Troy, the central character in Fences, is a 53-year-old man who was once a major player in the Negro baseball league. Because Major League Baseball was segregated during the peak of his career, he was never able to advance into a serious professional career. As a result, he is bitter, angry, and obsessed with his own unfulfilled potential as well as the less talented White men who succeeded in his place. Troy has had a difficult life, raised by an abusive father alongside 10 siblings after his mother left and never returned. Troy had to leave home at age 14, initiated into manhood when his father beat him up to take his girlfriend. Troy spent 15 years in prison for murder during a robbery, a crime he committed while he was desperate for money to feed his newborn son. Troy shows how trauma and violence from a parent can shape someone as they become a parent themselves.

Troy seems villainous, but he is also complex and damaged. Troy was denied many opportunities throughout his life due to racism, and he imagines that he might still become a professional baseball player. He enacts the abuse and control that he learned from his father onto his own son, destroying Cory’s chance to play college football. Troy is also charismatic and charming, able to win over women and friends, until the dark cloud of rage consumes him. Troy feels the weight of responsibility for his children and believes that fulfilling one’s duty is more important than love or affection. Troy lives by his own rules, but he strictly enforces those rules within his family. Troy is also an unreliable narrator when he tells stories, embellishing tales from his life with impossible details to make his life seem more extraordinary than it is. 

Bono has been Troy’s best friend for 30 years. They work alongside each other as garbage collectors until Troy is promoted as a driver. For most of their relationship, Bono looks up to Troy and follows his lead, but his immense respect for his friend in based largely on Troy’s relationship with Rose. Bono has a strong relationship with his own wife, Lucille, and tells Troy that the moment he began to truly respect Troy and see that he could make intelligent choices was when Troy chose Rose. At the time, Troy was still a popular baseball player, and there were plenty of women who were interested in him, but Troy decided to settle down. Bono surmises that Troy is having a relationship with Alberta, commenting in the first scene of the play about Troy buying her drinks, but Troy repeatedly denies it. In the first scene of the second act, Bono warns Troy to extricate himself from his affair and preserve his marriage. Although Troy finally confesses to Bono that he is cheating on Rose, he demonstrates later in the scene that it is too late to get out of the situation. Bono loses respect for Troy and stops spending time with him after Troy ruins his marriage.

Rose is Troy’s devoted wife of 18 years before Troy has an affair and impregnates another woman. She is warm and giving, often cooking food and worrying about whether the people she loves are eating well. She realized early in her marriage that Troy was rigid and tough and would never allow her to grow, but she worked hard to honor her commitment to him and hold their family together. Rose also doesn’t hesitate to tell Troy when he is wrong, but she sometimes endures his rage as a consequence. When Rose learns about Troy’s affair, she cuts him off as a husband but agrees to raise his motherless child. Once she extracts herself from Troy’s control, Rose realizes that she has given up herself to make room for Troy. She rediscovers herself to become a mother to Raynell, finally able to blossom and grow. After Troy dies, Rose can see how Cory takes after him and encourages Cory to accept this part of himself so he can grow and change as well. 

Lyons is Troy’s first child by a woman who came before Rose, and he grew up largely outside of Troy’s control. At the beginning of the play, Lyons is 34 years old, which means that Troy was only about 19 when he became a father. Troy entered prison when Lyons was a baby and remained there for 15 years, and Lyons’s mother had moved away with Lyons by the time Troy was released. Although the play does not explain how Lyons reunited with his father, Lyons places himself under Troy’s influence as an adult and echoes some of Troy’s choices. At the end of the play, Lyons has been sentenced to the workhouse for stealing and fraudulently cashing checks, and his wife has left him. However, unlike Troy, Lyons continues pursuing the passion that gives his life meaning. He is a musician, and although he is described at the beginning of the play as being more interested in the lifestyle of a musician than in music itself, he plays gigs regularly. Although Lyons frequently borrows money from Troy to make ends meet and support himself, he is fulfilled as long as he can play music. Lyons demonstrates that money and fame are not the most important things in life.

Troy’s younger brother, Gabriel, is the only person from Troy’s family who remains in his life. Over a decade before the start of the play, Gabriel sustained a brain injury in World War II, and he now has a metal plate in his head. Gabriel is sweet and childlike, having escaped the influence of his father that had so damaged Troy. He also believes that he is the angel Gabriel. He carries a trumpet, talks about chasing hellhounds, and is sometimes arrested for having meltdowns and disturbing the peace. Most of the Century Cycle plays contain an element of the supernatural that may or may not be explainable by natural means. At the end of the play, Gabriel finally blows his trumpet, certain that it is his responsibility to open the gates of heaven for his brother. Through his frenetic dancing and howling, it is possible that there is something spiritual or supernatural occurring, but it is also possible that Gabriel is simply misguided and delusional.

Cory is the only son of Troy and Rose, and he grows up fully under Troy’s control and influence. He is the unwilling heir to his father’s and grandfather’s flaws. Like Troy, Cory has the talent to become a serious athlete, and a college recruiter offers him the opportunity to earn a degree while playing football. However, Troy projects his own shortcomings and insecurities onto his son and prevents Cory from potentially becoming a more successful athlete than he was. One of the major events of the play is Cory’s coming of age as he challenges his father and then leaves home after a physical altercation. This moment echoes his father’s coming of age when Troy left home after physically challenging and standing up to his own father. Unlike Troy, however, who landed in prison, Cory joins the Marines. At the end of the play, Cory is a colonel and has plans to get married, although he still fights to escape his father’s influence and live a different life. It becomes Cory’s responsibility to break the cycle of abuse and emotionally distant fatherhood.