Troy

As a man Troy has many sides. He is strong-willed when it comes to things he believes is right, he is tough, and he gentle and sweet when it comes to Rose. Already in the play we have seen multiple examples of times when Troy has acted on something that he believes in. In one case, Troy stood up for the rights of black men to be able to drive the garbage trucks just like the white men do. He argued with the Commissioner’s office that is was unfair for only the white men to be able to drive the garbage trucks while the black men did all of the dirty work. “Look here, Rose… Mr. Rand called me into his office today when I got back from talking to them people down there... it come from up top…he called me in and told me they was making me a driver” (Wilson44). In this scenario, Troy did the right thing in arguing the case of inequality. Later on in the play, Troy goes to Cory’s school and tells the coach that he isn’t allowed to play football, and that the scout shouldn’t bother coming. Troy unfairly punished Cory because sports were unfair to Troy in his past and he doesn’t want Cory to play sports either. While Troy thinks that he is doing the right thing, he isn’t paying attention to what Cory wants, and how important the scout was to him. Troy is using excuses like work in order to say that Cory doesn’t deserve to play. “I can’t work after school during football season, Pop! I tried to tell you that Mr. Stawicki’s holding my job for me. You don’t never want to listen to nobody. And then you wanna go and do this to me!” (Wilson57).  Troy might think that he is right, but he is not always right just because he believes he is.

                Troy lies and embellishes stories a lot, but whenever Rose corrects him, he always admits that she is right. Troy is very caring and kind and it shows how much he cares for Rose. He frequently says that she is the best thing that happened to him, or that she was the only good thing to come to him. Even while Troy is explaining to Rose why he doesn’t want Cory’s future to be anything like Troy’s past, he incorporates “you the only decent thing that ever happened to me” (Wilson39). Troy constantly says things like this which shows that he is a very loving husband to Rose.

While Troy may not be perfect, and he has some skewed views of how things should be, he is not an overall bad person. He obviously cares a lot for Rose, which means that he can’t be all bad.