The Piano Lesson by August Wilson

First produced: 1987; first published, 1990

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Magical Realism

Time of plot: 1936

Locale: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Story:

In The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, Boy Willie Charles and his friend Lymon arrive at the Pittsburgh home of Berniece, Boy Willie’s widowed sister. The two men have driven to Pittsburgh from Mississippi in a truck full of ripe watermelons. When he arrives at his sister’s home, Boy Willie announces to Berniece an ambitious plan that will require her cooperation: He wants to buy a parcel of land in Mississippi on which the Charles family’s ancestors served as slaves and sharecroppers. Boy Willie has saved some of the money he will need to make the purchase, and he intends to sell the watermelons in his truck to raise more. For Boy Willie to acquire enough cash to make the purchase, however, Berniece must agree to sell the old piano sitting in her living room and split the proceeds with her brother. Although the piano has been in Berniece’s possession since she moved to Pittsburgh, Boy Willie claims half ownership of the instrument.

Berniece strongly opposes the sale of the piano, which is imbued with symbolic value. Doaker and Wining Boy, Berniece and Boy Willie’s uncles, detail the complicated history of the instrument. The piano was originally acquired in 1856 by Robert Sutter, the man who owned members of the Charles family. The piano was an anniversary gift from Sutter to his wife, Ophelia. Lacking cash for the purchase, Sutter acquired the instrument by trading two Charles family slaves, Mama Berniece and her nine-year-old son Walter. Papa Boy Willie, Mama Berniece’s husband, wished to memorialize Mama Berniece and Walter. An expert wood sculptor, he obtained Ophelia’s permission to carve their portraits and other memorable Charles family scenes into the wood of the piano.

The piano remained with the Sutters after the U.S. Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves, but on July 4, 1911, members of the Charles family stole the piano from the Sutters’ home. The group included Doaker, Wining Boy, Berniece and Boy Willie’s father, and Boy Charles, the grandson of the woodcarver and Mama Berniece. Boy Charles maintained that as long as the Sutter family had possession of the piano, the Charles family was still spiritually enslaved; by stealing the instrument, Boy Charles believed he would finally liberate his family from the Sutters. After the theft, Boy Charles hid from Sutter and the police in a yellow train boxcar. When Robert Sutter’s son discovered the theft and Boy Charles’s whereabouts, he burned the boxcar where Boy Charles was hiding, killing him. Sutter never recovered his stolen piano; it remained in the Charles family, and Berniece took the instrument to Pittsburgh when she moved there in 1933.

Berniece is unwilling to part with the piano because she considers it a sacred relic that holds the Charles family’s history through slavery, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Hearing that his sister will not agree to sell the piano, Boy Willie offers a King Solomon solution to their dispute: cut the piano in half and let Berniece retain her part while he sells his half. To Boy Willie, the instrument holds only sentimental value: Since his sister is neither playing the piano nor giving lessons to earn a profit from it, it is, in his view, a useless family heirloom. By contrast, the land that Boy Willie wishes to acquire from the sale of the piano would give him standing and even a degree of equality with whites in the Jim Crow South. Berniece, however, believes that the piano embodies the Charles family’s history. She points out to Boy Willie that their father gave his life to wrestle the piano from the Sutter family. Indeed, Berniece tells her brother that their mother, Mama Ola, polished the piano with her tears and prayed for her husband’s soul over the instrument. In Berniece’s view, selling the instrument would dishonor her father’s sacrifice and her parents’ memory.

According to Doaker, another party is laying claim to Berniece’s piano. Doaker maintains that the ghost of the recently deceased James Sutter, Ophelia’s grandson, is restlessly searching for his family’s missing piano. According to Doaker, the ghost periodically visits Berniece’s home at night and plays the piano. Doaker reports hearing piano music late at night. When he goes into the living room to find out who is playing, he sees the piano keys moving without a human being nearby. Charles family ghosts are also reportedly creating mischief. According to local legend, several Sutter family members, including James, have died by the hand of the ghost of the Yellow Dog railroad, by being pushed into wells—revenge for the killing of Boy Charles.

Despite his sister’s protest, Boy Willie makes arrangements to sell the piano to a used musical instrument dealer in Pittsburgh. When he and Lymon try to move the piano, however, they cannot budge the instrument. As Boy Willie and Lymon consider how to move the piano, the Reverend Avery, a minister in Pittsburgh, arrives to perform an exorcism on Sutter’s ghost from Berniece’s home. While Avery exhorts the ghost to depart the premises, Berniece begins to play the piano, invoking the names of her family’s slave ancestors as she plays. Boy Willie, suddenly sensing Sutter’s presence, rushes upstairs to grapple with Sutter’s ghost. After a struggle, Boy Willie is able to eject Sutter’s ghost from the premises. Convinced by the ordeal that the piano is more than a sentimental family heirloom, Boy Willie relinquishes his claim on the instrument and returns with Lymon to Mississippi.

Principal characters

• Berniece, a widow living in Pittsburgh with her uncle and daughter
• Boy Willie, Berniece’s brother
• Lymon, Boy Willie’s friend
• Maretha, Berniece’s daughter
• Doaker, Berniece and Boy Willie’s uncle
• Wining Boy, Doaker’s brother
• Avery, a minister

Bibliography

Bogumil, Mary L. Understanding August Wilson. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Contains critical analyses of The Piano Lesson and other Wilson dramas.

Elkins, Marilyn, August Wilson: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1994. A collection of essays and interviews on Wilson’s plays.

Nadel, Alan, ed. May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994. A collection of critical essays on Wilson’s plays, including The Piano Lesson. Essays discuss the plays individually, as well as addressing Wilson’s (then unfinished) cycle of plays as a whole.

Pereira, Kim. August Wilson and the African American Odyssey. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Provides a persuasive defense of Boy Willie’s argument for selling his sister’s piano.

Rothstein, Mervyn. “Round Five for a Theatrical Heavyweight.” The New York Times, April 15, 1990, sec. 2, p. 1. A contemporary review of The Piano Lesson, published shortly after its debut.

Shannon, Sandra G. The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1995. Contains an analysis of The Piano Lesson, including a discussion of how Wilson, with the assistance of director Lloyd Richards, revised early drafts of the play to create the finished product.

Tackach, James, and Emilie Benoit. “August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and the Limits of Law.” Law, Culture, and the Humanities 4, no. 2 (2008): 280-291. A discussion of the legal issues in Wilson’s play.

Wilson, August. Conversations with August Wilson. Edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006. A collection of interviews with the playwright, in which he discusses individual plays, his cycle of plays, his influences, and issues facing African American dramatists.

Wolfe, Peter. August Wilson. New York: Twayne, 1999. An excellent introductory overview of Wilson’s dramatic world and concise discussions of his individual plays.