Troy's legacy

Troy’s was a father, Brother, Husband, and friend, he had so many people around him that were counting on him. Troy tried very hard to provide for himself and his family, without him a lot of people would be in a different place. Troy gave all he could to the people around him, “Troy:
Woman… I do the best I can do. I come in here every Friday. I carry a sack of potatoes and bucket of lard. You line up at the door with your hands out. I give you the lint from my pockets. I give you my sweat and blood.”(40). Troy Works very hard to make money for the family so he can provide a nice home and food. Throughout the play Troy changes from being a sort of cranky and crappy person to the people around him. He treats people like they don’t matter, Troy thinks all he needs to be happy is money and a job for a steady income.

Troy’s legacy can be interpreted in many different ways, in my opinion I found his legacy to be partly negative and partly positive. By that I mean in the beginning of the book fences Troy is very exhausted all the time and treats the people that he cares the most with disrespect. Towards the end of the play he realizes that the things he has done are starting to effect the people in his life. “a man’s got to do what right for him. I ain’t sorry for nothing I done. It felt right in my heart (to the baby) what you smiling at? Your daddy’s a big man. Got these big hands. But sometimes he’s scared. And right now your daddy’s scared cause we sitting out here and ain’t got no home. Oh, I been homeless before. I ain’t had no little baby with me.”(79). The saying “you don’t miss something until its gone” is very important at this part of the play because he had  family and a home but he made the choice to cheat and the consequences from his actions are coming back to bite him in the butt. Troy had all he needed and now he has nothing no home, no family, and no friends to help him. He hit a very big wall and I feel this is his breaking point, he finally realized that he had the things he wanted, and he just couldn’t see it before. His legacy changed from being a crump to understand what it really means to give and receive when it is needed.

I think Troy ultimately left his legacy behind by the actions he made, for example, when he told rose about what he had been doing and that he now has a baby. He made those decisions for himself and that left him in a tough spot because he had nothing. “Troy: in talking, woman, let me talk. I’m trying to find a way to tell you...I’m gonna be a daddy. I’m gonna be someone’s daddy.”(66). This is wear try went wrong, he told Rose which was the right thing to do but he shouldn’t have been going around with another woman in the first place. He also shows his legacy in a positive way, in one part of the play he’s talking to “death”. “Alright...Mr. Death. See now… I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take and build me a fence around this yard. See? I’m gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me. Then I want you to stay on the other side” (77). This is where Troy takes his strength back and decides he’s gonna do what he can to get his family back. I feel Troy tried very hard to provide for him family, but he also was a cheating and non-caring person. Both of those things are very important for people to have in order to be happy and give others happiness.

What is Happiness..?

Happiness in this book is a confusing thing because each character has a different definition of happiness. Troy finds happiness as living his life and providing for his family but also having something he can escape to. For example, the woman that he had a baby with was his way of escaping his daily routine of working, coming home, and providing for the family. "'I can laugh out loud...and it feels good. It reaches all the way down to the bottom of my shoes. Rose, I can't give that up'" (69). For Rose, happiness is a different story, she defines happiness as being with her family, loving, and caring for the people that she is closest with. This is why she stays home to cook and clean while Troy is out being the breadwinner. For Cory, happiness means doing what he loves you and he loves playing football but his dad doesn't think that he will be happy in the long run. I don't think happiness has an overall definition in this book just because each character has their own way of looking at things in a happy or negative way.

Our society presents happiness kind of like the book fences does. Each individual in our society perceives happiness in a different way happiness can be a routine that you do daily and you can be perfectly happy with that or doing something different every day. I think happiness is over glamorized because we are so infatuated with the fact that we can live every day being happy with who we are but society makes it hard on people. I would say happiness is not an accurate portrayal  of reality because being real doesn't mean that you're happy all the time sure you can overall be happy and have happiness but there will always be negativity in the world. I don't think happiness is a right because I think we decided our own happiness and it shouldn't have to be a right to be happy with your life.

Lastly I would say happiness in the book fences and in the real world is close in comparison because each individual has their own definition of happiness. Although I do think the real world has a big society influenced happiness and by that I mean society tells us what we need to be happy. In the book I feel like each character knows what they want to be happy but the reality is that they can't find it. I would say comparing the book to reality doesn't justify what happiness really is but then again neither does the real world.

Troy is a....

In the book fences by August Wilson, Troy is a Father, brother, Husband, Former athlete, and the breadwinner of the family, he is a very important person to a lot of people. Troy does all the necessary things to be the best father, brother, etc. as he possibly can. “That’s all I got rose. That’s all I can give. I can’t give nothing else” (Wilson 40). Although when it comes to his first marriage he wasn’t there for his kids like he should have been.  At one point in the play his son from his first marriage, Lyons, says “if you wanted to change me, you should have been there when I was growing up. I come by to see you …ask for ten dollars and you want to talk about how I was raised. You don’t know nothing about how I was raised” (Wilson 19). As the father to his son from his current marriage, Cory, he’s trying to teach his son the value of a dollar by only paying for only the necessities, not entertainment. Troy being the breadwinner of the family means when Cory asks for money for something that is only for entertainment, he makes him work for his own money. Rose tries to do all she can to make everyone happy and keep the drama to a minimum.  “Times have changes from when you was young, Troy. People change. The world changing all around you and you can’t even see it” (Wilson 40). When Troy was young he wanted to play baseball but when he got on the team he realized he was just going to be a benchwarmer. Troy doesn’t want Cory to hope and dream for unrealistic things so he tells Cory to get his job back so he earns his own money. Rose tried to convince Troy that racism isn’t the same as it used to be when he was a young boy. When Troy was young he wanted to play baseball just like Cory does now but he never got to play because he was a different race. He is trying to protect his son from the same thing happening to him. Troy treats Rose like she’s just his play toy, “we go upstairs in that room at night… and I fall down on you and try to blast a hole into forever” (Wilson 40). I feel Tory is just trying to get by because everyone around him takes everything out of him. So when it comes to his family he can’t give all the care and love that he wants to.

August Wilson's Legacy

August Wilson was an African American playwright who created a series of 10 plays. “I read that [Moss Hart’s autobiography, Act One] when I was 20 and didn’t know anything about theater” (Kachka). His love for plays and theater was always there but at around the age of 20 he started actually writing some of his own work. He took notes of the people around him in his daily life, anything from people at the local bars to random people on the streets. Then when he would get home from doing his “research”, he would sit and write for hours. Wilson’s plays were very influential in fact that they were real, this is something that not many people had done in the past so it was definitely a change to the theatrical community. Because of how different these plays were and how the reality affected people, Wilson obviously made a lasting impression on the community.

As individuals and the public, every one apart of that said community leaves behind a legacy, whether it is good or bad. Wilson’s legacy of showing the reality of African Americans hardship and reality in society helped shape the next generation of playwrights and the theater goers. As an appreciation and acknowledgment of August’s work, a theater in New York City where he grew up, was renamed after him in 2005. Wilson was able to pass on his legacy by doing something that would forever change the theatrical community forever. I don’t think people understand that a legacy can leave behind a certain reputation. Whether a legacy is positive or negative it can affect the future and reflect on the past, leaving a legacy is a very important part of living. Leave a legacy you can be proud of.