Fences: The Dynamics of Black Literary Heroism

March 23, 2003
by Ayanna Gillian
Self Empowerment Learning Fraternity, Trinidad and Tobago

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Karl Beckson describes the dramatic hero as simply the most important character in a play, who moves the action but whose heroism does not necessarily imbue him with qualities of virtue and courage typically ascribed to the hero of mythology. Dorothea Krook however, has a more complex definition of the dramatic hero, in particular, the tragic hero. She asserts that while the qualities that distinguish the tragic hero may be as multitudinous as the playwright wishes to make them, the most distinctive element to her is his, "charismatic charm... the outward radiance of a spirit, brimming over with energy of life, a superabundance of vitality, which is the sacred founts of all its gifts and graces" . In August Wilson's critically acclaimed play, Fences, Troy Maxon's character looms larger than simply being the primary persona who moves the action. As we examine Wilson's vision to portray the everyday life of black Americans as noble, transcendental and beautiful, we see that his characterization of Troy achieves just that: the portrayal of an ordinary man of humble beginnings and his heroic struggle to live life on his own terms. Troy is thus not only the quintessential dramatic hero, but also a humanistic, personal one for his heroism lies in his raw, vivid uncompromising humanity. While he is unable, even at the end of the play, to put to rest the demons of his past and come to terms with the wounds of history, it is in his nobility of spirit and transcendental strength, coupled with his vulnerability, bitterness and rigidity that draw us to him and make him a most vivid, moving and heroic character in every sense of the word.

Our first glimpse of Troy in the stage directions of Act One, Scene one, immediately sets up this heroic construct. His name alone has great mythological significance. Critic Gunilla Theander Kester asserts that the name Troy within the Western tradition " brings to mind fateful, historic connotations of war and destruction" (109). He is also described as "a large man with thick, heavy hands" and constant references are made throughout the play to his sheer size and indomitable presence. His wife, Rose and son, Cory both claim that he seemed too big for the house and completely dominated the space. His strength and physical prowess as well as his flashes of temper seem to also conjure up images of the Yoruba orisa Ogun, the god of war and iron, which adds to his heroic physical presence on stage. Dorothea Krook speaks of the physical basis for the tragic hero's courage: "... the superabundance of vitality... is also the source of his courage; and it is in some sense, of the body: rooted in the physical, animal springs of life" The physical presence of this character on stage as well as the mythological significance accorded to his name has the important effect of not only setting Troy up as the theoretical hero since it is obvious from the beginning that he is the primary character, but he also imbues him with elements of the traditional hero, full of a sort of God-given strength and charisma.

Wilson's own Nationalist stance, greatly influenced by the Black Power Movement of the 1970's bore fruit in his Troy's own revolutionary struggle for racial equality in his workplace. He was the first to speak out against the discriminatory promotion practices, which denied blacks the opportunity to hold the better paying position of truck driver: " I went to Mr. Rand and asked him, ‘ Why?' Why you got the white mens driving and the coloured lifting?' Told him, ‘What's the matter, don't I count? You think only white fellows got sense enough to drive a truck?' ". Troy risked not only being fired by his white boss for what would have been perceived as impertinence, but also the possible censure of his black colleagues like Brownie who appeared to be a sort of "Uncle Tom" character.

Troy's sense of the injustice meted out to the ancestors of African slaves in America is acute. Throughout the play he makes references to the economic and social inequality between the two races, his main grouse stemming from his own exclusion from playing in the Major Leagues of Baseball based on the colour of his skin. In this Troy's role as hero and protagonist is to give rise to the author's own political message as well as to illustrate further the reality of African American life in the 1950's curtailed by history and memory.

Wilson is careful to construct Troy as a man who lives up to his responsibilities, one who is loyal and duty-bound to take care of his family. As a father he tries to instill in his sons a sense of duty and responsibility and a cognizance of the harshness of the world around them. He is a man without hope, without any illusions about any sense of justice in the world. In an interview with critic Sandra G Shannon, Wilson himself complains about the negative stereotypes still propagated about black people in American popular culture. His construction of Troy may have been an attempt to counteract this negative stereotype of the black male as lazy, shiftless and irresponsible. Certainly the responsibility of both Troy and his friend Bono to their families are an attempt to counteract the abandonment of the character of Bono's father and of the other fathers spoken of who abandoned their families in the wandering years after emancipation.

