Fences

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Act I

Reading Check

1. Who is Bono?

2. Who is Lyons?

3. What does Troy need Cory’s help to build?

4. Why does Gabriel have a metal plate in his head?

5. How does Gabriel spend his days?

6. What scheduling arrangement for football season has Cory made with his boss at the A&P?

7. What is Troy’s reaction to the arrangement Cory has made with his boss at the A&P?

8. Which woman does Troy tell about his promotion to driver before he tells Rose?

9. What is Rose’s position on Cory’s football plans?

10. How do Troy and Bono meet?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Who is Alberta, and what is Troy’s connection to her?

2. Why is Troy dismissive of Cory’s interest in football?

3. How does Troy beat Death?

4. What is Troy’s relationship with the Devil?

5. Why does Troy feel guilty with regard to Gabriel?

6. Why doesn’t Troy want to put Gabriel in a hospital?

7. Why doesn’t Gabriel live with Troy and Rose?

8. Why does Rose say Cory wants to play football, and what is Troy’s reaction?

9. How do Troy’s and Cory’s visions of Cory’s future differ?

10. What does Troy say about liking Cory?

11. What does Troy say about respect for Cory?

12. What is Troy’s view of his father, and why?

13. How does Troy treat Lyons when he returns to pay back $10?

14. How does the conflict between Troy and Cory over the A&P job intensify?

Paired Resources

“A Fence” by Carl Sandburg

• The speaker discusses a fence going up around a lakefront stone house.
• This poem relates to the themes of Aging and Death.
• The title of the play is Fences, and the first reference to a fence comes when Troy angers over Cory’s absence because the pair is supposed to be building a fence. Consider a fence around Troy and Rose’s house. Which resident might want the fence, and why?

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost

• This poem focuses on a fence between neighbors. As the speaker and his neighbor meet to repair a wall between their properties, the speaker comments before building another wall, “I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out.”
• The text connects to the theme of Aging and Death.
• Consider the purpose of a fence around Troy and Rose’s house. What would it keep in? What would it keep out?

Act II

Reading Check

1. For what reason was Gabriel arrested again?

2. According to Bono, who wants the fence, and why?

3. What does Troy confess to Rose regarding Alberta?

4. What is Cory’s “second strike”?

5. What may have been Troy’s motivation for his actions against Gabriel?

6. What happens to Alberta?

7. In what way does Troy try to deny his responsibility to Alberta?

8. What favor does Troy ask of Rose?

9. Although Troy has a house, how does he describe his condition to his daughter?

10. When Rose grants Troy’s favor, what are her two conditions?

11. Instead of going to college to play football, what is Cory doing?

12. How does Cory insult Troy?

13. At the end of Scene 4, what happens to Cory?

14. At Troy’s death, what are each of his children doing in life?

15. At Troy’s death, what is Bono doing in life?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is Troy’s motivation for his relationship with Alberta?

2. What does Rose accuse Troy of doing to her?

3. What is the state of Troy and Rose’s marriage after his confession?

4. In what ways does Rose accuse Troy of ruining Gabriel’s and Cory’s lives?

5. What promise does Troy make to Death?

6. As Scene 3 opens, why might Rose be listening to a baseball game?

7. Why isn’t Troy sorry for his actions with regard to the women in his life?

8. How does Troy convince Rose to grant his favor?

9. What has happened to the relationship between Troy and Bono?

10. According to Cory, what is the conflict between Troy and Cory?

11. How does Troy die?

12. What are Rose’s and Cory’s differing opinions about the role Troy played in Cory’s life?

13. What mistake does Rose believe she made in her relationship with Troy?

14. How does Gabriel celebrate Troy’s life?

Paired Resource

“Black Fatherhood in the Long Nineteenth Century”

• This review considers the legacy of enslavement on Black fatherhood.
• Considering the placement of Fences in Wilson’s American Century Cycle and the theme The Sins of the Father, in what ways are the relationships between Troy and his father and Troy and Cory influenced by Black history?

“August Wilson’s Century Cycle”

• See how Fences fits into chronological order (by time period of the setting) of the entire American Century Cycle.
• This article connects to the themes of The American Dream and Aging and Death.
• What metaphors in the play seem to resound in other Century Cycle plays, based on these or other short summaries of the works in the collection? How are Fences’ themes evident in the other works?

Recommended Next Reads 

Seven Guitars (1995) by August Wilson

• Another of Wilson’s American Century Cycle of 10 plays covering 20th-century Black history, Seven Guitars is set in 1948 and explores the masculinity of blues singer Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton.
• The plays were not written in chronological order; Seven Guitars precedes Fences chronologically. In 2016, Denzel Washington directed a film version of Fences.
• Seven Guitars on SuperSummary

Two Trains Running (1987) by August Wilson

• Another of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle of 10 plays covering 20th-century Black history, Two Trains Running is set in 1969 and traces the loss of Memphis’s Black-owned restaurant. Sterling, a civil rights activist, tries to help Memphis.
• Two Trains Running follows Fences chronologically.
• Two Trains Running on SuperSummary