Transcript for:
Analysis of August Wilson's "Fences"

hello everyone i'm here today to talk about august wilson's play fences with you and there is so much to talk about that i'm really going to keep this video manageable and focus on a few places throughout the play where we can pause and and look at it um more closely you know thinking about what some of you said on the discussion board and and even places in the play that nobody really talked about that we can um you know address so first of all the vocabulary so i posted um a little just short drama vocab list of terms and there's nothing really unusual here um it's not quite as i think unfamiliar as some poetry terms like we did last time but i did want to at least take three or four minutes and talk about um aristotle's like for him the six elements of drama and five of those are in the list that i placed on blackboard so in thinking about this now that the list is alphabetical but when it covers one of the six of his list it'll say this is the second in aristotle's list and then there's one that's not in the alphabetical list because there's not necessarily one term that works so we'll just talk about those elements of drama and when you see a play i know there are students when i've been in class with them with this in the last few years with this play people have watched um the hollywood you know version of this story which stars denzel washington and viola davis which the two of them are amazing um playing troy uh maxim and rose but there are some things obviously with the theater you know with live theater that would be different right than when you have something like the availability of a hollywood um set you know and so some of that really when you see these plays acted out on stage uh it's a different experience and i don't know if any of you you know if you're a theater buff or if you like to go to broadway sometimes i've tried to take my my kids to to new york to see broadway plays whenever i've had a chance because it's just an experience that unlike i think watching similar things on film or whatever and of course we have like trinity where i try to go once each season and pick something that i haven't seen before but um you know theater if you think about a limited stage and what possibly you know the setup of that stage would look like for the play that we're going to look at it would be this this kind of backyard right where the fence is in the midst of being built this is where all the action takes place everything else that happens in a story they're either having in a conversation about the past or thinking about the future or hearing about what's happening off stage but all of the dialogue is concentrated in their home right out back and so the hollywood version changes that a little bit so you know if you ever get an opportunity to see one of august wilson's plays i would recommend you know getting that real live experience but that being said you know i think viola davis won the oscar for her performance and you know she's pretty amazing as rose but so for aristotle who thought a lot about this some of you may know um that there are certain things that we care about and not that they're totally different than what we care about when we're looking at a story or a novel but you know unique to this play because plays have a limited you know time and place that they can present in this believable way so the order of the events um you know somewhere it says something like they they have to have this balance like it has to be credible that the story kind of makes sense and also it it wants to wow you a little bit so this credibility and also maybe somewhat astonishing feeling you know like is what really captivates you um on stage so the order the plot how it unfolds um it's very difficult in real theater to do like fantastical stuff or stuff with a lot of imagination and like because you're limited in the time and space that you have on the stage so bringing those kind of elements are always more challenging so also for aristotle the theme so the theme i think for him it was probably the most important so he's got his six but theme is is like the the overall message or impact that everything in the play is really surrounding and i mentioned a few of the themes in the prompt for the discussion board and you guys picked different parts of that to tackle but it's these overall like thematic like that that really just kind of transform you or transport you i should say um to these 1950s you know america and you feel like that that racist um sort of element like every little subtle thing in the play supports that um you feel the injustice of that many of you wrote about the fact that you know he just kind of wanted to drive the truck rather than pick up the garbage and dump it in the truck you know something minor like that but then there's all these other little subtle things that support that theme of just inequality you know injustice there's also a lot about the struggle in the 1950s you know if you were to be there that zeitgeist we've talked about before that moment in time a fly on the wall what's the spirit of this moment there is this like very large generation gap the the elders have gone through more like you know difficult uh historical periods especially for the black americans than their children and then even more so for their children's children than their children's children so there is this generation gap they don't see eye to eye even between like troy's older son lion who's probably like early 30s and then his teenage son you know that there's gaps there and they're both his children they're just 15 years you know separated by age um sorry i'm just gonna shut my ringer off uh and then the other one i mentioned was the husband and wife as far as theme goes because you know rose and troy uh it made me chuckle a little bit because uh several of you picked out the same part in the story that you know he just is kind of dismissive of her you know it's like rose go in the house let me in bono finish up like this guy talk like i've got something for you later like go get yourself all