Fences- August Wilson | Questions and Correct Solutions | Graded A+ | 2024/2025 Update

Fences- August Wilson | Questions and Correct Solutions | Graded A+ | 2024/2025 Update Context - Answer --Fences ends in 1965, but the themes of the play directly place its consciousness in a pre-civil-rights-movement, preVietnam-war-era psyche. -In Fences as in Wilson's other plays, a tragic character helps pave the way for other blacks to have opportunities under conditions they were never free to experience, but never reap from their own sacrifice and talents themselves. This is Troy Maxson's situation. Troy's last name, "Maxson," is a compressed reference to the Mason-Dixon line, considered as the imaginary line originally conceived of in 1820 to define the separation between the slave states and the free states. Maxson represents an amalgamation of Troy's history in the south and present life in the north that are inextricably linked. -Wilson asks his audience to put together what they know of American history with the way his various characters experience and perceive history through their own, often conflicted eyes.-The Pittsburgh of the Maxson family is a town where Troy and other men of his generation fled from the savage conditions of sharecropping in the south. After Reconstruction failed, many blacks walked north as far as they could go to become urban citizens. Having no resources or infrastructure to depend on, men like Bono and Troy found their way in the world by spending years living in shacks, stealing, and in jail. -Published: 1986