Dreams Deferred: Exploring the Masculine Mystique in August Wilson’s Fences

Abstract

Using Robert Staples’ concept of “the masculine mystique,” this article explores the protagonist, Troy Maxson’s desire to conform the expectations of the masculine mystique in August Wilson’s Fences. Troy emerges from a battered past and as someone who once dreamed of swinging for the fences—playing professional baseball—but is consigned to being a garbage man. His perception of his existence and worth is inadequate mostly because he, as an “emasculated” man, cannot realize the American Dream economically and socially. By considering his masculinity within the standards of the masculine mystique, he creates pressures that can only be abated by removing the inadequate benchmarks defining him. Measuring himself by the term and concept of “imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy,” yet unable to participate in the American capitalist enterprise, he is doomed to fail. Robert Staples’ concept of the masculine mystique provides a theoretical framework to understand the ongoing crisis in Troy’s masculinity. As a solution to this crisis, August Wilson highlights resistance to European American representations of African American manhood, promoting instead, a spiritual and cultural connection with the African American community and a recognition and appraisal of his ancestry. Unable to take off the lens of the masculine mystique that obscures his view of himself and the world, Troy is inclined to see himself as limited, confused and victimized