fences that Troy erects around himself to separate himself from his family, from the truth and, most importantly, from a true recogniton of what he is like – a copy of his violent, womanizing father.
