"Some people build fences to keep people out, and some people build fences to keep people in," suggests the wise Bono one afternoon during his usual bonhomie with his comrades. garbage collector Troy Maxson. This seemingly minor phrase encompasses the entire leitmotif of August Wilson's play, Fences. It is a play set in a time, as the author puts it, “turbulent, fast, dangerous and provocative” and in which the collective barriers of society are beginning to dissolve. It's a time that will leave many, like Troy, perplexed by the changing nature of family and country. Wilson uses song to reveal the nature of the emotional and physical barriers that serve to torment or protect the characters in Fences. The songs, which permeate the Maxsons' lives, reveal how Troy imposes his barriers on his wife and children, and how these characters react to such barriers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Wilson's use of song reveals a lot about the characters and their relationships with each other. “Jesus, be a fence all around me every day,” Rose sings one morning as she hangs up the laundry. She sings about being “protected while she travels on her path.” As the first song in the play, this song helps reveal Rose's mentality regarding her role as a wife and mother. Rose asks her husband Troy to build a physical fence around their yard. Bono, a family friend, sees it as a way to “hang on” to Troy because “she loves him.” This woman has “eighteen years of [her] life invested in Troy” with no other way to keep Troy faithful than to pray, as with this song. Yet her efforts fail as Troy not only cheats on her, but announces that he's "going to be someone's daddy." By this point in their marriage, Troy and Rose had "lost contact with each other", but she takes the child into her family and raises him on the grounds that "the sins of the father over child. She, however, considers Troy "a man without a woman", for having strayed from his protective barrier while she remained obediently within hers. The song appears later in the play when Troy revisits his father's music, whose song reveals Troy's mentality towards his family Being chastised by Rose for calling her like she was a dog, he begins singing his father's song about "a dog [whose] name was. Blue' then reflects on a dog he once had who "was arrogant like that [meaning like Rose had done]" and wouldn't come when he called. The nature of the song reflects. Troy's attitude towards his family on whom he imposes figurative barriers He expects his family to obey his word, as if they were dogs themselves, and builds restrictive fences to keep them there too. powerless under his domination as the dogs He builds fences around Rose to keep her "settled to make her dinner and clean her sheets", and another around Cory to keep her from "getting involved in sports". He builds yet another to separate himself from Lyon, whose outlook on life and purpose differs greatly from that of Troy. Rose "took his life as [his own]" and he stopped Cory from playing football. Rose later reflected that "it was so big it filled the whole house"; perhaps this is the secret to why his fences were successful and why hers were not. Troy had the power to maintain its barriers by brute force or by mastering all,.