powdered up you know um one of you i think it was an antonia someone said something like i wouldn't want my husband to talk to me like that you know um that's just another place where there was a lot of inequality so even among a couple that were both black americans you still have this you know injustice really where you know she keeps up the home but he leaves to work to go work to earn the money he has more say he has the final say when it comes to whether or not cory can play football he he says it's his word what's gonna happen this is no he's not doing this he's you know and it doesn't matter what rose thinks it doesn't matter if she wants to kind of let her son pursue his dreams or it doesn't matter it's it's troy's world in that sense so there's all these different dynamics and in their relationship and even obviously he has an affair and raynelle the child at the end is the result of his affair and that's hard for rose to accept but the mother you know dying in childbirth which is pretty harsh you know but at that time um you know it wasn't that unusual like women did die in childbirth more often and and so he asks rose can we take the baby and and we know that obviously she agrees so even that is is kind of an injustice within the marriage with him just wanting her to understand that he works hard for the family and he takes care of her so she should basically understand that he's got these other needs where he wants to go have fun and laugh and not have the worries of the world and so she almost is in some way supposed to understand that and you know she gives that amazing speech to him in the backyard where they're um when they're kind of going about it because she finds out about alberta the the mistress i guess we could call her and and she is saying like what are you talking about like you haven't been the easiest person i've had to sacrifice you're not the only one who sacrifices and you know she she kind of lets him have it but it doesn't really change the fact that the gender roles are quite different at that time you know so again this piece is you know pittsburgh pennsylvania and 1957 you know there has been a huge amount of progress with black americans at that time so there's heading like in the direction of progress but there's still a huge way to go and so it's this moment in time remember you know i don't know if you read a little bit about august wilson but he you know he himself was you know had um one you know white german parent and and also a black american parent so he kind of had the both sides of the racial thing and and you know really strove to like understand some of these dynamics and so every play all the the series that he has of the 10 plays that all are one decade of the the 20th century so a play that sets in 1900s to 1910 and the next ones from 1910 to 1920 and the 30s and 40s so this play fences is that fifties decade um and he won all kinds of awards i mean like i know we're getting a little off topic okay we're talking about theme but we'll say a little more about that okay so the whole work the whole work really i think that's why theme might be the most important of the elements because all of the details kind of support that impact you walk away understanding some things race injustice gender gaps and then also the roles in in the family um the generational things that we see between between troy and his kids okay so so in your vocabulary list the third one again that list is alphabetical is the characters so developing the characters i mean there's so much study if you know you were a theater major the characters kind of bring the whole thing to life so there's a lot um you know that's why casting directors make really good money in hollywood finding the person building the character once that character is built you know you need that actor to bring it to life and it's so important all the subtleties and um the fourth one is connected to that which is in your list which is diction so the ability to really speak in a way to pronunciate in a way that is connected to that moment in time again if you're bringing this moment to life denzel washington right if you were to see him in a you know interview he talks like the average american he takes on this character and he has this diction of you know pennsylvania uh you know a black american who comes from like his father's a sharecropper there's a lack of education and literacy and like he brings through the diction in the way that he speaks it's like you're in the 1950s and you're talking to someone who works you know in that capacity and and has that experience and it's it's an amazing thing to bring to life and so so diction can do a lot if if it's spot on in the theater like you transports you to that to that place now the fifth one for aristotle is the one that's not really it's not a single word and so it's not in that vocabulary list so it's described as kind of um like the mood or um some people say even it's like the heart of the play the mood the heart the rhythm these are all kind of words that are used for aristotle's like fifth um element which is it creates a certain feeling um you know and it's i it's hard to say exactly what that is for fences i think that it's almost um it's definitely a heavy heart it's it's it's i think a conflicted mood like in some ways when troy's just trying to like let his hair down having beer with his friend bono chit chat it's kind of like you're with him like you want him to you feel like he's the underdog because you have this compassion about the racial injustice and you know and then the next minute you know he's fooling around on rose and you're kind of like it's not exactly upright behavior and you know you get this bit of conflict and then at other times you know you're like angry at him like when he has a conflict with corey and he can't see past his own bitterness some of you use the word bitter he's bitter at the way he was treated and prevented from pursuing baseball professionally he was only allowed in the negro league and you know like he said you had to be twice as good to get like half as far and players who were