Fences Poetry Connection

Kyle Webster

2 White

Fences Poetry Connection (Still I Rise)

One theme that is evident throughout the poem is rising; or overcoming a tremendous

obstacle. In the poems case, the clear speaker of the literature is an African American women

who is either enduring the tortures of slavery or living through a timeframe of racial prejudice

and discrimination. One analogy that can be compared to the identity of the poem is, “It’s always

darkest just before the dawn.” When Maya Angelou wrote Still I rise she was living in the late

fifties and early sixties when the racial segregation of African Americans was at its vertex.

Meanwhile, Fences; a play by August Wilson, was also written in that same exact timeframe that

Maya Angelou is referring to.

Not only does the setting of the play correlate with Still I rise, it’s major themes share

connections as well. One scene in particular that can define the major theme of the two pieces of

literature is the moment when Corey confronted Troy about his place in the family and overall in

society. Corey has the same mindset that drove Maya Angelou to write Still I rise. His reasoning

is that there mustn't need to be segregation in sports and in the workforce as well. However, Troy

is still there to combat this mindset; reminding Corey that life was a set manner for people of

color and that no mercy for their circumstance was a necessary evil in society.

People like Troy were the ones who held the Civil Rights Movement back; keeping it as a

fabled dream rather than a reality. His anger of how society cheated him out of success is what

drove him to shun out any possibility of success for him and his children in the future. However,

it was Corey's generation that drove the Civil Rights Movement; and his mentality of

overcoming and never quitting when things are the darkest gave important political and literary

figures like Maya Angelou the courage to break down societies fences.

“You may shoot me with your...