Analysis Of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson

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The past has many underlying effects on people that are not always apparent. One 's history may drive them to do many things out of vengeance, fear, compassion, or numerous other emotions. August Wilson 's play, The Piano Lesson, set just seventy years after the abolishment of slavery, still revels in the aftermath brought on by it. Many African Americans continue to struggle to establish their freedom and independence and build a life for themselves. The Great Migration was in full swing as many moved North in the hope of a brighter future. In Wilson 's play, Boy Willie’s struggle to achieve his father 's legacy and overcome white oppression reveals how people tend to strive for better than what their family members in the past had and develop
Boy Willie’s family piano, engraved with illustrations of his family history, has great sentimental value and his sister, Berniece, believes it is more important and crucial to honor their mother who lost their father after he stole it in an act of defiance against the Sutter family which ultimately led to Papa Boy Charles death. Her mother polished the piano for seventeen years after the death of their father, “seventeen years worth of cold nights and an empty bed. For what? For a piano? For a piece of wood? To get even with someone?” (1232). It represents everything that she lost, raising her children on her own, and so much more. She poured her soul into maintaining its impeccable appearance in an attempt to preserve her relationship to Papa Boy Charles. The carvings portray the history of her family, the hardships they went through to get to where they are today, and their resistance to slavery. In “The Dialects of August Wilson’s Piano Lesson”, Harry Justin Elam suggests, “Sutter’s possession of the piano constitutes a form of enslavement… While no longer physically bound to the slave master, Wilson believes that African Americans remain spiritually and physiologically imprisoned by the dominant culture unable to express or discover

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