Fences by Wilson

The play has used a number of symbols to develop the overriding theme. The first category of symbols is the trains. It is through Troy that the author brings in Raynell, his illegitimate baby, for the first time home. Troy comfortably sits with the motherless baby where he once reigned on a porch even though it is currently an unwanted presence. Troy proceeds to sing the song which echoes all the pleas of an individual man begging the train engineer to allow him to ride in hiding and for free.

With special focus on the Harlem Renaissance when the African American artists and writers were flourishing across the Twentieth Century and when slavery times were on, trains were literary devices for African American music and literature. Characters riding a train or talking of trains is a representation of change. The other major symbol is fences.

August Wilson named his play, Fences, due to the fact that the characters lives keep changing around a fence-building project that basically serves as a literal as well as a figurative device of fundamental representation of the relationships bonding and breaking in the focus of the entire backyard. Due to the fact that Rose seeks eradicate the fence built serves as meaning to her character as she sees it as something necessary and positive (Wilson & Freedman 78).

Bono further observes that Rose is for the opinion that the fence is built to keep her loved ones in. There are a number of themes that this play has sought to depict along the elements of developing relevance to the audience. The first is the coming of age with AuthorLastName3 regard to the damaged black manhood’s cycle. Clearly, both Troy and Bono are seen to keep relating the stories of their respective childhood in the south as well as the tales sourced from their individual relationships which have difficult fathers towards Lyons.

Their painful memories basically provide one of the contexts for understanding the differences and similarities across the generations which separate Lyons and Cory from Troy and Bono. The father to Troy, just like most of the other blacks after abolishing slavery became a failed sharecropper. Troy also claims that the father was very evil to an extent that no woman was willing to stay with him for long. It is for this reason that Troy grew up motherless (Shannon 56).

When he attained the age of fourteen, his father evidently noticed that Troy was taking care of a mule which had wandered off. Troy’s father later found Troy with one of the girls that Troy admired. At this point, he severely beats Troy using leather reins. Troy developed a thought that his father was angry at his disobedience. However, to prove that Troy’s father was very despicable, he then raped the girl. The other major theme in the play’s narration is the interpretation and inheritance history.

Most of the conflict within the plays done by Wilson, including Fences, comes up as a result of the characters being at odds with the manner through which they perceive the past while still seeking to deal with their respective future. For instance, Troy Maxson as well as his son, sees Cory’s future in a different way as they interpret history. Expressly, Troy does not entirely want Cory AuthorLastName4 to keep experiencing the various forms of hardship as well as disappointment which Troy kept feeling while becoming a professional sports player.

It is for this reason that he demands that Cory solicits additional work after school other than practicing for the football team. However, Cory sees that most of these times have changed due to the fact that baseball rejected players as talented like Troy due to their skin color (Bloom 34). Cory is well aware of the possibilities existing that the professional sports world in including him in the team practice. Cory provides to Troy a number of examples of the previous successful African American athletes. Cory’s sport, football, extensively integrated the players a very long time ago before baseball.

For the purposes of having Troy accepting such a change within the world, it is clear that there is cause for Troy to essentially accept the collapse of his personal dreams. There are various impactful motifs used in the play as style. One of the motifs is death and baseball. Initially, Troy Maxson intensely declares that death is not anything more than a fastball at the outside corner. Based on this line, it is clear that the former slugger of the Negro League majorly merges the past experience while he was a ballplayer with aspects of his philosophy.

Troy, Rose, and Bono argue on the integral performance of the black ballplayer at the Major League with comparison to Troy at the time when he was at his prime periods. Fastballs on the outside corner were Troy’s homerun material (Menson-Furr 23). Even though Troy basically feels well beleaguered from work while still deeply troubled for AuthorLastName5 purposes of coming along early towards playing at the Major Leagues due to the segregated elements of his top form, Troy holds the belief that he is duly unconquerable and rather immortal in relation to issues of both life and death.

Troy also knows he was in apposition of overcoming pneumonia ten years ago while surviving an abusive father and the treacherous climate and conditions while adapting to the survival of the urban environment as he walked towards the northern section to live in Pittsburgh. Seeds and growth are the other essential aspect of motif that the book has emphasized on. Characters in ‘Fences’ figuratively and literally employ the motif of plants, seeds, flowers, and related actions such as growing, planting, taking root, and gestation within both their actions and language.

Similar to August Wilson’s mother, Daisy, Rose bears a flower’s name. Rose is one of the typical African Americans housewives of the 1950s. She is depicted as the family and caretaker of the home as she represents nurturing and loving cares which are attributes that are frequently applied in growing plants. Most of the flower’s characteristics after which she derived her name, Rose is termed as a beautiful soul protecting her family as well as protecting herself in times when Troy inflicts harm on her (Bloom 34).

To Raynell, Rose further demonstrates that each seed will take considerable time to grow. It is on these grounds that Rose adds that it needs to be given a chance to grow. This exemplifies her levels of generosity and patience across her relationships with each other along the play. For example, when she takes Cory’s side on the AuthorLastName6 decision made to play football, her concern and compassion towards Gabriel upon his arrest as well as accepting Raynell as her personal child immediately Alberta dies.