Social Work Practice with the Maxson Family in Fences

Introduction: The Maxson Family's Communication Struggles

The Maxson family has been struggling with their emotions. The family members do not know how to communicate their feelings effectively, and the ways they express those feelings often end up hurting one another. Troy has Cory's best interests at heart when he denies Cory the opportunity to play football; however, he fails to express his reservations to Cory directly. Instead, he goes to Cory's school and tells the coach to remove Cory from the team. Cory is left wondering why his father would do this and assumes his father wants to hurt him. If Troy could only communicate with Cory and share what he feels about Cory playing football, they could arrive at a solution that would be mutually beneficial. Cory could have informed Troy how things are different now and how the racial injustices of the past are no longer in play in the same way.

Troy believes he was a victim of racial bias and that he was denied the opportunity to play baseball based on his skin color. Troy refuses to accept the reality that his age was the primary reason he was rejected. Allowing his emotions to cloud his judgment and going to the school to inform the coach that Cory would not be playing football was not the correct course of action. When Cory finds out what Troy has done, he becomes enraged and directs his verbal aggression toward his father. Cory believes Troy is holding him back from pursuing his dreams — and that he would ultimately be better than his father. August Wilson's Fences uses this father-son conflict to expose how unprocessed trauma and racial history shape family relationships across generations.

If both father and son understood how to communicate their emotions, this would have been an opportunity to sit down and talk things through. Troy would explain his reservations, and Cory would come to understand where his father was coming from. Troy's conflict with others throughout the play stems from his lack of cultural literacy and his preference for seeing things in black-and-white terms. Troy makes decisions based on this rigid framework, in which he is always right and everyone else is wrong.

References

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