white who weren't as good as he was made it you know and so he has all this bitterness about sports in general but like even for his son it's a different sport it's football so it doesn't matter to him though it's kind of like the white man will bring him down he won't really let him succeed and even though corey's you know support system his coach thinks that maybe he has enough talent maybe he could go to college on like football scholarship troy isn't interested in letting him pursue that because he's he's he's just bitter he's angry and and so when when he's like putting a fence you know we'll talk about the fence symbolism but when he keeps putting that fence up and cory's like trying to pursue his dream and he keeps you know blocking him you get frustrated with him and and so i think the the the play has all of these moments so it's a it's not like a constant say like same rhythm it's not always heavy of heart sometimes it's a little light and there's a little humor and then it's heavy or it's frustrating you know it's got all these different like little rhythms and of course at the end i think they're supposed to be hopeful thing there you know even as troy even though he dies he dies you know swinging his bat doing his whole like baseball thing that he does it's quick right he just dies of a massive heart attack you know and right now at that point is seven and you know she is kind of like a ray of sun and rose is now not going to be alone because she's got ray now and had it not been for troy's affair and everything else right they wouldn't have had right now so at the end it's a heaviness because you're you know you're at troy's funeral but corey even though he hasn't forgiven his father he does come home from the military to be there with his mother and raynelle is kind of singing some of the blues like troy does so you can see his impact on her and you know so it's a conflicted i think it's a conflictive heart um and then the last one is the spectacle and that one's in your vocabulary list as well but this is the whole production this is the wow when you're in the theater everything they do to construct the scenery the things they wear the costumes the props the makeup everything that brings it to life is um what's kind of cool you know like it's you're in the theater and it's just like wow that's the spectacle there are i mean there's numerous plays that come to mind you know the next play that you're reading for next week medea is like the classical greek tragedy and you know you don't have any change of you know when that would have been performed right you're in this like concrete stage right this sort of amphitheater you have won the front of you know medea's home that's it all the other actors come and go but every action takes place right there it's pretty stripped back into some basics where theaters have gone and as they have evolved so we're looking at this modern play first and so it would be a really like if you were in the theater you'd think you were in the back of a rundown house in the middle of pittsburgh like every detail of like what that back of that house would look like and the fence and like a pile of pieces that haven't been cut and maybe the saw table and a couple of stoops where they sit down on the back steps and you would feel like you just stepped into troy and rose's house or the back of their yard like nothing goes you know nothing is overlooked so you transport yourself and you know so theater can you know theater is very immersive and sometimes unexpected i i went i went to see um a play with my um my mother's boyfriend because she's not my mother's not really into theater and so him and i love to go to theater so we went to see like crime and punishment this like dostoyevsky you know based on that and we're sitting like two rows from the front you're very clo you know how trinity is pretty small and the main character is like in a bathtub and he's like facing us and there's also and then all of a sudden he just stands up and i'm you know i'm with it was one of those moments where you're like wow you really feel like you're in the room and there's nowhere to escape you know the whole audience just like what like wasn't expecting that like somewhere on the thing and probably said there might be brief nudity i don't know and then like the set goes black and the stage gets cleared but it's there are those shocking moments where you really feel like you're in this you know living room or this man's bathroom i guess uh and so we kind of like that in a lot of ways because you don't have all the outside noise you're there everyone in the theater is quiet and you're just like where arguably this should be a similar experience in the in the movie theater but that's probably some of the theater that you know people don't like you have other people chatting other people eating touching things you have you know just sort of that behavior you know if someone keeps talking or like coming in and out and it can disrupt your immersion already you can kind of see rows in front of you so you sort of have to just teleport there past those rows but then if you have all these distractions a theater is not like that they there's no talking there is no like you have a the the sort of like a little intermission in between the the axe and you can go and you can get a beverage or something but you can't bring food back and be eating during it and so it's i feel like that's where that experience like the real immersion comes from and i mean it could be like that in a movie theater if everybody was cooperating i guess but it's just way looser so sometimes you can't have that experience so that that spectacle is just like you know the thing you know that's that astonishing little thing and it's also credible like you're there you see it you're witnessing it and all those things working together make theater like an amazing experience like as many times as you can go you want to go so we'll say just a few more things so um this i i asked this on the discussion question list if you've looked at them about this concept of like tragic hero and stuff and