Taking a Deeper Look at The Piano Lesson by August Wilson Essay

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, tells a story of a family haunted by the pain of their past and their struggle to find peace to move forward. The story begins with character Boy Willie coming up from the south visiting his sister Bernice. Boy Willie introduces the idea of selling the family’s heirloom, a piano, to raise enough money to buy the land on which his ancestors were enslaved. However, both Boy Willie and his sister Berniece own half a half of the piano and she refuses to let Boy Willie sell it. Through the use of symbolism, Wilson uses his characters, the piano and the family’s situation to provide his intended audience with the lesson of exorcising our past in order to move forward in our lives. Our past will always be a

Part of the central message is being burdened by your past and not being able to move forward. The piano was originally owned by Sutter, the previous owner of their family. However it is consequentially stolen by their family. After Sutter is allegedly pushed in and dies in his well by the Ghost of the Yellow Dog, he comes back to haunt the residence that holds the piano. When Berniece sees Sutter’s ghost and the first time, she says, “Sutter…Sutter’s standing at the top of the steps” (13). The haunting of Sutter’s ghost is blocking Berniece’s path to moving forward into the future. Berniece is not only burdened by the hardships of her ancestors, but now she is haunted by the spirit of her family’s old owner. It almost seems impossible for her to embrace her history and celebrate her roots, which is just where Wilson wants the reader’s thinking to be.

While Berniece has extraordinary nostalgic worth for the piano, Boy Willie saw it as a chance to expand to what's left side. Despite the fact that Boy Willie saw the piano as a chance to escape sharecropping, he kept in mind about their progenitor, and their traumatic story on the grounds that all through the play, he imparted the family history to Maretha (Berniece little girl), which Berniece doesn't need her to think about because of the way that it's excessively difficult. Kid Willie expressed that, "The main thing make that piano worth something is them carvings Papa Willie Boy put on there… That was my extraordinary granddaddy. Father Boy Charles brought that piano into the house. Presently, should expand on what they exited me. (p. 160)" Boy Willie sees the piano as want to break the family's convention of sharecropping, he needs to utilize what's left by their family to manufacture for the future, in light of the fact that on the off chance that he could offer the piano, and purchase the area, sharecropping wouldn't be a battle for them any

August Wilson was a famous and influential playwright who wrote about the African American experience and conflicts with the White world. Although he may be argued as one of the greatest playwrights in America, I myself have only heard of his work once when my seventh grade English class read Fences, a play about a man and his son dealing with dealing with racism while also dealing with their own conflict when the son wants to follow in the steps of his father and become a professional athlete. I had honestly forgotten all about that one play I read eight years ago. Wilson’s name was barely among the many playwrights studied in my latter years. This could be because of the content of his plays. Much of Wilson’s work examines the negative aspects of being African American in America such as racism and poverty. When we read about African American literature in school, we read about empowerment and pride. It is ironic how students study White writers who tell stories like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness with mistreated African American characters, but barely study those same stories written by Black authors, poets, and playwrights. Because African American literature was not glorified in the past, specifically speaking of a time before the Harlem Renaissance, it may take time for certain works of African descendants to be glorified at the same level as those of White writers, especially if their peak wasn’t during the Renaissance.

The apparitions in this play are The Ghosts of the Yellow Dogs and Sutter. Both these ghosts have the motivation of revenge. Having two separate motives for the piano; Berenice values the piano's history while her brother, Boy Willie, wants to sell the piano and use the money to buy the land his family was enslaved on. The Charles family is being haunted by the ghost of Sutter, whose family once owned theirs. Sutter's ghost appears after he falls down his well and the cause could be the Ghosts of the Yellow Dogs, the spirits of the Charles family's ancestors. The ghost's appearance causes conflict within brother and sister to rise. Sutter comes back after his death as a ghost to avenge his murder and reclaim his piano. In act 1 scene 1, Berniece states, “Just go on and leave. Let Sutter go somewhere else looking for you”. Berniece thinks that Sutter's ghost appeared because her brother, Boy Willie, killed him. In reality, the ghost of Sutter just reminds Berniece about her family's history and the piano. The piano represents her family’s past, struggles, and history. Berniece cannot accept her family’s past and move on. “Mama ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands bled. Then she rubbed the blood in… mixed it up with the rest of the blood on it.” This shows

     Any person that can rise up from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top is able to achieve great things in life. Renowned playwright August Wilson, a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, and other awards for his work, is an example of such persons. He grew up in a lower class black family, faced the difficulties of an African American, and turned himself into the great writer he is.

