Alex Kulak

Diana Jaher
August 24, 2016
Fundamentals of Theatre I
Given Circumstances
Physical Environment: The play takes course over several weeks in the Fall of 1957. This time of
year is supported by two facts:
1. Cory is in his high schools football team, which generally plays its season in the fall and
winter,
and
2. Troy brings up how the snow will be coming soon to compromise the roof of his house.
The setting is the Maxsons backyard, a wood porch and lawn in a lower-class
neighborhood. Lower-class being as luxurious as a garbage collector like Troy can afford.
Social Environment: Fences examines the plight of African Americans in the United States prior
to the Civil Rights movement. Career options were limited to menial labor and grunt work for
Black Americans at the time, and the play examines one working-class man in particular. Troy
Maxson, a middle-aged garbage man, who lives in late 1950s America with his wife, Rose, and
their son, Cory. Troy is not a radical or an intellectual, he is simply a man who wants equal
opportunities as his white co-workers. He even goes to the Union to try to get the opportunity to
be promoted from garbage collector to driver. Troy embodies many of the values Black
Americans held at the time, He is a deeply spiritual man, quoting the Bible in normal
conversation, he is careful with the little money he has, choosing to put his money towards fixing

his roof over purchasing a television, and above all, he believes in the duty of providing for his
family above all else.
Polar Attitudes: At the start of Fences, Troy is very fixed in his beliefs. He disapproves of Cory
being on a football team and playing in college, while being unaware that higher education could
lead to better opportunities for his son. He is also opposed to the behavior of his other son,
Lyons, who aspires to be a musician, but in the meantime, lives off money borrowed from his
father. He is shown to be proven wrong at the end of the first act when Lyons returns the money
after he gets a job playing at a club.
Previous Actions: The characters describe many of the events that occur before the action that
incite many plot points. Troy describes his courtship with Rose, early in the action. Later, he
describes how Gabriel became mentally disabled after the Second World War, and his upbringing
and eventual exodus from his home. The latter account expands into Troys previous life of
crime, and the time he spends in jail, which implies to the audience how Troy came to have many
of the values he holds strongly.