Hand Me Downs

Troy’s legacy is something we focus on a lot throughout the play. If you don’t analyze it then you would think that maybe Troy didn't care much about his legacy. But with further thinking we can tell that Troy’s legacy is important to him and it’s held in the hands of the family he leaves behind.

Throughout the play we see as Troy pushes his morals and his values onto his children and wife while all along he is going against them himself. Maybe we need to view these morals and values AS Troy’s legacy, rather than his legacy being the path he walked himself.  

In chapter 5 the scene is set as the whole family gathers around Troy’s funeral. Cory is back from the Marines, Gabriel is lucky enough to leave the hospital to visit and Lyons has also stopped by. The female figures in Troy’s life, Rose and Raynell, also find themselves there. All these people has been impacted by Troy in some way. Troy’s pushed his views and values onto these people, even though he didn’t always live them out in his own right. He sought to it that his children learned from his mistakes.

In a way it’s almost chronological how Cory’s problems involve sports while Troy tries to enforce his legacy upon Cory’s athletics by trying to have Cory learn from Troy’s experience. Then Lyon’s problems with borrowing money as paralleled by Troy’s experience with taking money from Gabe.

We see Troy progressively become more and more stern throughout the novel. When it came to these pieces of advice, he began with acting calmly in unacceptance and ended with very direct instructions toward “doing the right thing”.

In the end Troy leaves his legacy on a family with hands over their ears, ignorant to most his pieces of advice. They remember Troy as their dad who wanted to set the right precedents for his children’s success.

Still sometimes words snuck through the fingers of the ignorant family. In Act 2 Scene 5 Lyons reflects about his current time in jail citing Troy for saying “It ain’t so bad. You got to take the crooked with the straights. That’s what Pap used to say” (94).  This statement serves as a monuments to Troy’s legacy and the words he passed down.

In Scene 5 Rose goes on and on about Troy saying “Like I’d been blessed to relive a part of my life. And if the Lord see fit to keep up my strength... I’m gonna do her just like your daddy did you… I’m gonna give her the best of what’s in me” (98).  This quotes directly correlates with how Troy’s Dad’s legacy has been passed down to him and now he has passed his dad’s legacy down to Rose.

Troy left being something in each one of this children. His legacy is the morals and beliefs that he has left behind in his family.