Fences

Fences - A Response to Professor Fusi's Lecture

I read Fences for the first time last year in my AP English class. We had just finished with all of our AP testing, and my teacher felt the need to further broaden her students horizons with a few of her personal favorites. Fences by August Wilson was the first play we read. We read the play aloud, which took us three class periods. Each time we all portrayed a character, and attempted to put on an accent fitting the character. My favorite was my friend John's accent. He played Gabe, and spoke in an odd almost slow sing-song voice. Reading the story for a second time I still heard John's voice inside my head each time Gabe's character speaks.

Reading the story for the second time could not elicit the same reaction I had for the story the first day my English class read it aloud. Now I enjoy the story, knowing the ending, and I appreciate what it teaches me. However, when I first heard the play I am ashamed to admit that I believed it to be just another story about how life was hard for families years ago.

This time I recognized the fence metaphor, and in reading the play I searched for signs of Troy setting up his own fence around himself. He grew up poor, in a family of eleven children with a life-hardened father. Something this play teaches us is that life experiences shape who we are. This means the life experiences people experience on their own as well as the experiences taught inadvertently to us by our parents. As hard as Cory worked to escape his father's shadow, he could not. As hard as Troy worked to escape responsibility, he could not. Troy's past determined his future, his son's future, and both of their reason.

This example of people living in a social class, stuck in the belief that they can only reach as far as they can see is similar to the family of one of my best friends, Mitchell. His father is a truck driver. He never went to college, still he works hard, never for fun always out of necessity or responsibility. He holds himself back from achieving full happiness, and why I cannot understand. What I know is that his son was raised with the same beliefs. Work hard to earn money and support your family. Don't stray too hard from what you know you can reach. Sometimes I wonder what they would learn from reading Fences. As for me, Fences opened my mind to a lifestyle I have never experienced. I have always had opportunity, and been pushed to reach my dreams. I can only imagine a life where this is not true.

I sometimes wonder if the characters in the play learn anything throughout their lives. Did I simply miss the connection?