编程代写,cs代写 Interpreting August Wilson’s Fences from a Historicist Perspective

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3 min readNov 24, 2021

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Fences is a remarkable play written by August Wilson in 1983, an African American playwright who has been devoted to exploring the Black experiences through his plays and short stories. It is also the award winner for Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987 and the Tony Award for Best Play. Fences set in the 1950s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it examines the African American experiences and racial relations in the post-war context by portraying an African American protagonist Troy Maxson, a 53 years old household worker who struggles to provide for his family. Troy lives in a small house with his wife, Rose, son Cory, and younger brother, Gabriel who has psychological problems. In the book chapter “Historicism and Cultural Studies,” Robert Dale Parker illustrates the method of new historicism in analyzing literature and argues that “new historicists read history and literature together, with each influencing the other, and without a sense of stable facts” (260). Parker’s insight explains new historicism as a different approach in viewing the relationship between history and literature. Unlike old historicists who view history as certain and stable facts that can only provide background for literature, new historicists interpret history and literature as two intertwined factors that influence and shape each other in a continuous cycle. Analyzing Wilson’s Fences in the light of new historicism, the awakened consciousness of Troy for equal rights, the father-son conflict of Troy and Cory, and the different interpretation of the fences demonstrate the interactive relations between history and literature, the internal contradictions of history, and the changeable perspectives in viewing things.

The social context of the dawn of Civil Rights Movement stimulated the wake of Troy’s consciousness for equal rights, which reveals the interactive relations between history and literature. As Parker has pointed out in his book, new historicists hold the belief that “textuality of history and the historicity of texts shape and reshape each other in a continuous cycle of mutual influence (261). It means that history and literature are two interactive factors that could exert influences on each other continuously. To put it into perspective, the history will shape how the text is headed and how the characters are portrayed. The story is set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before the Civil Rights Movement took place on a nationwide scale. But the consciousness of African Americans for equal rights had begun to awake gradually. Wilson describes the year 1957 that “the hot winds of change that would make the sixties a turbulent, racing, dangerous, and provocative decade had not yet begun to blow full” (3). In the 1950s, Jim Crow laws and other measures were passed to ensure the segregation between whites and Blacks even after slavery was abolished. African Americans found it hard to merge into the society where the white supremacy prevailed. African Americans were forced to take on the low-paying jobs and even committed criminal acts and still unable to provide for their family. At the beginning the Act 1 when Troy is drinking and talking with his best friends Bono, Troy tells Bono, his recent encounter with his employer, Mr. Rand. Troy questions his employer, Mr. Rand, “Why? Why you got the white mens driving and the colored lifting?” (Wilson 4). Two friends are talking about their concerns and complaints about the unequal jobs they do. They have been subjugated into the segregation that treats them unfairly. When they as African Americans can only take the most laborious jobs of lifting heavy cargo and loading, white Americans can drive the trucks. The overwhelming hardship of physical labor is not what that is bothering Troy, but the inequality. He doesn’t ite gifted

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