Jose Morales
English 164
Dr. Kidd
08/03/2012

“Fences” and “A Raisin in the Sun”

Plays, “Fences” and “A Raisin in the Sun” share similar plots. They take place in the mid-western United States in the 1950’s and explore the family dynamics of the African-American Family and the paradigmatic shift it experienced between two generations. The older generation, who could remember slavery by first-hand experience or by being born during a time when success for the average African-Americans was systematically stifled by racist and unconstitutional laws that were put in place when slavery was legal, and the young generation that began to show some sense of entitlement, had begun to overcome institutional barriers to succeed and empower …show more content…

Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”(Hansbury3.3)
Mama, with this statement, puts in plain English, what she has been trying to teach her family through her own actions. Rose Maxson in “Fences,” who is Troy’s wife and mother of his second child, Cory, expresses the same philosophy in her day to day life as Lena Younger, or Mama from “A Raisin in the Sun.” Rose is forty three years old, loves her family unconditionally and volunteers at church regularly. Like Mama, Rose respects and holds in high regard, the institution of family and takes her role as the nurturing mother and the matriarch of the family very seriously. Her instinctive desire to keep her family together and close to her is shown in her request that her husband and sun build a fence together around her small, grassless backyard. While Mama was at odds with her son in “A Raisin in the Sun,” Rose Maxson has Troy’s indifference and emotional absence to contend with. In “Fences,” both Rose and Alberta,