this has been something that people discuss around this we don't know um like if august wilson um wants us to sympathize or to um [Music] you know when when someone is a tragic hero if you think of it as it's it's like a good person suffering like a tragic hero isn't like someone who is having this perfect life like troy maxson is far from perfect right but you get a sense that he is this good person trying to do the right thing but he's also human and so as he's trying to work monday through friday and bring home a paycheck and protect his family and all he he keeps messing up like sometimes humans do and the fact that he keeps trying and like kind of giving it a go instead of just like some people do right succumb to you know alcoholism or drugs or leave like obviously troy and his um the older son lions just left my head for a second lions the older son obviously him and lion's mother that that didn't work out so like maybe he learns from this right now he meets rose they have a son and now he's sticking it out it isn't easy they have their issues but there he is you know he's not an absentee father he's not you know just kind of walking away and just pursuing his own thing he's still like trying to do right by the family even when he's having some of his other behaviors so if we consider him to be basically a good person but suffering sometimes the way to see someone who is um like a frustrating character in this sense is to like understand that person as someone who is suffering like he's suffered discrimination like we learn about his father his father beat him like two within an inch of his life like his father was a cruel man his father was so cruel that troy's mother couldn't stick around even though she probably didn't want to leave her kids he was such a cruel man that she left them and then you know so then you start to understand things like unfold a little oh he was basically abused his father's terrible person you know and so you learn about him and yet he's not doing that he's not abusing his wife or his kids yeah he's bitter and he has some of these things and so the character of troy is really like always the focal point of this play um what else do i want to say before we get started i think and also you know music the kind of accompaniment um during plays is is is another thing that can kind of bring different elements um to life because there's this like blues music that's played with this like genre of you know prior to that so prior to um that genre often you know the the blacks didn't create like their music that other people you know that was it was kind of like they had music on the plantations they're singing and various things but not like the blues everybody wanted to listen to it wasn't just for them and but yet it was still a way for them to kind of um whether it was pain or pleasure of life mainly pain um they were able to express that and through vocals and instruments you know so if we were like in a theater to see this you'd have that that blues which would add a lot to that mood and that rhythm and and and troy sings a little bit here and there so all right well i just want to poke around the piece a little i know you if you read this and and you took your time there's hopefully you you you found all the little gems but um you know the setting of the play you know we get a little background we know which always is going to be originally this you know opening sometimes it's there's actually just like a narrator that comes over speaker and will like almost read like it's 1957. you know the the who was it what which team just won i always forget the baseball um hank aaron uh beat the giants and like that whole uh if you're a sports fan i guess that's you probably know those tidbits but like this was a you know so it might like give a little background like that and and it's a time also that's described like there's a lot of descendants as it's described of african slaves that have now because there is no slavery free to roam but yet they're kind of clinging to around the south like making their way various states heading north but like there is this kind of southern home base um and as they start to spread out more as he describes it like they're not necessarily feeling welcome and so pittsburgh pennsylvania it's pretty north you know um and it has different um kind of neighborhoods i guess we could say so like if you're from you've heard the saying like one side of the tracks you know like so the poorer neighborhoods i'm people didn't some of them still didn't have like things like indoor plumbing and gets pretty cold in states like pennsylvania um the conditions were run down you know but for the first time there was also some progress because people who were working were saving and they were able to maybe buy something a little bit nicer and so start to like move out of total poverty you know like although the house that rose and troy live in has kind of you know it's not an amazing beautiful house but it's it's a house it's got indoor plumbing it's got a back yard yeah it's got to fix the fence and it's going to need some work but it's in a decent neighborhood you know it's so it's like they're they're in the midst of this transition they're not obviously as bad off as their parents were but clearly their children are going to have it a little easier you know so they're in this transitional moment and like certain things are still very um like repressive you know like employment isn't equal and so for someone like troy to just question like he he's not even worried that he questions like he's not gonna fire me because i asked a question you know but he basically you know it comes to his mind and now you know he's like 53 year old man so he's been doing this job a long time and he finally just was like you know what he's probably feeling his age like i'm getting too old for this garbage why can't i drive you know and the funny part like that there is there are these light moments you know like he doesn't even have a driver's license like troy doesn't even have a driver's license like that's the least of his worries it's like well