football. In trying to control his son, Troy alien-
ates Cory; simultaneously, he is estranged from his
wife, Rose, by his infidelity. While Troy asserts that
life is a game that he can win and death is nothing
but a “fast ball on the outside corner,” he is over-
taken by both, and he goes down swinging.
The central metaphors of the drama are baseball
and the fence that Troy builds throughout the play.
A rag ball, suspended from a string, hangs from
a tree in the Maxsons’ small dirt yard and serves
as the focal point of the sparse setting. An unfin-
ished fence frames the yard, and a sawhorse and a
pile of lumber indicate Troy’s building project. The
fence has multiple meanings, representing Rose’s
desire to protect her family and Troy’s need to shut
out everything that threatens him. Additionally, it
symbolizes the institutions that confine all of the
major characters. Troy; Lyons, his oldest son; and
Bono, his friend, have all been imprisoned. At the
end, Cory joins the Marines, Rose seeks refuge in
the church, and Troy’s brother, Gabriel, is confined
in a mental institution. Essentially, the fence rep-
resents the institutions that are the repositories of
the characters’ and, by extension, African Ameri-
cans’ dashed dreams.
Similarly, baseball, once considered the coun-
try’s favorite pastime, symbolizes the American
dream and represents Troy’s hopes for an equal
chance at life. It also signifies the bitterness that
destroys his relationship with his son and, ulti-
mately, is the instrument of his death. During an
argument, Troy calls two strikes against Cory for
his disobedience and warns him not to strike out.
As they confront each other later in the play, Troy
backs the young man against the tree, and Cory
grabs the bat to strike his father. As a legacy, Troy
leaves anger, failed dreams, and alienation. He dies
alone in his backyard, while swinging his bat.
While Troy’s death suggests that he is a tragic
figure and the play is a pessimistic representation
of black life, the story ends on a positive note, of-
fering Troy redemption and the surviving char-
acters hope. Gabriel serves as a mystical figure in
Fences. Although severely wounded in World War
II and left mentally deficient, believing that he is
the archangel, Gabriel is the play’s spiritual force.
He forewarns Troy of his death and after Troy’s fu-
neral performs a “life-giving” dance as he blows his
trumpet and opens the gates of heaven. Through
this flawed figure as well as the women Troy leaves
behind, Wilson gestures toward hope and a life
free of fences.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blumental, Anna. “ ‘More Stories Than the Devil Got
Sinners’: Troy’s Stories in August Wilson’s Fences.”
American Drama 9, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 74–96.
Gates, Henry Louis, and Alan Nadel, eds. May All Your
Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August
Wilson. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994.
Pereira, Kim. August Wilson and the African-Ameri-
can Odyssey. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1995.
Plum, Jay. “Blues, History, and the Dramaturgy of
August Wilson.” African American Review 27, no.
4 (Winter 1993): 561–567.
Shannon, Sandra G. The Dramatic Vision of August
Wilson. Washington, D.C.: Howard Univerity
Press, 1996.
Wang, Qun. An In-Depth Study of the Major Plays of
African American Playwright August Wilson: Ver-
nacularizing the Blues on Stage. Lewiston, N.Y.:
Mellen, 1999.
Barbara WilcotsFinney, Nikky (1957– )
Author, visionary, teacher, and poet Nikky Finney
was born by the sea in Conway, South Carolina,
to Frances Finney, a teacher, and Ernest Finney,
a civil rights lawyer who is currently a Supreme
Court justice for the state of South Carolina. The
proud Finneys crowned their daughter with her
Gullah legacy, out of which she continues to write.
Finney recalls that when her grandmother died
she participated in the Gullah ritual of placing
newly minted coins over the eyelids: “I kissed the
pennies then closed down the eyes of the woman
who had taught me to see” (2003, 48). Finney is a
graduate of Talladega College in Alabama, from
which she received a B.A. degree in English lit-
erature. She pursued graduate studies at Atlanta
University.182 Finney, Nikky