"Two Trains Running"

Essay # 45441

African-American Studies > 1950-Present
African-American Studies > Civil Rights
African-American Studies > Racism

A look at the African "American Dream" in August Wilson's "Two Trains Running".

1,629 words () | 7 sources | MLA | 2003 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper shows that, at the end of a decade of revolution in civil rights, the African-American situation in everyday life is unchanged, due to mainstream society's denial of the marked history and future of African-Americans. Wilson uses "loud-talking" to identify this denial, as well as to bring about changes in social responsibility and African-Americans' searches for prosperity.

From the Paper:

""Wilson's plays show, if anything, that slavery isn't "historical" or time-bound, or even continuous. It's something that starts all over again wherever oppression is elided or forgotten"(Fleche 13). At the end of the 1960's it seems that the civil rights revolution has not freed the African American from the urban wasteland created by racism. Memphis's restaurant once a thriving business within the community is now barely profitable due to the loss of wealth of the city. As Memphis looks to sell his building to the city, other essential businesses have already moved on, such as the doctor, supermarket, and five and ten (Bogumil 97). The drug store owner, Meyer, burns his business down to collect the insurance money and lets an innocent black man go to jail with the blame. "Two Trains Running is about economic survival of African Americans and the many entrenched oppressive forces with which they collide as they chose among luck, violence and fair play" (Shannon 167)."