August Wilson resembles spirituality and survival in another play included in his cycle , namely Fences the plot of which revolves round two figures of fences. One is real and the other is metaphorical to give the representation of both defenses and obstructions. As Troy Maxon’s wife has a request to build a fence that would protect her family’s property , Troy tries his best in building spiritual fences of his own. Being segregated by the whites in the past , he creates fences that make his relation to his family , as a husband and a father turbulent . The same racial barriers , which hindered his talent as a great baseball player and became a garbage truck driver instead, appear again to separate Troy from his family. The playwright gives his character a suggestive name , “Troy” refers to a defensive wall and the internal resistance against outside assaults and attacks at war , just like the great Greek Troy. As for the name “Maxon” , it is derived from the name of a racially determined line, the Mason-Dixon line. So , Death would be the most proper guest such a wall and a line may welcome. After his girlfriend’s death while she was in childbirth , Troy does not welcome Death , but challenges it by the wall he constructs :
I’m gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me.
And I want you to stay on the other side . See? You stay
over there until you’re ready for me. Then you come on .
Bring your army . Bring your sickle. Bring your wrestling
clothes . I ain’t gonna fall down on my vigilance this time.
You ain’t gonna sneak up on me no more. When you ready
for me…that’s when you come around here… Then we
gonna find out what manner of man you are… You stay
on the other side of that fence until you ready for me.
Troy is striving to survive Death which means both to him , physical death and spiritual death. Blacks , simultaneously , die physically and spiritually due to racial discrimination and poverty. In spite of the fact that Troy’s fences resulted his alienation from his family , especially his wife , Rose’s literal fence she has asked for comes to form a good complement to her husband’s fences. They seek their family’s protection and the fences they have built seem tenacious though different.
Troy’s destroyed spirituality results the intergenerational conflict with his son , Cory. Their contention includes not only a physical confrontation but a spiritual one as well. The father does not want his son to be as disappointed as his father in sports. Troy reverses his racial experience of the past to Cory’s present ignoring the changes happened after seventeen years ago. It seems that Troy’s spiritual wounds are not healed yet ; he blinds his eyes to the present changes concerning the whites’ racial attitude toward the African Americans. Unlike his father , Cory believes the change really happen as he sees his father scolds the son’s reverence to football: “The Braves got Hank Aaron and Wes Covington. Hank Aaron hit two home runs today. That makes forty-three.” Ironically, Troy’s perspective justifies the father’s oppression as a spiritual protection from being devastated: “I don’t want him to be like me!”.
Asst. Lect. Shaima N. Mohammad
Dept. of Hotel Management
