African Americans have allowed themselves to think that everything is about racism. They see themselves building emotional fences in a form of self-defense. In the way the main character Troy impacts his family, August Wilson provides an insightful look into the culture and history of 1950's black America. The story illustrates Troy, his father and briefly his son, in an examination of how these men serve to symbolize the struggle of men and how those struggles are often passed down from generation to generation. Throughout the story, the word Fences symbolizes every difficult aspect they have encountered.
Fences is a lesson in hope. First, there is hope for a better future of African .
Americans and by extension for all human kind. If we view Troy's life as a whole, we .
are seeing it as tragic. He was abandoned by his mother at age eight, fled from a brutal, lustful father at age fourteen, began steeling for a living and served fifteen years on a murder charge. He held a steady but disagreeable job as a garbage collector, supported a wife and son, stayed sober six days a week, won his own private civil right battle to become a driver and remained faithful to his wife Rose for eighteen years.
Fences is a fascinating play of an African American family in the 1950's. It's a tale of newly released black slaves trying to survive in the middle of American in an urban industrial city. It's a story of four generations of Black Americans and how they passed on a legacy of morals, attitudes, and patterns of life. Fences examines the escalating racial tensions in America during the 1950's. It deals with complex social issues such as racism and adultery. The author also recognizes that the family represents the foundation for American society as a whole, and chooses the family as the emphasis for the story. The family is built with that specific form of love, respect and dreams that most people had during this time.