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 she noted, there was never a bloom. He never came to that realization.

Rose made a stand that was uncommon in her day. Although she suspected her husband of being unfaithful, she stayed with him. But when she found that her husband had impregnated his mistress, she told him that she would no longer live with him as his wife, and they lived separate lives. When his mistress died in childbirth, Rose adopted their daughter as her own, and took care of her, only allowing Troy to provide for them as he always had. As stated in Understanding August Wilson, Rose realized that "financial security is only a portion of the equation and that it can simultaneously take away what it also provides" (Bogumil 50). Rose was about twenty years Troy's junior when they married. At the time, she equated the stability of their household and the fact that they did have more than others with love. As she grew to realize the distinction, she gave up on love for comfort until she found that Troy and Alberta were having a child. Then she made a stand for herself and her family.

Rose realized where she went wrong in her marriage after Troy's death. She told her son Cory that she'd made the error of not making Troy think of her. "When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave some room for me" (Wilson 98). She admits to giving up her identity for the betterment of her family. She never thought of what was best for her, but what was best for her husband and the children. She admitted to thinking that at one point, Troy might begin to think of her wants and needs as she did for him, but she discovered, he never did.

The title of the play - Fences - held symbolism for every character in the book. For Rose, the symbolic meaning of the fence was to hold the tenuous bonds of her family unit together. Remembering her own family, Rose tells Troy, "And you know I ain't never wanted no half nothing in my family. My whole family is half. Everybody got different fathers and mothers... my two sisters and my brother. Can't hardly tell who's who. Can't never sit down and talk about Papa and Mama. It's your papa and your mama and my papa and my mama..." (Wilson 68). Family was extremely important to Rose, and it was also important that the family unit stay together. This is why Rose endured her husband's distance from the family, his delving into the past without participating in the present, and knowing that her husband was seeing another woman. The breaking point for her was the fact that he was having a child out of wedlock, something that she'd experienced through her life, and did not want any of her children to have to experience.

Although Troy was a distant father, Rose tried to fill the space that he left with the children with her love and compassion. The fence would be to keep them close to her, and keep them together. Troy never built the fence, and he was out of her life, but she held closely to Raynell and continued to nurture Cory.

Richard Wright's "Bright and Morning Star" details the troubles of an African American family, with the mother, Aunt Sue, as the protagonist. She and her sons are members of the Communist party. The identity of the members is kept secret as it is illegal to belong to the party, which has members that are both Black and White. One of Sue's sons, Sug, is already in prison for his connections with the party. When it is learned that there is a traitor amongst their ranks, and her son Johnny Boy has been captured, Sue takes action. She goes to where they are torturing her son for the names of the members, and upon seeing the traitor; Sue shoots him, sacrificing herself. She knows that shooting the traitor, Booker, will result in her immediate death, but it will also end the torture of her son, and save the lives of the other members.

An unlikely female protagonist, Aunt Sue is a poor old woman who spends her days washing and ironing White people's clothing, as well as cooking. Undereducated,