Responsibility, in this play, is set up almost in opposition to loving happiness. When Cory asks his father why he has never liked him, Troy argues that there was never any suggestion that he should like his son, so long as he provided for him, which he has done. He has spent his life working to keep a roof over Cory's head. He recognizes that his responsibility to his wife includes keeping her properly fed and housed. He seems to believe that this is love; but when Troy tells the story of his own childhood, we realize that his father, too, never shirked his responsibility to his family, even when his wife abandoned their children. However, he was a very abusive father, and Troy ran away from him when he was fourteen. Troy does not seem to recognize that this story illustrates how very little responsibility sometimes has to do with love.

When Troy begins having an affair with Alberta, he sees her as an escape from his responsibilities. She represents somebody he can laugh with, a safe space within which he can be himself because he is freed from responsibility. He loves her, and therefore he associates her with freedom. When she dies and leaves behind an infant daughter, Troy begs his wife, Rose, to take the child, unable to take on a responsibility from a quarter he once felt to be free of obligation. He also signs over his brother, Gabriel, to an institution (though he claims he believed the paperwork he signed was a release form), abdicating this responsibility as well as becoming an increasingly broken man.