12/27/2023 0 Comments Expressive coherence examples in film![]() ![]() Yet, while August Wilson seems concerned with highlighting this conflict and hypocrisy at the core of Troy’s character, he’s perhaps not condemning Troy personally. These fantasies of Troy’s suggest that his past failures and suffering have pushed his mind, perhaps as a kind of involuntary self-defense, to favor imagination and fictional constructions over any consistent, constant consideration of his real past. Troy’s inner conflict seems also to play out in the way he puts a fantastical spin on the reality of his past, such as telling fanciful tales about encounters he’s had with a personified form (the grim reaper or the devil) of death. But, in Cory’s particular case, he sees such possibilities as unrealistic (i.e., his belief that Cory will never succeed in professional football because black players aren’t given a chance). Similarly, Troy’s willingness to protest the unfair treatment of blacks in his workplace (they’re only hired to carry garbage, while whites are exclusively hired to drive the trucks), embodies a progressive view on the possibilities of race which mirrors the possibilities that his sons see for the future of race relations. But at the same time, Troy’s affair with Alberta suggests that he’s perfectly willing to engage in something not grounded in practicality, but rather in pure pleasure divorced from the needs of his family. For instance, Troy can’t see anything practical, or therefore worthwhile, in the professions (music and baseball, respectively) to which his sons Lyons and Cory each aspire. This inner contrast – which to those around him can feel like hypocrisy – is evident in a variety of ways. As a result of Troy’s experiences, he has become a man who at once espouses and insists on rigid practicality in order to protect himself and his family from the world, even as he indulges (or can’t stop himself from indulging) in a kind of wild impracticality of his own as a way to escape or redress the unfairness he perceives as having thwarted his own life. The play can largely be described as charting how Troy’s actions, as they’re informed by his past, affect those around him: how his own shattered sense of hope ripples into and distorts the aspirations and dreams of those around him-how the racism of his world growing-up continues to express itself through Troy’s actions, indirectly shaping those of a new generation. Shaped by the effects racism has had on his life-by the struggles it created in his youth and the career ambitions that it thwarted, including his desire to be a baseball player-Troy lives in the shadow of what could, and what should, have been. ![]() The husband of Rose, and father to Cory and Lyons, Troy is the central character of Fences. ![]()
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