Learning from History: Insights from The Piano Man's Daughter

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A great philosopher and a writer, George Santayana once said, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”. This phrase by Santayana has deeply touched many people’s hearts and encouraged them to look back at their past. Everyone has a shameful history that one desperately endeavours to hide and ignore, or sometimes forced to hide and ignore. However, whatever the reason might be, hiding and ignoring is definitely not the wisest solution to one’s problem, because it often initiates bigger problems. One must accept to face the past and truly learn from past mistakes in order to prevent the repeating of the same mistakes. The novel, The Piano Man’s Daughter deals this idea of learning from past mistakes, and the author Timothy Findley expands …show more content…

The Piano Man’s Daughter is narrated by the protagonist, Charlie Killworth, and is about Charlie tracing back his mentally ill mother, Lily Killworth’s faded memory to find out who his father is. As Charlie continues his journey of finding his father, truths that have been hidden and ignored for multiple generations begin to get revealed. Through the story of Charlie’s family, Findley explores the importance of learning from mistakes of the past and how essential it is to pass that knowledge onto the next generation to improve the cycle of life.

A truth must be revealed, or whoever is not aware of the truth will suffer from it. In The Piano Man’s Daughter, the author Timothy Findley uses the story of a long hidden truth about uncle John Fagan and his illness to emphasize the significance of revealing the truth. Ever since the

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