Troy doesn’t believe that his son, Cory can be successful in his dream, football, because of his perception that it is exclusively a white man’s sport.

The relationship Troy has with Rose is complicated and somewhat ironic. Troy makes it a point to speak in a joking, if not degrading manner to Rose. Troy and his friend Bono are talking about an attractive woman named Alberta when Rose comes out of the house and inquires as to what the two men are getting into. Troy responds, “What you worried about what we getting into for? This is men talk, woman” (1.1.84-85). Troy is older and with this type of talk and behavior, tries to establish himself as the family leader. Rose, in fact turns out to be the true bond and emotional leader in the family, which is an irony that Wilson presents. Wilson typically paints a picture of black families as in the woman being the solid core, and the man, with a large ego trying to discover who he is. Wilson’s depiction of black male characters is interesting in these examples because as a boy there was no father in his life; however, he established his own male role images by listening carefully to black men’s conversations in the local café.

Wilson expresses to the reader that black men have the same problems as other people in life. There are metaphorically speaking, fences that we all must deal with. Some people have problems or circumstances to contend with out of no fault of their own. Wilson is telling us about the unique problems, or fences that black men deal with due to the fact that they are black men, with all other things being equal. This is an additional burden to people who have the same human qualities common to other people of any race. Wilson does not portray the characters as poor helpless souls in a sea of self-pity at the mercy of the evil white man. Rather, the characters are portrayed as dignified people who contend with many circumstances in life. Some circumstances are not under their control such as race or social status, which sometimes arguably may be a derivative of race. Some circumstances are created however, by the characters of Wilson not out of happenstance, rather of their own conscience decision such as Troy’s adultery. Using another baseball metaphor, Wilson depicts Troy’s cal

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