While Wilson has indeed attempted to paint Troy as a heroic character, it is important to properly examine the relatively new genre of African American Theatre and the inherent need for a new set of standards for literary criticism for this genre, which is so bound up in the historical, cultural, and the poetics of memory of African Americans. While the character of Troy may seem to fit neatly into the realm of tragic hero it is important to see him outside of that box and propose, as Larry Neal did in the 1960's during the Black Power Movement, the need for a "separate symbolism, mythology, critique and iconology that allows specific articulation and definition to black responses to the American experience".

Several critics have examined the African archetypes present in the work as well Wilson's use of distinctly African symbols instead of traditional Western ones. What must be noted as well is how Wilson uses Troy as a locus through which all the pain, degradation and lack of ‘place' in the African American experience is depicted. It is in Troy's suffering that we see the effects of history on the black psyche and the resultant existential loneliness, psychological scars and abject hopelessness. The very fact that most of the action takes place in the yard or on the front porch locates the drama in a place without boundaries, a place that is not fixed or' owned'. Hence the symbol of a fence that Troy and his son attempt to build through that the play becomes, not only a means of holding the family in, a symbol of protection, but an attempt at fixing and naming space where they can belong. Forever on the fringes of white American society, the fence becomes almost a ritual circle, which establishes protection, memory and ownership.

In a play that addresses the metaphysical problems of memory and the need to carve out a place in an adopted land, we can see how the heroism of Troy is indeed complex. In the context of the historical issues the play confronts, the virtue of the hero lies in his struggle to survive in a world that has denied him, and in his psychological flaws because of this denial. Troy emerges as a man ‘fenced in' by his past. His rejection from the Baseball Major Leagues in a time when blacks were not allowed to play, has left him with a bitterness that can only result from the cruel denial of the ultimate dream. As a result he seeks to deny both his sons the ability to try and fulfill their own destinies. He is unsupportive of Lyons career in music, and refuses to allow his younger son to accept a football scholarship, which would have allowed him to go to university. The pain of his own denied dream has locked him into a place where he cannot see past it. The irony is that while he asserts that he doesn't want his son to grow up like him, " I want him to move as far away from my life as he can get"; he denies him the opportunity that may have allowed him to do just that.

In one of the most moving passages in the play, Troy speaks of his own father: "Sometimes I wish I hadn't known my daddy... he ain't cared nothing about no kids". He describes a man without dreams and without happiness, a man cruel enough to almost kill his own son and rape a young girl. His recounting of the beating that he received from his father that almost killed him and led to his being on his own at the age of fourteen, echoes with historical significance as well as persona anguish for the hero. Many African Americans in the very early 1900's found themselves in this reality; Wandering with no place to go and no prospects for any sort of life. Troy speaks of "Coloured folks living down there on the river-banks... living in shacks made of sticks and tarpaper." As a personal experience for Troy however we get a glimpse into a mind with many demons that he has yet been unable to purge. The tragic irony of the tale of his father, however, lies in the fact that Troy seemed to be destined to relive his past through his own treatment of him son. Just like his father before him Troy too cast his own son out into the world and continued the cycle of pain and locked in memories.

The motif of death and baseball is possibly the most powerful image in the entire play. From the first scene where Troy declares that he has wrestled with death, and that "Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner", the idea of struggle and the fragility of this makeshift reality they have created is introduced. Although Troy has tried to create a protected space by building the symbolic fence, he is in constant war with Death personified as either a wrestler or a baseball coming at him. One can infer that his real life confrontation with Death at the hands of his father made him painfully aware of how easily all he had, even life could be taken from him. Thus what his son Cory may see as callousness, " Them feet and bones! That pumping heart... I give you more than anybody else is ever gonna give you" is simply the only reality that Troy has to offer his son, the only thing that could not be taken away.

