The Mothers of Fences and Bright Morning Star

The Mothers of “Fences” and “Bright and Morning Star”

August Wilson, the author of “Fences” and Richard Wright, the author of “Bright and Morning Star” produced writings that made a significant impact on the culture of African American literature as we know it today. Both authors centered their works around African Americans, illuminating issues within the communities, and specifically, the family unit, or lack thereof. With Rose in “Fences” and Sue in “Bright and Morning Star”, both were mothers that exhibited strength and sacrifice, putting their own needs aside for the wellbeing of their families.

August Wilson’s “Fences”, written as a play, is a story of a Black family, primarily centered around Troy Maxson and his plight as a Black man in a predominantly White world. The play also puts an emphasis on the disintegrating relationships between Troy, his wife Rose, and his son Cory, due to his adulterous relationship with Alberta. That relationship led to the subsequent birth of Troy and Alberta’s child, Raynell, and Alberta’s untimely death during childbirth. Rose then adopted the motherless Raynell, but no longer had any further dealings with Troy as a husband.

Rose Maxson is named for a flower, and takes on characteristics of that flower. When her husband is unfaithful to her, she takes the steps to protect herself and her family just as rose would protect itself. Throughout the play, she is generous and patient, even when the situation does not warrant it. In Act Two, when Rose talks about her life, she uses a metaphor about planting: “I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams…and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me no eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom. But I held on to you, Troy” (Wilson 71). When Rose told Troy that she took her feelings, wants, needs and dreams and buried them inside him, she was telling him that she’d given her life for their marriage and their family. She put his needs consistently and the needs of their children over hers. In Fences, Troy was the dreamer, and Rose was the realist. Where Troy still imagined a time when he was major league baseball material, and longed for those days, Rose held fast in the present, deflecting Troy’s negative behavior and trying to keep the peace. In her own way, Rose felt that her optimism about their life as it was in the present could overcome Troy’s dreams and thoughts about the past. But as