Fences

An Autobiographical Masterpiece

August Wilson was born Fredrick August Kittel, Jr., on April 27, 1945, to Daisy Wilson, an African American woman from North Carolina, and Fredrick Kittel, Sr., an immigrant from Germany. He was raised by his mother and stepfather, David Bedford, in Pittsburgh's predominantly black Hill District. During Wilson's adolescence, the family moved to Hazelwood, a working-class, mostly white immigrant neighborhood in Pittsburgh in which the family encountered considerable racial animus. Although he dropped out of high school at age 16, Wilson was such a voracious reader that the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh eventually awarded him an honorary degree. He was especially attracted to the works of Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright.

Having been inspired by the Black Arts movement's embracing of African American culture and history, Wilson first worked as a poet prior to turning his attention to the theater. After successful presentations of his first two works, Jitney at the Playwright's Center in Minneapolis and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Wilson developed Fences at the Yale Repertory Theatre, under the helm of Lloyd Richards, dean of the Yale School of Drama and director of the original Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun.

Set in the Hill District between 1957 and 1965, Fences chronicles the Maxsons, a blended Pittsburgh family ruled by their titanic 53-year-old patriarch, Troy. A former baseball player in the Negro Leagues, Troy is an ex-convict-cum-garbage-man who campaigns for equal treatment at work and special treatment at home. He overwhelms his wife, sons, and best friend, imposing his will on every person he encounters. Gradually, Troy's behavior alienates his wife, Rose, and youngest son, Cory. When his ego leads him to impregnate another woman, his fall from grace is almost mythic and Rose emotionally withdraws from his life altogether.

In that it focuses on a single character rather than a large ensemble, Fences has the most conventional structure in any of the Pittsburgh Cycle's plays. A tragic hero in the mold of Greek and Roman dramas, Troy is torn between his duty to provide for his family and his own hubristic personal desires. Wilson represents that schism in Troy's name, Maxson, which is a portmanteau of Mason-Dixon, the traditional cultural dividing line between north and south in America. Like many of his other works, Fences features a dysfunctional father-son relationship, a mentally impaired soothsayer, black religious practices integrated neatly into the plot, institutional racism as a constant impediment to success, and Wilson's trademark poetically naturalistic language. There are autobiographical elements as well. Bedford worked as a garbage man. Wilson had argued frequently with his stepfather about his high school athletic career. In addition, Bedford had served time in prison prior to marrying Wilson's mother, and he died while Wilson was still a young man.

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