In the realm of the tragic hero there is always a fatal flaw in his personality that causes or precipitates his downfall. Krook argues that it is the " chief outward sign of hubris which brings the tragic heroes and heroines to disaster" . However, with the character of Troy it is not that simple an equation. Wilson's careful construction of a historical reality shows that Troy is not just an individual, but the end result of an inviolate line of memory from the middle passage to the present. His failures are not simply a result of his personality but a result of his history. However it can be said that Troy's greatest difficulty was the ancient sin of visiting the sins of the father upon the son. He was unable to come to terms with his own reality and bitterness and instead of ensuring that his sons did not feel the pain he did, he made it a part of their reality as well.

Dramatically, Troy's downfall can be said to have been his infidelity to his loyal wife Rose. It is after this revelation that he had an affair that resulted in the conception of a child that his carefully constructed world begins to fall apart. The pace of the action increases rapidly as Rose ends their romantic relationship even though she stays in the house, his relationship with Cory deteriorates even further, and his own mental state seems to descend deeper and deeper into despair. The only thing that seemed to be salvaged in his life is his relationship with Alberta, with whom he had the affair. However even this is taken from him when she dies giving birth to his child.

A further example of the need to create a new method of literary criticism for black theater is that fact that although Troy can be seen as a tragic hero, Fences cannot be seen as a tragedy. It is Rose who ends the tragic cycle of memory when she agrees to be a mother to Troy's illegitimate child, saying, "... she's innocent... and you can't visit the sins of the father upon the child". Raynelle's birth and Cory's return to the house after Troy's death, herald a new beginning for the family. The meeting between Cory and Raynell is profound as it is the final resolution of a legacy of pain. As they sing together Troy's favourite song about his dog, Blue, it seems that his tormented spirit can be finally put to rest. The dance by his brother Gabriel who was injured in the war fighting for a country in which his brother could not even play baseball, forms the final ritualistic resolution of the conflict and the cycle of memory. What some critics had called a soundless terrifying dance is really a "heraldic epiphany", a distinctly African ritual, cleansing and sending on of the spirit of Troy to the other world . The stage directions "He finishes his dance and the gates of heaven stand open as wide as God's closet" confirm the cleansing and healing that has been brought about by the reconciliation of Troy's two children, children that represent opposite sides of his life and psyche. It is this reconciliation that heals the memory and seals the breach between the past and the future.

Fences is a work rich in historical significance, cultural allusions and memorable characters. The question of Troy's heroism must be looked at in the context of the genre of African American literature in order to fully appreciate the craft of the playwright and the psychology behind his crafting of character. While Troy was not able in life to reconcile the demons of his past, the lives of his children and the selfless choice of his wife served as a ritual cleansing for his spirit and gave new light to his role and a flawed intensely human hero.


Works Cited:

Beckson, Karl, Literary Terms: A Dictionary, Noonday Press; 3rd Revision edition (July 1989)

Fitzgerald, Sharon. "August Wilson: The People's Playwright", American Visions, August 2000

Harrison, Paul Carter. "August Wilson: A Casebook", African American Review, Winter 2001

Jackson, Gale. "The Way We Do: A Preliminary Investigation of the African Roots of African American Performance" 1991, African American Literary Criticism, 1773 to 2000 ed. Hazel Arnett Ervin, Twayne Publishers, New York

Kester, Gunilla Theander, "Approaches to Africa, The Poetics and Memory and the Body in Two August Wilson Plays" August Wilson: A Casebook. (Casebooks on Modern Dramatists) (ed) Marilyn Elkins

Krook, Dorothea "Heroic Tragedy" 1969 excerpt from Elements of Tragedy (New Haven Conn. and London, 1969), pp. 39-46, Tragedy: Development in Criticism: A Selection of Critical Essays ed. R.P Draper. The Macmillan Press Limited 1980

Stylan, J.L. The Dark Comedy-The Development of Modern Comic Drama, second ed., Cambridge University Press, 1968

Shannon, Sandra. "Blues, History and Dramaturgy: An Interview with August Wilson" (1994) p.379, African American Literary Criticism, 1773 to 2000 ed. Hazel Arnett Ervin, Twayne Publishers, New York

Wilson, August, Fences New American Library; Reissue edition (March 1995)

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