The Failure of the American Dream in August Wilson's Fences [PP: 69-75] Peyman Amanolahi Baharvand Department of English Language and Literature Islamic Azad University, North Tehran Branch Tehran, Iran ABSTRACT This paper traces the impossibility of the fulfillment of the American dream for African- Americans in August Wilson‟s Fences. It examines why Troy Maxon, as the protagonist of the play, is not able to fulfill his dreams of freedom, and economic achievements in an environment of oppression where he finds himself surrounded by hostile whites who hinder his development. It indicates that the racial discrimination, manifested in various forms including racial segregation prevalent in the white-dominated American society, impedes Troy‟s progress. A large number of African-Americans migrated from southern states to the north in 1920s and 1930s in order to find jobs in industrial northern states. They had been told that the United States was the promised land of equal chances wherein everyone regardless of race and gender was able to progress from rags to riches. They left the South, in which racism was still pervasive despite the abolition of slavery, and moved to the North for the fulfillment of the dreams they had been promised. The advocates of the American Dream claimed that hard diligence and intelligence could lead a man to material prosperity. Nevertheless, this paper demonstrates that since African-Americans are considered to be „„others‟‟ in the white dominated society, financial progress and other aspects of the American Dream remain impossible dreams for them. Keywords: The American Dream, Baseball, Negro, Racism, Slave, Fences ARTICLE INFO The paper received on Reviewed on Accepted after revisions on 21/09/2017 14/10/2017 17/12/2017 Suggested citation: Baharvand, P. (2017). The Failure of the American Dream in August Wilson's Fences. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 5(4). 69-75. 1. Introduction August Wilson (1945-2005) was a prominent African-American playwright who wrote 15 plays for which he won many awards. To name only a few of the prizes Wilson won, one can refer to a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for his play Fences, and a second Pulitzer Prize for The Piano Lesson. Wilson is generally referred to as a dramatist who concentrated on the sufferings of African-Americans in his plays. He intended to depict the wretched life of a neglected race in the United States in order to draw the attention of social reformers throughout the world to these miserable people. Fences is the best play in which he portrays this suffering. As Wilson's masterpiece, Fences is a play in which the author foregrounds the troubles of an African-American family who fails to fulfill their dream of success and happiness despite the diligence and constant efforts of Troy Maxon, the head of the household. The first group of African slaves were brought to the New World, later to be the United States, by European traders in the 1620s. Since African slaves were well- built and strong individuals for whose labor no wage was required, the idea of slavery was of great financial benefits for slaveholders. Though it is impossible to think of the exact number, roughly six to seven million slaves were imported to the New World during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. African slaves worked mainly on cotton, tobacco and rice lands. Every slaveholder possessed on average fifty slaves who worked in extremely wretched conditions. They were hindered from education and other preliminary social rights. Moreover, most of black women were subject to sexual harassment by their white masters who took sexual liberty with them. No slave family could feel secure, because slaveholders did not hesitate to disintegrate these families in order to sell them to other masters. American slaveholders did not face serious challenges until the accomplishment of American Revolution