SECTION B (NON-AFRICAN DRAMA) AUGUST, WILSON: Fences Comment on the appropriateness of the title, Fences.

Answer Details

The title of August Wilson's play Fences is highly appropriate, for the fence is both a literal object built on stage and a rich symbol that gathers up the play's central themes.

The literal fence

• Throughout the action Troy and Cory are slowly building a wooden fence around the Maxson yard, a task Rose has asked for.
• The unfinished fence is a constant physical presence, and the labour of building it frames the family's quarrels and conversations.

Fences that keep people in (love and protection)

• Bono observes that some people build fences to keep the ones they love close. Rose wants the fence because she is trying to hold her family together and keep her loved ones safe within it.
• The fence therefore stands for Rose's love and her wish to protect husband and son from a hostile world.

Fences that keep people out

• The fence also symbolises the barriers Troy builds against death. He boasts that he has fenced Death out of his yard and dares him to come.
• It suggests the defences people raise against danger, disappointment and mortality.

Fences of separation and division

• The fence marks the emotional walls that grow up between the characters: between Troy and Cory, whom he drives away, and between Troy and Rose after his betrayal.
• It reflects the racial barriers of segregated America that fenced black men like Troy out of opportunity, such as the colour bar that kept him out of professional baseball.

Irony of completion

• The fence is finished only late, by which time Troy's own fences have shut out his son and wounded his wife. The completed fence encloses a broken family.

Conclusion

The title Fences is apt because the fence operates on every level of the play: as a real structure, as a sign of love and protection, as a defence against death, and as an image of the social and emotional barriers that divide people. The single image thus unifies the whole drama.