As Fairy Godmother from Shrek Would Say, I'm Holding Out for a Hero

While reading “Fences”, I was bothered by the lack of a clear “hero” character. Usually in a story I can find at least one character to latch onto and force all of my hopes upon, but there is no such character in “Fences” (or at least not one who gets the job done).

The first character we meet is Troy. It is pretty obvious from the beginning of the story that Troy is not going to be much of a hero. He’s a brute, crude, and a little too rambunctious to trust with our confidence as a hero. Furthermore, he fails at the pivotal point in the story that determines his fate as a good or bad character. When Bono tells him to be good to Rose because she is good for him, Troy then admits to Rose that he has fathered a child with another woman. At that moment, August Wilson eliminates Troy as a hero possibility for us.

Our second, and more realistic, hero possibility is Rose. Initially she seems like a good candidate. She is caring and forgiving, even taking in her husband’s illegitimate child. She stands up for her son even in the face of an angry Troy. But the one problem I have with her as a hero character is that she stays with Troy or at least that she doesn't seem to get as angry as she should about his infidelity. She takes in his child with another woman and stays married to him. On the one hand, I think she is extremely admirable for those actions. But the modern-day feminist in me still wanted to see her walk away from him or at the very least give him a harder time. I think in a way that Wilson meant for her to be the strength behind the family and the only reason it endures. For some reason, though, she still does not seem like the hero of the story to me.

If I had to pinpoint the so-called hero of this story, it would be Corey. He starts out as the talented and full-of-potential teen who is struggling to overcome his father's expectations and ridicule. He has a sort of Cinderella story of sorts in that he leaves home without any prospects and returns as an accomplished man. It's probably partly my teen bias that draws me to Corey's story but I definitely sympathized with him and his story.

The only problem with considering Corey as the hero of the story is that he is clearly not the main character. We learn about Troy's life, Troy's actions, and Troy's problems. We do not witness Corey's transformation at all. He leaves home essentially the same boy we meet in the beginning of the story and returns completely differently without us knowing the full story. That, however, brings us back to Troy. Perhaps it is my sympathy for Corey that does not allow me to have any sympathy for Troy. He is a lonely and unfortunate person who essentially misses out on some of the better things in life. But he does have good times with his wife and baseball and he was given every opportunity to have a good family life. But he doesn't.

All in all, I'm still waiting for a hero to emerge from this story. Even though Wilson seems to point to Troy as the hero, I cannot accept Troy as a good enough character to warrant the title of "hero of the story". And Corey cannot really be the hero since the story does not center around him at all. So there we are--left without a hero. Now I'll just have to listen to that voice in the back of my head saying, "Does every story really need a hero?" (631)