In August Wilson’s Fences, Troy Maxson is the leading man. He is depicted as a fifty- three-year-old, African American man, holding a job in the sanitation department as a garbage man. Growing up, Troy was a baseball star in the Negro Leagues. Unfortunately, Troy’s athletic ability diminished before the Major Leagues accepted blacks. He was hard working, strong and prone to twisting the truth. Troy had a troubled and bitter personality. He plays the dominant role in his thirty year friendship with a co-worker; Jim Bono. Troy is husband to Rose, father to Lyons, Cory, and Raynell, and brother to Gabriel. Troy’s years of hard work in trade for only miniscule progress depress him, and he struggles to express the love and support the feels for his loved ones.
Maxson is a strong individual who believes in hard work and puts in many hours to provide for his family. The duties and obligation that Troy internalizes characterize his view of his life. Troy feels the weight of responsibility so heavily that he can only envision endless weeks of labor, and endless paychecks to be cashed. Troy is headstrong and aggressive, constantly complicating the relationships with his family members. Troy’s hurtful actions and words make it nearly impossible for him to sustain healthy relationships. He is strong enough to provide for his family and honest enough to tell his wife that his mistress is pregnant. However, he is too weak to discontinue cheating on his wife. He lacks the strength to be open with his son and cannot bring himself to admit the true reason he never made the major leagues. The fifteen years that Troy spent in prison made him too old for the major leagues by the time he got out. As a husband, Troy is flawed, just as he is flawed as a father. Yet, his self-righteousness makes him
feel as if he is acting with integrity at all times, even when cheating on Rose. There are many weaknesses within Troy’s personality and way of conducting his relationships with loved ones. Troy wants Cory to have a better life than he has had working as a garbage man. Though he aims to be a good father to his son and to be a better father than his own father was, Troy’s inability to see that the world has changed keeps him from letting his son go to college. He is bitter and resentful at the opportunities he has lost due to the color of his skin, and is desperate to protect Cory from the same sort of disappointment that hit him so deeply. It is clear to see that Troy attempts to fulfill the expectations he sees for himself as a father and husband, but still falls short due to his own shortcomings.
Troy Maxson transforms into a lonely, unloved, fearful man from his original position as the center of attention in his family and social world. Though he constantly tries to escape his life, Maxson tries to engage life and challenge death because of how genuinely he believes in himself. Troy begins by confronting his employees about their discriminatory practices, he boasts to his best friend Bono and family member that he is unafraid of death and he keeps a secret that he thinks he can get away with about his affair with Alberta. When Troy demands respect from his son, Cory, he gets it and when he teases his other son Lyons, Troy feels bigger and better. Shown through the three Fridays interspersed in Fences, Troy descends into a lonely, friendless and loveless life when his fears, his anger and his secrets get the better of him, causing his loved ones to lose their respect for him and to change their life so that they do not depend on his presence anymore. Troy forfeits his role of loving and devoted husband, generous and responsible parent and loyal, honest and inspiring friend. Troy goes from juggling two relationships with women to having none. Troy calls the risky action of having an affair with
Alberta, “stealing second.” Though if that is how Troy plays ball at the beginning of the play, then one could say he ends the play as a benchwarmer.
Looking at Troy’s relationship with his eldest son, Lyons, you can immediately see that their relationship is strained from the minute that Lyons makes his first appearance. During the time when the audience first meets Lyons, Troy rudely greets him by asking “What you come ‘Hey, Popping’ me for?” (13). We learn that Lyons is a struggling musician who asks to borrow money from his father. Troy is not at all supportive of Lyons’ dreams of being a musician, even though that is what makes Lyons happy. Troy constantly insults Lyons’ by telling him that he is lazy because he would rather pursue his dreams than get a job similar to the one that Troy holds as a garbage man. Although Troy’s relationship with Lyons is the least complicated of all of his relationships, the strain between the two because of Troy’s constant insults is evident.
When it comes to the relationship between Troy and his youngest son, Cory, the strain is even more apparent. It is obvious to the audience that Troy and Cory simply do not get along. The two are constantly bickering, mostly about Cory’s dream to play football at the college level. Since playing baseball did not get Troy anywhere, he feels that football will not benefit Cory and that Cory should “get recruited in how to fix cars or something where he can make a living” (8). Troy constantly looks down on Cory’s dream and pressures his son to quit the high school football team so that he can work at the grocery store. The verbal abuse of Cory by Troy is enough to make Cory question whether his own father even likes him, but it is not until after Troy’s affair with Alberta is out in the open that Troy and Cory’s unhealthy relationship reaches a whole new level. Neither Lyons nor Cory share a close relationship with their father and Troy is to blame for that. After finding out about Troy’s affair, Cory stands up to his father in order to protect his mother during an altercation between Troy and Rose. Troy almost hits Cory, but stops
himself before threatening Cory by saying, “You better stay away from me, boy” (72). After this incident, Cory and Troy’s relationship close to nonexistent until the time of their last fight. During that fight, after two months of staying out of his father’s way, Cory has finally had enough of Troy’s verbal abuse and once again stands up to him. This quarrel ends with Troy nearly hitting Cory with a baseball bat, but he is once again able to stop himself and instead kicks Cory out of the house. Troy and Cory’s relationship completely diminished and he will never again hear from his son. Troy’s actions and verbal abuse resulted in an unhealthy relationship with his youngest son, and destroyed their relationship the two had in the first place. The second most important relationship that a man can sustain is the one with the person whom he has built his family with. In Troy’s case, that person would be his wife of eighteen years, Rose. From the beginning, we can see that Troy is the dominant one in the relationship. He speaks to Rose in a crude manner, referring to her as “woman” instead of by her name. Troy is always making inappropriate sexual remarks towards Rose in front of the other characters. An example of that is when Troy tells his best friend Jim Bono that he is “still gonna be stroking” (20) if Bono comes over to Troy’s on Monday morning. As if that was not already enough to make any relationship unhealthy, we soon learn that Troy is going to be a father as a result from an extramarital affair.
In the beginning of Act Two, Troy confronts Rose to inform her that his mistress, Alberta, is expecting a baby and he is the father. Troy attempts to justify his affair by saying that when he is with Alberta he can “get away from the pressures of the world” and “sit up in her house and laugh” (69). Right then and there, we see the already unhealthy relationship between Troy and Rose completely collapse.
The final family relationship that Troy is involved in is between himself and his brother,
Gabriel. This relationship is a simple one due to the brain damage Gabriel suffered during World War II. Although Gabriel does not understand a lot because of his brain damage, his relationship with Troy would still be as unhealthy. This unhealthy relationship is due to Troy’s improper use of the money that Gabriel has been compensated by the United States government. Troy gains control of Gabriel’s money and has Gabriel permanently put away in an institute due to his mental health problems. Although we do learn that Troy accidentally signed the papers to lock Gabriel away because of his inability to read, we know that he never took initiative to free Gabriel. Troy keeps money that is not his while keeping his own brother locked in a mental institute.
Throughout Wilson’s Fences, we as an audience are introduced to several of Troy’s relationships with different members of his family. Troy’s tough personality traits keep him from sustaining healthy relationships. His repetitive actions show that he is hard-headed, driven, stubborn and struggles to live happily with his family for these reasons. He views himself in a light that leads him to believe he is invincible, and so long as one views their self and the world through such a delusional lens, they will never thrive in relationships with others.