The Piano Lesson by August Wilson: The Wisdom of the Ivories
Can a treasured object of the past serve as a teacher for the future? Once people share the historical significance of it, an object can symbolize the overcoming of hardships of those lives in which it becomes a part. Therefore, it may indeed “instruct” future generations to glean wisdom from the past. August Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson centers on the trials and triumphs of a family affected by the enslaving of their ancestors and by current racial prejudice. An embellished piano, which bears the carved images of their enslaved ancestors accounts for the conflict that the Charles’ face. The Charles’ siblings inherit the piano from their mother, widowed upon the murder of her husband who stole it. Now, Boy Willie Charles wants to sell it to enable him to buy some land. His sister, Berniece, expresses adamant opposition to the sale since the endeared piano represents a great deal of family heritage. Because the slave-era piano embodies the Charles’ family history and bridges the past with the future, Berniece and Boy Willie should not sell it.
The piano in this play reminds the Charles’ of their past and symbolizes the abject immorality of slavery due to the exchange of it for human beings. During the American slave era, Africans were uprooted from their homeland, separated from their families, and stripped of their personal rights and dignity. According to Bloom, “All Wilson’s plays seem to share the preoccupation with uprootedness and feature characters who struggle to define themselves and their African American heritage within the context of racism and slavery” (Bloom). The piano exists in the present as a monument of the suffering that the Charles’ family endur...
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...e Companion to American Drama, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.
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Rudolph, Amanda M. "Images of African Traditional Religions and Christianity in Joe Turner's Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson" Journal of Black Studies 33, no. 5 (May 2003): pp. 562–575. Quoted as "Images of African Traditional Religions and Christianity in Joe Turner's Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson" in Bloom, Harold, ed. August Wilson, Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea Publishing House, 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.
Stafford, Tony J. “The Piano Lesson.” Ed. Frank N. Magill. New York: Salem Press Inc., 1992. 357-60. Print.
Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson. New York: Penguin Group, 1990. Print.
Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over
Werner, Craig, Thomas J. Taylor and Robert McClenaghan. Critical Survey of Drama, Second Revised Edition: James Baldwin. April 2003. .
On theme of August Wilson’s play “King Hedley II” is the coming of age in the life of a black man who wants to start a new life and stay away from violence. Wilson wrote about the black experience, and the struggle that many black people faced and that is seen “King Hedley II” because there are two different generations portrayed in King Hedley II and Elmore. Reporting the African American encounter in the twentieth century, Wilson's cycle of plays, including a play for every decade. The African-American group's relationship to its own particular history is a critical component in the play.
Do you ever have one of those days when you remember your parents taking away all of your baseball cards or all of your comic books because you got a bad grade in one of your classes? You feel a little depressed and your priced possession has been stolen. This event is the same as August Wilson’s, The Piano Lesson. The story is about a sibling rivalry, Boy Willie Charles against Berniece Charles, regarding an antique, family inherited piano. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano in order to buy the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves. However, Berniece, who has the piano, declines Boy Willie’s request to sell the piano because it is a reminder of the history that is their family heritage. She believes that the piano is more consequential than “hard cash” Boy Willie wants. Based on this idea, one might consider that Berniece is more ethical than Boy Willie.
Both Dr. Manganelli in “The Tragic Mulatta Plays the Tragic Muse” and Dr. Ashton in “Entitles: Booker T. Washington’s Signs of Play” depict marginalized African-American characters who have to deal with being former slaves and get into the public light in performative roles. Both authors show that African-American always have to perform for white people, be it when they are slaves, in a concubine role or later when they are free.
The Piano Lesson written by August Wilson is a work that struggles to suggest how best African Americans can handle their heritage and how they can best put their history to use. This problem is important to the development of theme throughout the work and is fueled by the two key players of the drama: Berniece and Boy Willie. These siblings, who begin with opposing views on what to do with a precious family heirloom, although both protagonists in the drama, serve akin to foils of one another. Their similarities and differences help the audience to understand each individual more fully and to comprehend the theme that one must find balance between deserting and preserving the past in order to pursue the future, that both too greatly honoring or too greatly guarding the past can ruin opportunities in the present and the future.
