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Thoughts on Wilson

Joel Schueler

August Wilson has said of his 10-play cycle that he wanted to ‘focus upon what I felt were the most important issues confronting African Americans for that decade, so ultimately they could stand as a record of Black experience over the past hundred years...what you end up with is a kind of review or re-examination of history.’

    August Wilson’s work is hugely steeped in the experiences of African American culture. Sometimes thought of as the ‘Black Arthur Miller,’ Wilson’s expostulatory plays of social and cultural identity have firmly established him as one of the finest playwrights of the latter half of the 20^th century. A history of oral tradition from the struggles on the plantation fields of the slavery era is examined right up to Wilson’s contemporary Black America, and indeed even how the future will play out. Wilson’s selective review of certain periods of American history via the medium of his plays provides a fresh angle on important issues. Paul Carter Harrison states that they are so important in their review and comment on African American culture that they ‘represent the culmination of political, social...objectives presaged by the Harlem Renaissance in the twenties and the Black Arts Movement of the sixties.’ⁱ Along with fellow civil rights writers such as Amiri Baraka and James Baldwin, the work focuses on an African unity and strength, away from the culture of Western America that mistreated their race. Through Wilson’s work we learn that Blacks endured many inequalities and hardships compared to whites even in the modern America Wilson sets his plays in. This essay will offer an exploration into the use of history in a small selection of his plays.
    Fences is set in 1950’s Pittsburgh. Wilson uses history to effect by setting the play very purposely in the same year Hank Aaron shocked American baseball by becoming the first Black manager in history to win the World Series with his Milwaukee Braves. Wilson wanted to emphasise the importance of this Black history, and by setting the play in this memorable year, a subtle device is being used to stress the notability of the play. Troy is depicted as the tragic character of the play, whose life as one of the older play’s characters, remains scarred by the slavery period. Despite there being a brighter future for his two children, in an America of slight progression, Troy is one of the older ones left behind after abolition, left like many Blacks of his time, he is left a failed sharecropper. Wilson uses Troy and Bono as characters as examples of a generation America forgot. The result is that they spend years living in shacks and turning to crime which many Black Americans of their era also did after abolition. With a lack of infrastructure and resources, Wilson is not excusing Black crime but implies that in these conditions the rise of Black crime is an inevitable occurrence. With all this considered, Wilson is delineating that despite emancipation from slavery compared with the Black experience of the past hundred years, that Troy’s generation are not that much better off than when they were slaves. Another reason for this is that Blacks still faced many inequalities to Whites in the 1950’s. As we see with Troy’s occupation, his role is a garbage lifter but is annoyed at how it is only the White drivers that drive the garbage vehicles. Troy works hard but gets little in return. His whole life is not without hardships, from starting off life in the poverty-stricken south to being ‘pushed back by the white establishment’ⁱⁱ in his pursuit of his baseball-playing dreams. This is important as baseball was separated by the standard leagues for Whites and the subordinate Negro leagues for Blacks during the 1950’s and many Black baseball players would have been in Troy’s position. Like lots of Blacks, Troy moved during ‘The Great Migration’ to the north in search of a better life but as we discover it did not necessarily mean it was better. A resulting factor of Black oppression is the common feeling for Black citizens to ‘stick together’ and build strong relations with one another, empowering their Black identity. An important part of the play that represents this involves the title of the play itself:- Troy’s wife Rose sets Troy and their son Cory the task of building a fence in their garden. It is said that fences can either keep people out or keep people in, and Rose being a compassionate character very much wants to enhance keep the fortitude of the housemates relations and keep racism out. The fence is also symbolic in that it represents a fence that Troy can hit a baseball over for a home run, something he was hampered from doing in a darker past. Paul Carter Harrison takes an interesting angle on what the building of the fence will mean to Troy. ‘Troy will erect a fence to set the boundaries of his universe...keeping the profane at bay and containing divine order.’ⁱⁱⁱ
    Another consequence of Troy’s past is that he finds it difficult to be close to his loved ones and indeed even has an affair with a woman named Alberta. This is part of Troy’s hypocrisy and moral depravity, largely as a consequence of Blacks’ belittlement.
    In a similar way that Wilson hoped to galvanise his Black readers into living their lives in happiness and pride with a fight against oppressors, he also wrote Fences with a burning desire to prove the white doubters wrong. He wrote it mainly because Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was slated for its ‘non-narrative aspects of its structure’^iv and ‘focus on two...characters.’^v
    In typical fighting fashion he wanted to show that he could write a decent play with a central character, in Troy Maxson. Furthermore, he was sick of whites thinking ‘about niggers as lazy and shiftless. Well, here’s a man (Troy) with responsibilities as prime to his life.’^vi He was desperate to show the Black man’s worth and that they were a capable and industrious people in America, with many of their faults a by-product of the oppression they had experienced. Fishman believes that, ‘it is Wilson’s approach to...responsibility which ultimately makes the play universal and allows him to examine issues which cross cultural lines.’^vii
