Fences By August Wilson: Play Analysis

According to August Wilson's official website, Wilson was born in 1945 in Pennsylvania; he grew up in impoverished Hill district in Pittsburgh ghetto. As a young man Wilson dedicated himself to become a writer reading works of African Americans such as Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. Along with Wilson's professional life, He won two Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1987), and The Piano Lesson (1990), seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and he received twenty three honorary degrees. Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, which collects ten plays that explores the African American experience in the twentieth century, was recognized as one of the significant literary achievements in the American theater. The play Fences is considered as a chronicle play depicts the period of 1957. Wilson argues; "I'm taking each decade and looking at one of the
most important questions that blacks confronted in that decade and writing a play about it. … Put them all together and you have a history"(234). August Wilson's Fences play reflects the suffering and struggling of living of the African American in 1950s. During this period most aspects of the American life were obviously chopped by race especially towards the African Americans. It is farfetched dream for any black person to pursue a career in any field. In the light of the above, the play highlights the lack of satisfaction through emotions and the family relationships. The American Dream was just a dream for the African Americans due to inequality that convinced them that the pursuit of happiness is even harder to reach. The American Dream is a nationally thought of the United States. The American Dream has changed over the course of history and includes both personal components such as homeownership, upward mobility and also a global vision. The American Dream is about spiritual happiness than material goods. Authors, throughout history, have constantly evolved the notion of the American Dream for the people of the United States. The concept of the American Dream has been tackling extensively through literature and several significant works of art exposes it. Merton uses the idea of the American Dream to illustrate Anomie Theory of Deviance, saying that people allow themselves to follow illegal behaviors when they fail to fulfill the American Dream. Deviance is a result of the strain an individual feels when they legitimately cannot achieve success. Merton indicates in this theory that both the unequal opportunities and society's emphasis on success lead individuals to deviance behaviors. The resulting strain leads people to resort to illegitimate means instead. This pressure is increased by the culture of success in America. August Wilson reinterpreted the American Dream, specifically for African Americans, in one of his ten plays, known as Fences.
The Pulitzer Prize winning play Fences, was the third play written in Wilson's Cycle about the struggle of African American men and women during the 1950s. Despite the fact that the 1950s was the start of the Civil Rights movement, in Fences, Wilson does not provide the reader with the notion that the African American Dream lies solely within equality. Rather, August Wilson contrasts the motifs of death and baseball with seeds and growth regarding Troy Maxon the protagonist. In order to convey how the ambition to live out the true American Dream lies within the family. In Fences, August Wilson characterizes Troy Maxon the protagonist as an African American man who has faced adversity all throughout his life. Along with the play there are different conditions in Troy's life. First when he was a young boy, and then a teenager, till he became a grown man. With these age stages, Troy might be described in the light of Merton's theory, as Ritualist, Innovator, Retreatist, and eventually
Conformist.