Why does Context Matter

Dear OIB class,
You say the questions on the quiz seem like random, trivial matters, but I disagree.  I'm beginning Fences with my Premieres today.  I open the work to the first page, where context is described.  I remember now, the comment made by August Wilson regarding life in Pittsburgh...the European immigrants found they could achieve their dreams through the promise offered by industry there: "The city grew.  It nourished itself and offered each man a partnership limited only by his talent, his guile, and his willingness and capacity for hard work.  For the immigrants of Europe, a dream dared and won true.
The descendants of African slaves were offered no such welcome or participation."
It is incredible how texts come to life again when we reread them and how stale and uninteresting they become in a fuzzy recall haze.  You see, Troy's father was a sharecropper and Troy was a sanitation worker.  These may seem like small, random facts for the student who works far away from the text and only close to the basic plot, but to know that Troy's father had lived the life destined to the descendants of slaves, a form of labor still tied to the land and often comparable to serfdom, illuminates our understanding of Troy as tragic hero.  Troy, a sanitation worker, is a step beyond, but still in a position of segregation--African-Americans did not ride up front, but hauled the garbage in the back.  This informs Troy's frustrations and helps explain his conflicts with the other characters in the play.  It will build his tragedy as well, as these frustrations cause him to leave first base, go over the fence and destroy his marriage.
In fact, August Wilson is writing the history of postbellum America, the heritage lived out by African Americans.  Fences, one of ten plays that chronicle this story throughout the 20th century, takes place in the 1950's, at a time just before the Civil Rights' shift of the 60's.  Troy feels the defeat of being the child of a sharecropper, being a sanitation worker, and of not having crossed the color barrier into baseball like Jackie Robinson.  His son, Cory, can have a football scholarship, can go to college, can have a different future.  But Troy can't get that.  He fences him in....and now the real discussion of this tragedy, with the use of the main metaphor, with the use of character analysis, with the use of this particularly important contextual point, kicks in.
That, class, is why context, seemingly unimportant you may think, is really very important.
Open your books.  See what the authors say.  Many, like Wilson and Morrison, lay it out for you, right up front there... You'd be surprised what the text will tell you.  In other cases, look through your notes, or even the blog.  We usually start with context in class discussion.  Not a lot, but what is laid out is significantly important.  Primogeniture,  gentry, Great Chain of Being, entailment, existentialism....etc.
Check it out.  Then cross check it with the author's own words...Rediscover the texts.  They are way more interesting than the mash up in the notes.  I promise. Think of the pleasure you had in reading the words on the quiz.  You rediscovered those words, and it was enjoyable.  I saw.  You don't have to acknowledge it out loud, but it is so.