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. 

Putting Troy in place

Troy is Fence’s protagonist. He is a very responsible man whose failed dreams lead him to be prone to believing in telling fake stories and illusions to make his life sound better and more exciting than it really is. Troy instigates conflict as a result of his ability to believe in self-created illusions and his inability to accept other's choices in life when they differ from Troy's own philosophy.

Troy’s inability to accept other’s ideas is one of his crucial downfalls. He considers his route the only option. This characteristic has been developed because of the hardship that he has had to endure. I still don’t think it is right for Troy to inflict his opinions over other people’s lives as much as he does.

It’s important that people are able to forge their own paths and be unique. Troy doesn't allow others to create their own path, he institutes his own. But it turns out Troy’s path isn't so clean either.

Troy walks a jaded path of hypocrisy. He demands that his family and loved ones live very practical and responsible lives but he himself is guilty of having an affair and rebelling against racist practices of his employers.

Troy seems to refuse to see life in the way he presents it to other but rather through how he perceives the same events in his head.

Maslow’s hierarchy places love/belonging as the third most important level of needs to thrive as a person in an environment. While Troy provides for the bottom two, is that enough? I think a father figure should be viewed as more than just a provider.

At the beginning of the play we joke with Troy about getting away with his affair and viewing him as the hero of the family, but as things progress we have to analyze his negative attributes as major character flaws in a conflicted man. 

August Wilson: Breaking Down Walls

The year is 1985. A gallon of gas would bring you to the subtotal of $1.09. The first .com domain is registered. And the Government is trying to crack down on Aids. Amongst these events of the world August Wilson’s “Fences” premieres.

Fences, Wilson’s most popular play, chronicles the story of a Negro baseball league player who must leave his job on the baseball diamond to work as a garbage man. It takes place in the 1950’s. The story does more than just touch on the racial inequalities of the time but revolves around them.

Think of the people in the audience to view such a play. What do you picture? If you’re like me you probably picture a stereotypical play audience: dressed up, clean, white people. There they sat learning about the struggle of an African American just years before.

Throughout August Wilson’s Career he aimed to speak on these taboos of racial stereotypes, pursuing them rather than just hushing them into a corner.

August Wilson was a black man, who wrote about African American struggles but his legacy will go on in being a much needed figure to break down our racial differences. Whether it was about the people in the theaters or the people he was writing about. He aimed to accomplish a setting where a person of any color could be seen the same. He was the playwright we all needed. His plays dance over historical pretense and racial boundaries to describe a world often unseen by audiences in theaters. He aims to break down the walls that institutionalized racism has built up.

Wilson’s plays can teach us so much, learning where we came from so we can shape a better tomorrow.