Fences By August Wilson: Literary Analysis

They say that racism is a thing in the past, which means that everyone is to be treated equal right? We see in the play Fences by August Wilson how racism is still present even after slavery was over. We also see how it changes the way certain families live their lives. The narrator uses several literary devices to better help his audience understand on a deeper level what this play is trying to state. Symbolism, metaphors, imagery, setting, protagonist, antagonist and irony are just a few literary devices that Wilson uses throughout his play to show us how racial segregation can be hard on a family. August Wilson was a black male that was born in 1945 and throughout his life he faced a lot of racial discrimination in school. Wilson was the only African American student at his high school which later on drove him to drop out of school. He was a phenomenal writer but his teacher accused Wilson of plagiarism saying that black person could not have written this good of a paper. Later on in life he blows everyone away when he wrote a total of ten plays in his life time and nine of the plays made it on Broadway and six of the plays got multiple awards. Needless to say, August Wilson was known for his plays and the irony and symbolism …show more content…
For instance, through the whole play Fences it is explained through baseball terms. The reason that the he uses baseball terms through his play was not only because it has to do with baseball but it helps the audience understand and puts them in the characters shoes. When Troy explains his affair with another mistress by saying how he felt safe with his wife but when he met Alberta he wanted “to steal second”(1391). Another example would be when Troy associates the devil as death which represents the struggles that he has had throughout his life. He also refers the devil as looking like a white hood like a KKK member and saying that the devil is a physical person as well as