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Cory is in the front yard swinging a baseball bat at a ball and attempting to imitate his father. Rose enters from the house, and Cory swears that he is going to stay on the football team. Rose promises to talk to Troy, telling Cory that Troy went to help Gabriel, who was arrested for disturbing the peace. Cory goes inside, and Troy and Bono enter. Troy is complaining about having had to pay $50 to get Gabriel out and that the police only keep arresting Gabriel because they want money. Bono asks Troy why he’s using hard wood instead of something softer like pine to build the fence, and Troy replies that softer wood is only for inside use. Bono mentions that Troy seems to have become very friendly with Alberta, but Troy claims that he is friendly with everyone. Cory enters, and Troy tells him to get to work on the fence. Cory wonders why Rose wants a fence at all, and Bono says that Rose loves Troy and is trying to keep her family there.
Troy sends Cory into the house, and Bono confronts Troy. He knows that Troy has been having an affair with Alberta and warns him not to ruin his marriage. Troy admits that Bono is right but claims that he has gotten in too deep with Alberta. Bono tells Troy again to preserve his marriage. After Bono leaves, Rose enters. They discuss Gabriel’s arrest, and Troy tells her that he has a hearing in three weeks to decide if Gabriel ought to be committed. Rose suggests that it might be for the best, and Troy replies, “The man done had his life ruined fighting for what?” (62). Rose starts to go inside to serve dinner, but Troy stops her. He tells her that he needs to confess something. Troy admits that he is about to be a father again. Rose is shocked. Gabriel enters and cheerfully gives Rose a rose. Gabriel talks about chasing hellhounds and getting a new quarter until Rose sends him inside. She then asks Troy why he cheated on her after 18 years of marriage.
Troy tries to explain that he felt like he was standing still, and that with his mistress, he was able to laugh and escape the stress and responsibility of marriage. Rose asks if Troy will stop seeing her, and he tells her that he can’t give up the way she makes him feel. Rose replies that she has been standing still with Troy, too, and that she has chosen to remain faithful, planting herself like a seed. Rose adds, “And it didn’t take me no eighteen year to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn’t never gonna bloom” (67). Rose accuses Troy of taking from her without even noticing how much she gave. Troy becomes angry and grabs Rose’s arm. Rose cries that he’s hurting her, and Cory enters, pulling Troy off of his mother and hitting him in the chest. Troy starts to go after his son as Rose pleads with him, trying to hold him back. Troy stops, telling Cory that this is his second strike and warning him again not to strike out.
It has been six months since Troy confessed to Rose. Rose has been avoiding speaking to him, but she breaks her silence because tomorrow is Friday and Rose wants to know if Troy plans to come home right after work. Troy says that he has slept at home every night and always gives his paycheck to Rose but that he plans to go to the Taylors’ and spend time with friends. Rose pushes him, and Troy tells her that Alberta has gone into early labor and is in the hospital and Troy plans to go and see her. Rose also confronts him because she learned that Gabriel was committed and Troy signed the papers. Half of Gabriel’s government check is now being sent to Troy. Rose accuses Troy of hurting Gabriel by signing the paper just as he hurt Cory by not signing the recruitment paper. Troy denies that he signed any such paper. The phone rings. Rose goes in to answer it and then returns. She informs Troy that Alberta gave birth to a healthy baby girl but then died. Rose wonders who will pay to bury her, and Troy exclaims that her family can take that responsibility. Rose goes into the house, and Troy addresses Death, promising to build the fence and keep Death out until it’s time to take him.
Three days later, Rose is on the porch listening to the baseball game. Troy enters carrying an infant. He tells her that the baby doesn’t have a mother. Rose is uninterested and goes into the house. Troy speaks to his daughter and tells her that he’s not sorry for what he did, and that this isn’t the first time he’s been homeless. When Rose reenters, Troy pleads with her to accept the child and help to raise her because the baby is innocent, and Troy can’t abandon her because she is as much his family as his two sons. Rose reluctantly agrees, because “you can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child” (74). She adds, “From right now… this child got a mother. But you a womanless man” and takes the baby into the house (74).
Two months later, Lyons shows up, calling Rose’s name and looking for Troy to pay back $20 he borrowed. Rose tells him not to wake baby Raynell and to leave the money on the table. Cory enters, and Lyons apologizes for missing his graduation. Cory says that he’s searching for a job. Lyons suggests that Cory ask their father. Lyons leaves, and Cory picks up a baseball bat. He practices batting for a moment but isn’t happy with his efforts. Troy enters. He and Cory stare at each other for a moment. Cory leaves, and Rose enters from the house. Rose is bringing a cake to church for a bake sale. Troy asks when Rose will be returning, but Rose won’t answer. She says that she has left dinner for him and exits. Troy sits down and drinks, singing to himself. Bono enters, stopping by for the first time in a while. Troy invites him to stay, but Bono declines. They no longer see each other at work, and Bono says that he is considering retiring soon. Troy comments that driving is boring and lonely and that he might retire soon, too. Bono leaves.
Troy continues to drink and sing. Cory enters, and father and son stare at each other again. Troy is drunk, blocking the entrance to the house, and Cory tells him to move. Troy grabs Cory and pushes him, demanding that Cory ask respectfully, but Cory refuses, stating, “You don’t count around here no more” (78). Furious, Troy exclaims that he provided for Cory and demands that Cory either respect him or leave. Cory demands to know what his father gave him, and Troy responds, “Them feet and bones! That pumping heart, nigger! I give you more than anybody else is ever gonna give you” (79). Cory replies that Troy has never done anything other than hold him back because he was afraid that Cory would be more successful than him. He has been scared of Troy his entire life, but now Troy is just “a crazy old man” (80). Troy shoves Cory again and tells him to get out of his yard, but Cory reminds him that the house was paid for with Gabriel’s money. Cory picks up the baseball bat and swings at him. Troy challenges Cory to kill him with it, but Cory backs down. Troy wrestles the bat from Cory and orders him to leave. Cory does, and Troy challenges Death to come and find him.
