Troy's Damaging Relationship With His Father example essay topic

Troy's Battle with Anger Conflicts and tensions between family members and friends are key elements in August Wilson's play, Fences. The main character, Troy Maxon, has struggled his whole life to be a responsible person and fulfill his duties in any role that he is meant to play. In turn, however, he has created conflict through his forbidding manner. The author illustrates how the effects of Troy's stern upbringing cause him to pass along a legacy of bitterness and anger which creates tension and conflict in his relationships with his family. Troy's relationship with his father was one, which produced much tension, and had a strong influence on Troy's relationships with his loved ones as an adult. He had very little respect for his father because his father did not, in Troy's mind, make his family a priority.

At an early age, Troy's father beat him "like there was no tomorrow" because he caught Troy getting "cozy" with a girl (549; I, 4). Troy said that "right there is where [he became] a man" (549; I, 4). It was at that moment that Troy made the decision to free himself from his father's power. Despite the fact that he did eventually escape his father's wrath, the struggle with his father's aggressive behavior and lack of love resulted in a coldness that resided in Troy's heart toward life and love. His father did not care about his children; children were there to work for the food that he ate first.

Troy describes his feelings toward his father by saying, "Sometimes I wish I hadn't known my daddy. He ain't cared nothing about no kids. A kid to him wasn't nothing. All he wanted was for you to learn how to walk so he could start you to working" (548; I, 4). Although Troy had very little respect for his father and vowed to be nothing like him, many of his father's harsh personality traits show up in his own personality. Despite Troy's continuous attempts to push himself away from anything he had ever known about his father, the inheritance of such irrational behavior was inevitable because it was all he had ever known.

The inheritance of this angry behavior was, in turn, the cause of his damaging relationships with his own family. Just as Troy endured his father's cruel ways, Troy's family is left with no choice but to try to learn to live with his similar ways. Troy's family is one that strives to maintain a sense of harmony and balance in the household. They avoid conflict, knowing that Troy's irrational reactions are not worth enduring far any reason.

The members of the family that makes the most effort to keep the family level is Troy's wife, Rose. The narrator tells us that Rose is a gentle woman. She cares a great deal for her family and her husband, despite the challenge of making her home a positive environment under the strains of a man with such impossible qualities. The author explains her reasons for enduring Troy by saying that " her devotion to him stems from her recognition of the possibilities of her life without him: a succession of abusive men and their babies, a life of partying and running the streets, the Church, or aloneness with its attendant pain and frustration" (526; I, 1). In light of the fact that Troy is a good man and provides for their family in a way of his duty, Rose loves and supports him and "either ignores or forgives his faults, only some of which she recognizes" (526; I, 1).

Despite his love and respect for his wife, Troy acts extremely disrespectfully towards Rose. Due to the lack of love and respect that Troy was shown as a boy, he does not know feelings to his family. He talks down to his wife as if she were a child, while at the same time he declares his love for her to his friend, Bono. Troy's fault, however, in declaring his love for his wife and family. He says, "I love Rose" (555; II, 1), but when the time comes for him to show his love, he only disrespects her. When Rose asks Troy what he and Bono are talking about one afternoon, Troy snaps, "What you worried about what we getting into for her son against her husband's combative words and rules, Troy refuses to listen to her reasoning.

It is unclear that Troy loves her, yet, because of his history with a battering father, there is an unconscious force that conjures condescension in his voice and actions towards any argument that Rose puts forth. Cory, Troy and Rose's son continuously avoid Troy's degrading remarks and strive to make Troy proud of him. He excels in everything that he does for the sole purpose of gaining approval from Troy, yet he is only rebuked for his efforts. When Cory questions Troy's reactions, Troy threatens Cory. Troy explodes with rage and retorts with responses like, "I'm gonna tell you what your mistake was. See... you swung at the ball and didn't hit it.

That's strike one. See, you in the batter's box now. You swung and you missed. That's strike one. Don't's trike out" (553; I, 4)!

Troy's main memories of his father in childhood are those of anger, like those evident in his attitude toward Cory. He remembers his father to be "just as evil as he could be... He wasn't good for nobody" (549; I, 4). Although these memories remind him of how not to be, his relationship with his father is very similar to his relationship with his own son. Troy's response to his relationship with his son is cold and unfeeling, just like the attitude his father held toward him.

When Cory is searching for some acceptance and asks Troy if he likes him, Troy responds, "Liked you? Who the hell say I got to like you? What law is there to say I got to like you?" (542; I, 1). Cory's efforts to be like his father either got unnoticed, or even more discouraging, are reprimanded from the point of view that they are not focused or responsible. Troy's idea of his role to his family is for him to be a responsible father and husband. His preoccupations with the importance of this role cause him to be concerned only with the fact that he does not view Cory as a responsible person.

He overlooks Cory's efforts to please him and make a career for his son, learned from his past with his own father, is responsible for the tension that builds between him and Cory. This tension will eventually be the cause of the lost relationship that is identical to the lost relationship that is identical to the lost relationship between Troy and his father. Troy's damaging relationship with his father had a dual effect in his life. It created a conscious awareness of how not to conduct his life and built fences, which inevitably recreated his father in his personality. These fences shaped and formed his relationships with his son. Due to his conscious efforts to not become what he did hold that were his father's.

The narrowness of his thoughts and ideas about life made him an almost impossible person with whom to have a relationship. These flaws permanently changed the lives of the people around him and built barriers which were too solid to ever be broken.

Bibliography

Wilson, August. Fences. New Worlds of Literature: Writings from America's Many Cultures. 2nd ed. Jerome Beauty and J. Paul Hunter. New York: Norton, 1994.522-575.