what if he says okay you can drive but you know let me see your driver's license you know ah you know he just goes in there like why can't why can't we drive it's not like there's paperwork because if if there was if the driver was responsible for like having to write things down then there could be the literacy thing and then many of the blacks were still uneducated and so if it required paperwork type thing then they could say listen unless you can demonstrate this kind of reading and writing you couldn't so he just wants he just says driving doesn't take any of that any you know i forget the word he uses like basically any knucklehead can drive you know you don't need to be able to write anything or um so he you know he asks and he's told you know you know we'll see maybe like kind of brushed off a little bit but he's he's actually going to like make his point and he's not going to be worried if that means they're going to fire him but bono is his friend is kind of nervous about it you know so that sort of underlying so it shows how it's systemic like in the workplace and um a couple of pages into that to that first act um they have this little discussion it probably didn't seem like much but they're talking about whether to shop at bellas this little like corner market type place where they know the woman who owns the and such but rose prefers to go to like the big stores like a and p where you have you know cheaper prices because it's quantity right you know it's kind of like today the walmart versus the smaller store you know you know when did walmart start having groceries right now stop and shop has to compete you know well at this time you didn't have the big walmarts so you had like an amp shopping market or you had a lot of these neighborhood stores where they were small but they had a little mixed variety of stuff and so troy doesn't want to go to the market he feels a loyalty to to the smaller market and rose is like she charges more than if i go to a in the amp you know but he says you know if i need a loaf of bread and like so in other words if he tells bella i need a loaf of bread i'll pay you friday she give it to me what sense that make when i got money to go and spend it somewhere else and ignore the person who done right by me so he feels like you know what there's a loyalty there yeah maybe it's 10 cents cheaper if i go to the big market but you know what when i didn't have that 10 you know whatever it cost 20 cents for a loaf of bread or something she would have given it to me and given me till friday and so that relationship that kind of thing is what's missing at the big markets you know you can't walk into the a and p and say hey i'm gonna take a loaf of bread today i'll be back friday so little things like that and those those kinds of neighborhood you know relationship those mean a lot because a lot of that is you know at that time and we had it here you think of like providence and federal hill and like you had the cheese shop and you had the butcher and you had you know you had relationships because they were individually they were owned they were family owned businesses there wasn't a stop and shop on every corner and so those kinds of things come to life like that you know he he's going to be loyal even if it costs tiny bit more because of that um he brings up well corey comes in rose is trying to like soften him a little bit that the college football people are looking at cory and you know troy starts with the i told him forget about that football stuff and so he starts renting and you know bono is yeah he likes rose and his friend bono likes rose and so he doesn't like get like on board with troy's rants but he tries to be almost like a mediator you know he's like he'll be all right if he's like you in sports he'll be all right but you know nobody's ever played as good as you and he's you know i guess troy was something you know he was really talented but so it causes him to go back and relive you know a lot of these things i mean there's just there's so many different places here um you know they address some of the racism and like things like the idea of having credit like that might seem like today most people have credit you can fill out applications for credit then you don't even have to know what color you are or what you know they don't really need any of that but at this time you know there's not a lot of people offering credit so like he gives this whole thing about what he had to do for furniture that the white man came to the house and said hey you know what all right you don't have any credit how about this i'll come furnish your place and you pay me ten dollars a month and so he makes a joke that this guy was the devil because he furnished the place but 15 years later he's still sending 10 bucks a month you know like if that were true which rose teases him kind of that that's not the case but if that was the case it would be it's kind of like people who rent a television right they don't have the money to buy the television so they rent it because they take advantage of people like that so then probably the rental fee after a month you could have bought the television right but that's not how it works because you don't have all the money up at once so they get you with interest and fees and like that was the plight of a lot of black american families trying to start out because they couldn't get credit so you unless you can you know amass enough of the money to buy it all at once you're going to get taken advantage of you know it's almost like like loan sharks um so he jokes that he's still paying the 10 every month and you know and bono's like how long you've been paying that 10 he's like 15 years and uh you know rose is like troy's lying we got that furniture from mr glickman he ain't paying no ten dollars you know and she kind of makes like a joke of it but whether he's just you know telling stories to his friend or what the idea is he's addressing that you know august wilson the you know writing this play is addressing a real you know social inequity the generational thing right before the end of that scene you get to