Seven years have passed, and it’s now 1965, on the day of Troy’s funeral. There is a garden, and Raynell, now seven, prods it with a stick. Rose comes out and tells her that watching the garden won’t make it grow any faster. Rose tells Raynell to come in and finish getting ready and goes back inside. Cory enters in a Marine uniform. He’s a corporal now. Raynell doesn’t know him and calls for her mother. Cory and Rose have an emotional reunion. Bono and Lyons enter, and Lyons is impressed that Cory is an officer. Rose comments that Gabriel is in the hospital and may or may not be released for the funeral. Bono comments that Cory looks like Troy did as a young man. Bono exits to help set up the church. Lyons and Rose reintroduce Cory to Raynell. Rose and Raynell go back inside. Lyons tells Cory that he and his wife broke up and that Lyons is now serving time at the workhouse for cashing checks that didn’t belong to him.
Lyons speaks fondly of Troy. Cory asks Lyons if he still plays music, and Lyons replies that music still gives him a reason to get up every morning. Rose calls Lyons into the house for eggs. Raynell comes back out to the yard. She tells Cory that Troy always referred to her bedroom as “Cory’s room” and that Cory’s football is still in the closet. Rose tells Raynell to put her shoes on, and Raynell goes back inside. Rose tells Cory more about how Troy died: While outside swinging his baseball bat, he collapsed, a grin on his face. Cory tells Rose that he isn’t going to attend Troy’s funeral. Rose insists that he is going, and Cory replies, “I can’t drag Papa with me everywhere I go. I’ve got to say no to him. One time in my life I’ve got to say no” (87). Cory describes his father as a shadow that was always following him when he lived in the house. Rose tells Cory that he is just like Troy, which Cory doesn’t appreciate. Rose asserts, “You can’t be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn’t nothing but you growing into yourself” (88). Rose explains that Troy tried to force Cory to have a different life but also tried to make Cory just like him.
When Rose met Troy, she believed that he was someone she could make a life and have children with. However, she allowed him to take up all of the space, and she gave up herself and her own life. When Raynell was born, her relationship with Troy was over, but she treated Raynell like her own daughter. Raynell comes out and tells Rose that the reverend is on the phone, and Rose goes inside. Raynell asks if Cory knew the dog Troy was always singing about, and together, they sing the song that Troy was singing drunkenly before his last confrontation with Cory. Raynell goes inside, and Gabriel enters. Rose and Lyons enter from the house. Gabriel announces, “It’s time to tell Saint Peter to open the Gates” (91). Gabriel blows his trumpet. The first two times, it makes no sound. He blows a third time and “there is a weight of impossible description that falls away and leaves him bare and exposed to a frightful realization” (91). Gabriel begins to dance and howl primally. At the end, “the Gates of Heaven stand open as wide as God’s closet” (92).
In the first act, Troy feels trapped, as if his life is stagnant and his family is holding him back from his true potential. In the second act, however, Troy loses his family and yet continues to live in the past. Before Alberta’s death, Troy stays with Rose out of obligation while spending all of his free time with his mistress. Afterward, Troy stays with Rose, even though he has ruined his marriage. He refers to Raynell’s bedroom as “Cory’s room,” even after he has chased Cory away. Troy’s worries about aging and becoming obsolete stem from a deep-seated fear of death. Troy envisions death as a being that he can challenge and fight—an entity that can be kept out with a fence—promising to welcome death when it’s truly his time to die. When Troy does die, he does so while swinging a baseball bat, and Rose comments that he died with a smile on his face. Following Troy’s death, Gabriel’s primal dance and howling represent not only the other characters’ freedom from Troy, but Troy’s freedom to finally rest and be at peace—the same thing he wished for his own father in the first act.
Cory physically confronts Troy twice in the second act. The first time, Troy stops himself from hurting Cory but announces that this is his son’s second strike. With the third strike, Troy becomes like his own father, and their final confrontation echoes the one Troy experienced before leaving home. Both fights amount to a coming of age, and just as Troy knew that it was time to leave home at 14, Cory must leave and become a man as well. Cory attempts to live his life differently from his father, determined not to become him. As Rose tells Cory, however, he can’t help but grow up to become his father because Troy gave Cory his own flesh and blood. This connection becomes clear when Cory and Raynell sing Troy’s song together. Unlike Rose, though, Cory can refuse to allow Troy to dominate his entire life. Now that Troy is dead, it is clear that he was always just a man. Troy was damaged and controlling but no less mortal than any other man. Cory can now make the decision to live a different life, even if he can never fully escape his father.
In the second act, Troy also reveals that the fence was Rose’s request. For years, Troy failed to build it, unwilling to allow Rose to hold him in. When Troy finally does build the fence, it’s too late. Rose no longer wants to keep him there, and Cory is gone. With Raynell, Rose recreates and relocates herself as person independent of Troy. She refers to Troy as rocky soil in which she planted herself like a rose, knowing that it would never grow but resigning herself to the life she chose. With Raynell, Rose plants a garden in the front yard of the house and waits patiently for it to finally bloom after Troy is dead. However, despite Troy’s cruelty toward Cory, he seems to have been a different father to Raynell. Troy’s malice for Cory, which is much stronger than his annoyance toward Lyons, is rooted in hatred toward himself and the son who is most like him. Troy was raised to believe that he needed to fight his father to become a man, and he accepts that he must give Cory the same opportunity.
By August Wilson