    The characters’ speech is often typical of an African American vernacular. Wilson hopes to engage Black readers with this as all Blacks can relate to it from the lowest socio-economic group to the highest. In one of Harrison’s most important quotes, he suggests that Wilson’s work is affective on a multifaceted level. ‘Wilson has reaffirmed the potency of the African continuum as a psychic and spiritual repository of values and survival strategies that authenticates experience and fuels the imagination...capable of promoting personal renewal and collective healing.’^viii
    In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom we also notice the theme of dispossession that is felt by Blacks, ‘We’s the leftovers’^ix and ‘Now what’s the colored man gonna do with himself?’^x These quotes attributed to Toledo symbolize the same type of loss that Troy and Bono feel in Fences. Levee is a young ambitious musician keen to start his own band. Just like the dispossessed Black race whose futures are ruined we witness in Fences that Levee’s future is also ruined once he shoots and kills Toledo. This is an example of Black peoples’ moral deterioration as a result of the devaluation they have suffered. The economic exploitation of Blacks was apparent in the 1920s in which this play is set and indeed for decades after. The arguing between Sturdyvant and Rainey symbolizes the battle between capitalists and workers, or powerful Whites and non-powerful Blacks, like the difference between garbage lifters like Troy and the white garbage vehicle drivers. The exploitative Irvin and Sturdyvant are countered in their behaviour by the non-negotiable Ma Rainey. In Act I of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Rainey arrives at the studio late flaunting her ‘black bottom’ with ‘the parodic gesture of male empowerment.’^xi She wants the heating up, wants coke and will only act on her terms. ‘I don’t care what you say, Irvin...I’m singing Ma Rainey’s song...Now that’s all there is to it.’^xii Wilson here is saying that Rainey represents what the Black people feel and need to copy: - an upstanding stance against the white oppressors. Song is an important weapon in Wilson’s plays. Such examples include Ma Rainey’s song along with Rose’s, and also in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone Jeremy is a ‘proficient guitar player, yet his spirit has yet to be molded into a song.’^xiii In this play as well, Bynum’s father had a Healing Song to cure the sick, and he himself has a Binding Song, ‘used to bind together dislocated lives.’^xiv Bynum further criticises Loomis who, ‘done forgot his song.’^xv Song has a very holy place in Black culture, with the Blues making sense of their everyday lives and history, right back to the songs slaves used to sing on the plantation fields. Song and music have been a firm backbone of Black culture to help them through the difficult times, and this is not lost on Wilson who wishes to emphasise this by their being in his plays. However unlike the Black slave songs, Levee, a character whom Wilson wishes to undermine as a bad example, sings a song that is egoist and anti-God. In Act II we gain a further understanding of the way in which the blues is a key musical account of life’s past and present experiences as Rainey points out, ‘The blues help you get out of bed in the morning. You get up knowing you ain’t alone.’
    One cannot emphasize enough the importance of the idea in Wilson’s work that remembering the past is essential to establishing the correct moral values and ways of living. As Harrison points out, ‘The African American moral personality...is shaped and validated by a value system gleaned from the folkloric repository of experience.’^xvi Ralph Ellison further describes folklore as, ‘the first drawings of any group’s character.’^xvii
    Troy tries to dismiss the inequalities imposed upon him and therefore does not allow himself to be devalued. However this strong personality he has come to adopt to fight off evils also pushes away those close to him, as it is also used as a selfish tool to help him feel better. It is also due to his difficult past that he sets up an unshakeable personality barrier or ‘sanctified province’^xviii and he even refuses to be intimidated by Death whom he fights with venom. ‘Death standing there staring at me...“Bound over hell! Let’s settle this now!” It seem like he kinda fell back when I said that, and all the cold went out of me.’^xix Part of his strong character also comes from establishing a patriarchal authority that is embedded in historic African American households. In similar fashion to the way in which Troy was brought up by a harsh, abusive father, which thus established Troy’s manhood in separating from his father and creating his image as the sole breadwinner, Troy’s fatherhood over Cory is similarly disciplinary, ‘I brought you into the world...I’ll take you out of the world!’^xx Wilson also tells us through Troy that not only during the 1950s was it common for the father of an African American household to have an old-fashioned authoritative role but that he is duty-bound. ‘...it’s my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you!’^xxi
    This is further seen when Troy brings home his daughter out of wedlock to care for her.