Wilson encountered racism early on in his life and this began to influence his writing. In

Boy Willie states, “Papa Boy Charles brought that piano into the house. Now I’m supposed to build on what they left me. You can’t do nothing with that piano siting up here in the house” (Wilson 51). If he sells the piano, Boy Willie will be able to build a life for himself. Berniece says, “Money can’t buy what that piano cost. You can’t sell your soul for money” (Wilson 50). She believes if they sell the piano, she risks losing part of her identity. With tender sentiment, Berniece relishes the determination of her ancestors to appreciate life and the love they had for one another in the face of slavery. Boy Willie says, “See, you just looking at the sentimental value…You can sit up here and look at that piano for the next hundred years and it’s just gonna be a piano” (Wilson 51). Berniece’s pertinacious refusal to part with the piano emanates from her sentimental devotion to it and the memory of her ancestors. Therefore, Berniece characterizes herself through the piano as it brings the beauty of the past generations to their lives (Wilson 50, 52). Boy Willie defines himself as an African American who declares his equality as a man and seeks to enhance his self-worth by becoming a land owner (Wilson 51, 94). Therefore, he values the piano for its potential to raise his personal quality of life through a financial gain. The significance of the piano resides in the differing viewpoints of each sibling.

In the play The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, readers are introduced to an African American family that has faced a dark past regarding slavery. The conflict between Berniece and Boy Willie over a piano that holds the family’s history is the very premise of the story. However, Boy Willie is most deserving of the piano because it would be an opportunity for him to transition from being an African slave to becoming an African American land owner. Therefore, Boy Willie can pursue the American dream by selling the piano, buying land and using it to earn a living.

In Player Piano, everything is controlled by machines and computers and depends on productivity. The managers and engineers only create new programs for more productive production. Even the rates of production and consumption are calculated by a computer (EPICAC), which is seated in the large Carlsbad cavern system. The EPICAC computer even determines the people's careers and in this way their whole lives. It gives intelligence tests to everyone, and on the basis of their results it sorts people into two categories - suitable for university entering exams and suitable for 'work'. The university studies allow their graduates to become managers, engineers, writers or public relation workers. You may become a writer only if

Lewis states that Wilson was an African American playwright, whose past of racism when he was growing up caused him to drop out of high school after a racist accusation

What should one do with their legacy, and how should it be put to use? In the play “The Piano Lesson”, the Charles' family faces this question, and struggles to find the answer. The family’s legacy is in the form of a piano. On the piano are carvings of their ancestors. The two main characters that are having a conflict over the piano are Berniece and Boy Willie. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano so he can add the proceeds of the sale to the proceeds of selling watermelon’s and buy some land from “Sutter”. Berniece doesn’t want to sell the piano because it holds the memories and blood that stains its wood (Gale, 2000, p255). She refuses to play the piano and keeps its history from her daughter in fear of calling up the spirits that

August Wilson's use of symbolism is an important and effective method of storytelling in The Piano Lesson. Symbolism is a technique used by writers to associate one object or idea with another. This technique is essential in The Piano Lesson due to the small-scale, rural environment in which the story is told. Important thoughts and ideas that Wilson is trying to portray about African-American society could never be expressed without symbolism, due to this small setting. There are many examples of symbolism in The Piano Lesson, but one can get a good idea of the importance of this technique by exploring some of the more prevalent ones. The most recognizable symbol throughout the story is the piano that the family owns. Another

Besides symbolism, Wilson uses indirect characterization to describe the different generations that are present in the play and show how each generation struggles to find and

Watt and Richardson, the editors, state that the play is about "acquisitiveness." That is, the acquiring of material possessions is central to the play, and this family. The