Sports as Central Motif in August Wilson's Fences

Introduction: Sports as a Motif in Fences

Sports is one of the principal motifs in Fences, a play by August Wilson, and is utilized to facilitate the other themes that this work of drama explores. The protagonist, Troy Maxson, is a former Negro leagues baseball player who is still attempting to reconcile his failed pursuit of a professional baseball career with the racial barrier that prevented him from advancing at the time he was playing. His son, Cory Maxson, is a high school football player with enough promise to earn a collegiate scholarship. Due to these facts and their effects on the characterization of both individuals, Wilson uses the motif of sports to illuminate many of the play's pertinent themes — including questions of race and justice (Burbank 118), the assertion of autonomy and manhood, and the pursuit of life shadowed by the ever-present threat of death.

Troy and Cory: Racial History and the Football Conflict

Cory and Troy are embroiled in a prolonged conflict for the vast majority of Fences, largely because Cory wishes to pursue a collegiate football opportunity against his father's wishes. It is fairly apparent that Troy remains bitter about his experience playing baseball in the Negro leagues and being barred from major league baseball because of restrictions against African Americans. Despite the fact that such racial restrictions on professional sports had been removed by the time period in which Fences takes place, Troy still opposes his son's pursuit of football, a stance rooted in the limitations of his own sports career. This conflict between the two characters is channeled through the motif of sports, as the following exchange illustrates:

Cory: The Braves got Hank Aaron and Wes Covington. Hank Aaron hit two home runs today. That makes forty-three.

Troy: Hank Aaron ain't nobody. (Wilson 1986)

The conflict and tension characterizing the relationship between Troy and Cory are effectively illustrated by this exchange. Cory is essentially pointing out that African Americans are now able to play sports — and baseball in particular, his father's former game — at the highest professional level in the United States. The implication is that Cory should be permitted to pursue a collegiate football scholarship, since the racial restrictions that derailed his father's career no longer apply. Yet Troy's resistance to both his son and his son's ambitions is evident in his dismissal of Hank Aaron: "ain't nobody." This conversation about contemporary professional sports shows that one of the central elements of the play's plot — the father-son conflict over Cory's athletic future — is dramatized through the lens of sports.

Baseball Metaphors and Troy's Defiance of Life and Death

In many ways, Troy's attitude of defiance toward his son's football aspirations reflects his broader defiance toward life in general. Because Troy was never able to play baseball professionally at the highest level, one of the major themes of Fences is his deep dissatisfaction with his own life (Gantt 10). This dissatisfaction manifests in the acts of infidelity he commits against Rose, in the tension and animosity he harbors toward his children — both Cory and, to a lesser extent, his other son Lyons — and in the disillusionment that colors his self-perception as a garbage collector who was good enough for the major leagues but was kept out by racism. This attitude of defiance is illuminated most clearly through the motif of sports, and perhaps most poignantly through a baseball metaphor:

"Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner." (Wilson 1986)

This quotation not only illustrates Troy's defiant attitude toward life — exemplified by his disdain for death, the ultimate negation of life itself — but it also reveals the way Troy thinks and perceives his circumstances. He genuinely thinks in the language of sports, and of baseball in particular, which is why the diction here is so significant. Just as in the earlier exchange, Troy dismisses something as "nothing" — and in doing so implies that the life death will end is equally "nothing." Troy is, of course, speaking about his own life, a life embittered by racial barriers and fractured family relationships. This passage demonstrates that the growing disillusionment defining Troy's existence is inseparable from the motif of sports. Significantly, Troy's preoccupation with death is resolved in the play's final act, in a scene toward which many of the earlier threads converge (Dobie 40).

Conclusion: Sports as the Foundation of Fences' Themes

A comprehensive review of the important facets of the plot of Fences and its themes indicates that sports is the primary motif upon which the play's other central ideas are built. Troy's defiance of life and his reckoning with death, his conflict with Cory over the younger man's anticipated career as a football player, and his incorrigible behavior — which leads to a growing sense of disillusionment about himself — are all delivered to the audience primarily through various aspects of sports, and baseball in particular. Wilson's sustained use of this motif gives the play its emotional coherence and ensures that Troy's deeply personal failures remain inseparable from the broader historical and racial forces that shaped them.

Works Cited

Burbank, Sergei. "The Shattered Mirror: What August Wilson Means and Willed to Mean." College Literature 36.2 (2009): 117–29. Print.

Dobie, Ann B., ed. Theory Into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.

Gantt, Patricia M. "Putting Black Culture on Stage: August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle." College Literature 36.2 (2009): 1–25. Print.

Gilmour, Nathan. "Troy Maxson Goes To Heaven." The Christian Humanist. 2010. Web.

Wilson, August. Fences. New York: Plume, 1986. Print.