    Through Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences Wilson coveys to us that the 1920s were different from the 1950s as far as hope for Blacks was concerned. If we look at the end of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom we witness a tragic end where not only a life from an older generation is lost but also the ambitions of an upcoming youngster. Wilson depicts here that the general feeling amongst Blacks at this time was one of limited hope, both for the older and younger generations with increasing atmospheric anger. However, with Fences we witness a more positive ending to the play, and it is Troy who absorbs all the anger from others towards him. Although in many ways Troy’s life is a tragedy and a struggle, it serves as a self-sacrifice to the younger generation. With Troy’s death is the end of an old generation encompassed by poverty and subordination, and the start of a young hopeful generation, of which Wilson was part. The brain-damaged Gabriel plays a muted trumpet to sound the passing of his brother and Harrison believes this is a fitting end to Troy’s death as it, ‘is a...gesture...of Troy’s transformation into the spirit which promises a new day.’^xxii Harrison goes on to comment that Gabriel’s ‘That’s the way that go!’^xxiii provides a sobering finish to the play and indeed Troy’s life, that restores order and reality to a very unreal life, ‘profaned by intolerable social limitations.’^xxiv
    In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom there is a male-orientated ego match between the musicians, comparing and discussing their tales of survival in an inhospitable world, that in turn causes a heated atmosphere. Levee ignores the wiser and older Toledo, fully intent on his own satisfaction and ambitions and ‘self-indulgence.’^xxv Wilson depicts Levee in this way to show his readers that if they are Black and follow Levee’s methods, they will end in self-destruction. It is therefore necessary to learn from history’s lessons and older folk before selfishness.
    In his plays Wilson often provides us with subtle perspectives on the past, allowing the reader to think over them more deeply and re-evaluate them. Through Bono we learn about the ‘walking blues’ and how this associates with the African American diaspora. In Act I, scene iv he comments, ‘they walk out their front door and just take on down one road or another and keep on walking.’ In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Toledo offers an interesting look at history via a ‘culinary parable’^xxvi You take and make your history with that stew. Alright. Now it’s over. Your history’s over and you done ate the stew. But you look around and you see some carrots over here, some potatoes over there. That stew’s still there.’^xxvii
    In conclusion it would correct in saying that history plays a fundamental role throughout Wilson’s work. Harrison argues that Blacks’ status as a minority race in America has helped form a bond of proud, vibrant writers like Wilson. ‘Marginalization prompted African Americans to probe the recesses of ancestral memory for recognizable African values, linguistic techniques, and aesthetic constructions that could be cultivated as a source of ethnic reaffirmation’^xxviii
    In amongst the implied messages to Blacks, his plays are so densely rich that they also cross cultures and remind us of the difficulties of inner-family life, particularly between husband and wife and father and son. In many of Wilson’s plays is the notion of a blues dynamic that sets the tone of despair and a will to survive. Moreover the texture and structure of his plays have a bluesy feel. Like a blues song his plays are lamenting and slow-moving. Kester is of the opinion that in Fences, Wilson ‘flattens...time by bringing...an acute sense of the closeness of personal experience and by drawing a parallel between past and future generations.’^xxix The past of Black religion and migration is deep rooted in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Harrison concludes it, ‘extends backward into the past where ancestors reside for “paradigmatic acts of gods.”’^xxx Repetition in the form of music, phrases in speech and actions further extends the use of the blues dynamic and the repeating of history. The harshness of Troy’s father on him for instance is repeated by Troy on his son. Furthermore the importance of memory and history is apparent in the most subtle of places. For example in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, ‘Bertha’s biscuits,’^xxxi and in Fences the fence as well as ‘Rose’s chicken’^xxxii and the ‘carrying out of trash.’^xxxiii All of these items about the home are linked with the characters’ joint need for settlement. Away from the wilderness of slavery in the fields comes a real protective feel to cement their sense of home. In Wilson’s plays there is, ‘an implicit mythic voice, one that struggles against the wall of history...and an explicit narrator.’^xxxiv It is a common theme not just in Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, but indeed throughout many of August Wilson’s plays that recognising the past of oral tradition and ancestral hardships is essential in establishing survival and more positively, a brighter, more progressive future for Blacks in America.

 

 

i Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 316 ii Elkins, Marilyn, August Wilson: A Casebook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994) Pg 162 iii Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 303 iv Elkins, Marilyn, August Wilson: A Casebook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994) Pg 163 v ibid vi ibid vii Elkins, Marilyn, August Wilson: A Casebook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994) Pg 164 viii Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 315 ix ibid x ibid xi Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 309 xii ibid xiii ibid xiv ibid xv ibid xvi Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 293 xvii ibid xviii Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 304 xix ibid xx ibid xxi ibid xxii Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 305 xxiii ibid xxiv ibid xxv Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 308 xxvi Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 315 xxvii ibid xxviii Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 292 xxix Elkins, Marilyn, August Wilson: A Casebook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994) Pg 108 xxx Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 315 xxxi Elkins, Marilyn, August Wilson: A Casebook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994) Pg 106 xxxii ibid xxxiii ibid xxxiv Wilson, August, Three Plays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) Pg 306

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