Fences

The play is called Fences because each character within the play  straddles on one side of the fence or the other.  Lyon, the eldest son, wants to prove his father wrong about his intentions; he borrows money that he has every intention of paying back.  His father, on the other hand, does not believe he is capable. Cory, the second child, born into wedlock, wants to show his dad that he is worthy of his father's love through his love of sports, as his father once emboddied.

 Symbotically, the idea of the father not finishing the fence, represents unfinished business within the family. Troy's father was a wanderer, he slept and left many of the women he encountered. Troy wanted different for his life; he met Rose whom he thought was the best thing that happened to him and envisioned  a life wherein he would be faithful and loving.

Jesus  is a fence within the union of Rose and Troy because through Rose, Troy was able to forgive and  move pass his father's  sin (infedelity). Though Rose appeared to forgive him, as his wife, due to death of the child's mother,  she worked through foregivene to  raise the child her husband fathered within their marriage.

Fences seperates Troy and Cory due to Troy's inability to understand the plite of his son. Like most father's, sometimes it is difficult to understand the mindset of a son when there is a  generational gap of understanding; difficulties one might face.  Troy was unable or unwilling to comprehend the differerences, goals or attributes that his son brought to the table. Cory, was more like his father, than his father cared to recognize.

There is a fence between Troy and Lyons because Troy is no longer married to Lyon's mom. Troy views Lyons as a mistake that he made when he was a young man. Troy felt that he was barely able to feed himself when Lyons was born. As Troy feels most of his life; he sacrificied alot for his family.

There are alot of fences that apply to this play, fences between husband and wife, between parents and children and amongst life and destiny; Love is unconditional built upon fences, meant to keep the one's we love in and the one's we hate out!