see with lions he kind of described like like he's a loafer he's a musician he doesn't want to be lions is like doesn't want to be the you know punch a clock you know he doesn't want to work hard in a garbage truck like his dad has off choice offered to get him a job there he just want to be tied down to that he wants to create music and he has this kind of but yet he's always there borrowing money so it's this weird thing where he like wants him to get a real job type thing um and maybe to some degree that still exists today parents want their kids to not just pursue hobbies but like to you know get something that can earn a living kind of um also the issue about the absent fathers absentee fathers comes in and we find out like um when troy hands his paycheck to rose it's 76.42 so granted it's 1957 but it doesn't sound like much money to support an entire family on 76 um and then the the idea of the fences comes in and out here but but basically you guys addressed this a little bit in the discussion board it's almost like troy creates these fences almost to like like keep death out he's always doing his like baseball like symbolism like one strike two strike three strikes year round he's like i ain't going easy i'm gonna this you know he's always he's like he's kind of like keeping death out like he's but rose is more like protect like trying to protect her family you know if you thought about maybe the kids like they're trying to get out you know cory's trying to get freedom and it's also interesting that this fence never really gets finished never gets finished so it's like not there's cracks in the fence but they've been building it for a while and it's never quite finished and so people get out and people don't get protected and like so the fence is maybe symbolic of of many things depending on which character we're looking at but if you think about i mean you could just kind of use application a little and bring it into your own world fence as a symbolism like what do we protect what do we you know do we let everybody in to our fence no right um but there are people we want to keep in and keep safe and and so this idea of offense is like a boundary um and whatever it can be seen throughout [Music] i like his little rant too about the lottery you know roses kind of likes to play a little lottery he thinks that's just fools spending money like throwing it away then he talks about one guy like he knew they finally and he actually hit the lottery and then he he opened a restaurant and then treated the white customers better than the black ones and like you know for troy that's doesn't make any sense he says like he opened a restaurant and he had like if you go if you went in like if he goes in he's getting like a bowl of when they get stew it's like potatoes but the white man gets the the beef the meat and the in the stew you know so he selectively scoops the stew better for the white customers you know it's all troy has all these little like things that unnerve him um gabe you may have noticed you know is it this is odd you know he's hurt in the war so again this is 1957 so he served in the war he's got a plate in his head so he's kind of in and out of like mental you know like maybe like a veterans type hospital but he also has his own living quarters but when they settled with him so he'll never be okay right he had to to get part of his brain removed and now he's got this plate in his head but like the settlement from the government was like three grand and so that's the money he was gonna he was living he was gonna live with troy and rose so troy used that money to pay for the house that they live in but then after a while gabe you know because of his issues and whatnot he he's kind of like a free bird and and he didn't want to live there so now he he lives somewhere else but there's some guilt some family other stuff there between like him using that money of his brother's head injury to pay for the house you know so he he has a a soft spot so when he's found like out wandering like he tries to go and get him and get him bring him back and get help and um one of you mentioned the poverty there's a lot of like poverty here one of the examples about the tv and the sun so this this highlights poverty but also the generation gap because you know something like a leaky roof is almost like you got to save to make sure you have enough to fix something like that like there's no you know there's not like a savings account where all this money goes because you're barely you know you're just making ends meet so you can only put tiny bit tiny bit well corey he's from a younger generation he wants a tv other people 1950s is when televisions were actually marketed to like homeowners he wants a tv but it's like 200 bucks and you know troy's like well i'm gonna need to fix the roof soon and you know oh he says you know what would you do true you know corey trying to like give his son a little lesson well hey say you had the money are you gonna save it for the rain you know when you gotta fix your roof you're gonna buy the tv and corey's philosophy as a younger kid is like i'm going to buy the tv and when my roof leaks i'll worry about it then kind of you know and and so troy obviously that's not going to make sense to him um so corey's like i'd buy a tv then when the roof started to leak when it needs fixing i'd fix it and troy goes where are you going to get the money to fix it you done spent it for tv you're gonna sit up and watch the water run all over your brand new tv so there's that like chiding like kind of back and forth like he's trying to teach him a little value of a dollar you saving money for a rainy day you don't wait till you have a leak and then have no money to fix it you got to be putting money away in case but obviously these are always issues when money is scarce when you could get a leak and not have a dime to fix it so putting little bits of money away and trying to teach these lessons to his son so some of that generational stuff um yeah i mean we get though at some point you know we get the story of really troy's father and what happened which is