Blog Question #6 - Second Half

From the first lines of his play "Fences," August Wilson hits us with black culture, diction, and words.  In 1987, only a black person could use the word "nigger" and not expect to be hurt.  On the other hand, a black person using the word "nigger" about another black person shows a certain lack of respect for his own race. In this play, Troy searches for himself, his inner self.  The question he silently asks in all his actions is:  Who am I?  With Bono in the first act, he is "Buddy" like Jackie Gleason's character was to Art Carney's in "The Honeymooners."  Gleason was the lead.  Or, perhaps "The Flintstones" might be a better choice because it's more current.  In "The Flintstones," Fred and Barney are buddies, but Fred is the lead. His opinions carry more weight. He is "Boss." Both Troy and Bono are blue collar workers - garbage collectors, but Troy isn't content to stay in that job where everyone is a black man.  He challenges that segregation at work and gets a promotion to a typical "white" job - garbage truck driver.  He pays a price, though, leaving his black community of workers.  He is lonely in his new job and his buddy doesn't come around on Fridays any more. Troy wants to be
"Good Father" but bumps his head on changing times. Baseball was a white man's game when he could have played and he doesn't understand that in 1957 with Jackie Robinson paving the way, his son, Cory, might have used the college football scholarship to work in a "white" profession.  Troy loves his wife, Rose, and dutifully gives her his paycheck each week so he can be "Man of the House," but he has an affair on the side and doesn't give Rose his attention.  Troy spends most of the play searching for himself and perhaps this search is more than Troy. Perhaps Wilson is using Troy to be the "Black Man" in a white man's world.

Wilson has all the family, except Raynell, institutionalized at the end of the play.  Troy is dead and underground,  Lyons is in jail, Gabriel is in a mental hospital, Cory is in the Marines, and Rose is a steady church supporter.  I think Wilson is saying that to the black culture, institutions are where blacks find their place. And he is angry.  In an interview (1989) with Bill Moyers in American Theatre, Wilson makes a strong point that blacks have their own culture.  They are and act differently from whites, Asians, and other cultures.  He says that "the real struggle, since an African first set foot on the continent, is the affirmation of the value of oneself... [and if] you have had to give up that self, then you are not affirming the value of the African being."  Wilson believes that an African should not try to become someone else in the white world.  In the play, Raynell is the hope of the family.  Times may change quickly enough so that she doesn't have to seek life within an institution, but may break down the "fence" between the black culture and others.