In the play “The Piano Lesson” by August Wilson, an African American family is used to demonstrate African Americans lifestyle in the early 1930’s. The purpose of this play is not only to present two different religions African Americans believe in, but it is to also focus on the problems and struggles, internal and external, they will experience. Because of the family’s ethnicity and color of their skin, this family has experienced many setbacks. August wilson focuses on three literary devices, symbolism, metaphors and songs to emphasize how serious the issue was in the past and appeal to the audience’s emotions.
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 our lives, but it does not limit or determine where we can go, what we can do, or who we can become.
However, his desire conflicts with the racial situation during the time of the play. The play is set during a time when blacks were primarily slaves and considered property. They also didn't own any property. His belief that he is of equal standing with a white man could probably be traced to his lineage with the piano. The piano had symbolized his ancestors since the piano has been around during his grandfather's ...
In The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, Berniece and Boy Willie are siblings who both want the piano that belongs to their family. Berniece wants to keep the piano because it holds their family history and it reminds her of the hard work her mother put into the piano. However, Boy Willie wants to sell the piano to buy land from Sutter’s brother because to him the land, like the piano, are both a part of his family’s history and both represent being free from Sutter. Both siblings fight over who has more rights to the piano and deserves it. In August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, Berniece struggles with being able to embrace her past and acknowledge its importance. Which reveals that instead of hiding the past we should embrace it and let it help
In this novel, The Piano Lesson, we learn that some characters are doing their best to leave their mark on the world. A main character, Boy Willie, continually attempts to do so. For instance, he says, “I got to mark my passing on the road. Just like you write on a tree, ‘Boy Willie was here.’” By this, he means that he wants to make sure the world knows that he was here, and that he left something behind. Just as his grandfather carved beautiful, intricate designs into the piano and left it for his family, Boy Willie wants to do something similar. For example, he wants to buy Sutter’s land and make it nice for generations to come. Ironically, Boy Willie wants to sell his grandfather’s statement in order to make his own.
As Floyd is falling down on the stage, my heart is teared apart resonating with miserable life of African-American people in 1940s Pittsburgh. I have seen how people struggle with their assigned and unfair destiny and how the brutal reality smashes their dreams and humanity; I have seen that there were a group of people singing, dreaming, fighting, loving and dying in the red-brick house, which I might pass by everyday, all in this masterpiece of August Wilson. It is always difficult to reopen the grievous wound of the dark period during America history; however, the hurtfulness would be the most effective way forcing people to reflect the consequence of history.
In the play, The Piano Lesson, music played an important role. The piano in the play represented the African American history and culture. The ghost of Sutter represented the pain and trauma that had been endured throughout the generations in the Charles family. Berniece did not play the piano because she associated it with pain and the bad things that happened to her family members. She did not want to accept the things that had happened in her family’s past. She thought that she could deny everything and act like it never happened. She believed if she continued to run from everything and everybody that the pain would go away. Berniece was burdened and haunted by the ghost of Sutter until she gave in and played the piano after all of those years. After playing the piano, Berniece was no longer burdened or haunted by the past. She was free from all of the denial. She escaped the pain through the music and reflecting on the carvings on the piano, which represented her heritage. Berniece’s brother, Boy Willie, told her “Berniece, if you and Maretha don’t keep playing on that piano… ain’t no telling… me and Sutter both liable to be back” (Wilson 108). By saying that, he meant that if she did not allow her daughter to continue playing the piano and learning about her culture that she would end up going through the same things that Berniece had gone through. Music has a huge impact on the African American culture in several ways and many things about the past can be learned through it.
In this essay I intend to delve into the representation of family in the slave narrative, focusing on Frederick Douglas’ ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave’ and Harriet Jacobs ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.’ Slave narratives are biographical and autobiographical stories of freedom either written or told by former slaves. The majority of them were ‘told to’ accounts written with the aid of abolitionist editors between 1830 and 1865. An amount of narratives were written entirely by the author and are referred to as authentic autobiographies. The first of more than six thousand extant slave narratives were published in 1703. Primarily written as propaganda, the narratives served as important weapons in the warfare against slavery. Slave narratives can be considered as a literary genre for a number of reasons. They are united by the common purpose of pointing out the evils of slavery and attacking the notion of black inferiority. In the narratives, you can find simple and often dramatic accounts of personal experience, strong revelation of the char...
Gainor, J. Ellen., Stanton B. Garner, and Martin Puchner. The Norton Anthology of Drama, Shorter Edition. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.