Happiness and Relaxation

Happiness in Fences, from what I’ve gathered, is being stress-free. The life’s that Troy, Rose, and Cory live are just full of stress, so when the opportunity of a stress-free moment or environment opens up they jump to it. Troy is surrounded by people taking from him, he goes to work and make money to feed his family, keep the roof over their heads safe and put together. Rose lives a life where she cleans, cooks and takes care of the family. Giving, and giving, with some more giving and has to live with her husband no appreciating her, or understanding all the work she really does. “Don’t you tell me about no taking and giving!” (pg. 72) Cory lives in a life where he just wants to play football, but his father will not let him. His father makes him have a job, go to school and play football if that’s what he wants to do. Which is too much for anyone to do. With so much stress when they see an opening where they can just escape, or sit back and relax. They’re happy with it, but it’s usually only short amounts of happiness that happen in intervals.

                In today’s society happiness is can come in short term events like, enjoying your day with friends, spending time with family, taking selfies with your Starbucks. We can have good days or bad days just based on if we got enough sleep or drank enough coffee etc. We have long-term happiness. Scoring that new job without the psycho boss, getting a brand new car you’ve been saving up for, moving into a new house. It’s long term stuff that happen after achieving our goals.

                The society in Fences and today’s society both have connections but also have many differences. Some of the connections are being the small things, you’re happy when you finally get a break from work, and the kids, you can go to sleep and get that extra few hours. However, no one in Fences really has any long-term happiness. We could possibly see Cory having long-term happiness but his father ruins that for him, stopping him from following his dreams. You don’t really see people happy often in fences it’s a really depressing society.