Fences Act Two, Scene Five

Rose tells him that Troy’s shadow in his life was nothing but “you growing into yourself.” She tells him, “Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn’t …and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was.” Rose tells him that she once thought Troy could fill all the empty spaces in her life as a mother and a wife but that Troy was so big, he filled the whole place up. In order to keep his strength, she had to give up some of hers. Taking in Raynell offered her the chance to once again be a mother, to have “all them babies I had wanted but never had.”