It is important to note Troy does not intend on making his son's life difficult nor does he want to make him miserable but he does want him to have a stable job that will allow him to provide for a family. There is also the notion that at the A&P, Cory will escape persecution for being African-American. Troy is attempting to protect his son but what he fails to do is realize that times have changed. A future with football would allow Cory to provide for his family far better than anything he could find in town. Troy cannot see this clearly and because of that, he cannot see how it is literally robbing his son of a bright future single-handedly. By trying to protect his son, Troy is only ensuring his life will be wrought with the same difficulties he had. He is pushing his son away from him, making them more like Troy and his father. All of these things are helping Troy build the perfect fence between him and his son.
Fences play also peers into the complexity of relationships. The issues of boundaries and separation extend beyond Troy and Cory. Rose sees the fence in the backyard as a symbol of protection for her family. In its purest form, it is a symbol of love. Troy, however, views it as a burden. Bono stumbles upon a bit of profundity when he says, "Some people build fences to keep people out . . . And some people build fences to keep people in" (1631), Troy does not make the connection and seems content to separate himself from others. Kim Pereira writes that even after surviving his father, Troy still finds himself in a: "similar predicament with his son Cory, with the roles now reversed. The play deals with the pain that psychological separation brings family members as each generation gropes toward...
Here we see how issues must be dealt with in order to move on. Troy holds onto the things that have hurt him in the past. By continuing to do, he only makes the fence more difficult to tear down.
Fences delves into the complexity of man. We all walk away from painful and difficult situations. How we deal with them makes all of the difference in how we lives out the rest of our lives and how we treat others. The literal fence in Troy's backyard should have been enough to help him see how he was alienating his son but his own emotions were standing in the way. We encounter fences like this every day in relation to family matters, work issues, and with others we come into contact with daily. Fences illustrates how painful these fences are and how difficult they are. Troy knew he did not want to be like his father but everything he did seemed to state otherwise. It seems they become more complicated when we are dealing with people we love, proving Wilson's point that a fence has more than one purpose.
Works Cited
Metzger, Sheri. "An essay on Fences." Drama for Students. 1998. GALE Resource Database.
Site Accessed July 15, 2010.
Pereira, Kim. "August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey." University of Illinois Press.
1995. GALE Resource Database. Site Accessed July 15, 2010.
Wessling, Joseph H. "Wilson's Fences." Explicator 57.2 (Winter 1999): 123-127. Rpt. In Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 222. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010.
Wilson, August. Fences. The Norton Introduction to Literature W.W. Norton…