pretty heartbreaking you know he he troy's like a 14 year old kid he takes off with a little girl from the neighborhood and they're you know spread out a little blanket or they're having their own little like hang out by the you know and all of a sudden his father comes and sees him and not only like troy's scared just because oh boy i'm in trouble but then because his father is about to take advantage of the girl so like troy recognizes she's in danger like he's gonna have his way with her and so troy just tackles him like it's an all-out beat fest of like he he barely escapes with his life and then never sees his father again so it's a it's kind of violent and just brutal like his father not only would he find you're going to be upset with him because here he is fooling around with a girl he's a 14 year old boy yank him back home maybe but to yell at him about it kick him out and then go to actually like then try to attack the girl yeah that was really bad he says uh troy uses the word evil you know describing him but he was just as evil as he could be um so the mom left them when he was only eight because she just couldn't probably for her own safety and you know um and so he gets himself into trouble he ends up doing time in jail learning you know he's playing baseball in jail so he kind of misses his opportunity even though he was so good and everything between that and the jail and he had already gotten his older son lion he had already gotten his mother pregnant and so he does time in jail and you know it's it's a really just it's a heart-wrenching story you know but there's these moments of lightness where you see he's he's kind of risen above it you know he has not let it just um you know the way he describes i mean he even he even ends up in jail he was trying to defend himself but in the way he did that he killed the guy and you know so every stroke of luck just seems like he's had it pretty tough and you almost feel for him even though he can be abrasive to the people who love him you know his kids and his wife and then we find out about alberta and and you know again we struggle to understand him and he tries to explain it to to rose when she finds out and it's he just says like he he doesn't want to hurt her you know he's trying to be the best husband he he can but there's something about just being with no cares at all and just being able to laugh with this other woman who you know isn't trying to make sure he's paying the bills or doing whatever like just this it's a selfish thing you know and that's what rose basically tells him how selfish that is because her life isn't easy either but she's never strayed never gone with some other man like she's been faithful to him even though it hasn't always been a picnic so in the end you know he his son leaves angry with him fighting over the sports and you know his son tries to stay like it seems like you don't like me and you know that famous scene troy is just like we mean he's like i don't have to like you have an obligation to you i take care of you you have a roof over your head you have food in your stomach you have this that's my job i don't have to like you like and it feels really harsh because you're like you feel like all this kid wants is his father to be like i love you son and like but he won't he's like what are you talking about i meet my obligations i do this for you i i and it's really like oh and he just they miss that opportunity to connect and they get into a scrap because troy and rose are having words because of his affair and corey tries to like you know he's feeling himself getting a little older tries to step in and and so the two of them get into it and then corey just runs out of the yard and then like that's it he goes he joins the military and so when troy dies many years have gone by so there's obviously a gap in the timeline raynelle has come home because alberta died in childbirth his his mistress so rose agrees to help care you know raise the baby so rainelle is there singing some of the songs that she knows that troy taught her and it's the day of the funeral and so the play comes to an end with corey returning and you know you see rose kind of she's sort of the hero of the story like she's kept it together and she's still raising right now it's like her sunshine and um you know as i said the heart of it is a bit heavy there at the end but at the same time you know he died at the moment you know doing what he was doing swinging his bat and you know it was quick and um and you see that you know corey come home to be there at least even though he's still being a little stubborn and lions is there and the little girl and it's you know it if you think of it as like this you know as i like to use the word zeitgeist but to the spirit of this time what's it like we don't really get to hear from white characters to just kind of say like we don't really get to see mr rand the boss's perspective like you don't get any of that this is a black american story this is the story of 1957 living somewhere in pittsburgh the struggles that went on within the black family the social injustice you know you look to the the white man who's at the workplace and the selling the furniture and the credit but within the family dynamic that's all about those things the the husband and wife and their children and um their struggles and so it's not all the whole thing isn't just a play about racism yeah that's a piece of it but there's also family dynamics and things that you don't want to just overlook and say oh it's a play about how white to a race is we don't we don't hear anything from any white people in the entire thing like there's it's it's this story of troy and rose and their family and so all their little struggles that are even that are separate from the from racism in that way so these the important family unique dynamics and such so yeah so i i mean medea is couldn't be more different so next week you're reading the greek tragedy but students tend to really like medea she's pretty wrathful and and that'll be our our last play so our last work for the semester so i'll see you on the next video