Fences Group

Question:

amanda-ragoonath
amanda-ragoo...
Student
Community / Jr. College

Why was the play named after the word "fences"?

was it about the blockage between the blacks and the whites

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Posted by amanda-ragoonath on Tuesday October 13, 2009 at 5:24 PM and tagged with fences, name.

Answers:


  1. akannan Teacher
    Middle School

    eNotes Editor

    The concept of "Fences" does have to do with barriers and the obstacles that are built to prevent full acknowledgement of one another and the dialectical other.  We can see this with Troy's inability to connect with his son, as well as Troy's lack of emotional connection with his own background and father.  This notion of an emotional fence is even erected between Troy and his wife, to whom he is loyal, but has an affair and child with Alberta.  The idea of building barriers or fences does exist in the manner in which white and black society perceive one another, but the play does a very thorough job of linking this building of social fences as one linked to the emotional and psychological fences that exist within our own sense of self.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/fences/themes

    Rate answer:

    Posted by akannan on Tuesday October 13, 2009 at 5:35 PM