Seven Guitars by August Wilson

First produced: 1995, at the Goodman Theater, Chicago, Illinois

First published: 1996

Type of work: Play

Type of plot: Tragedy; comedy

Time of work: May, 1948

Locale: The backyard of a tenement in the Hill District, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Principal Characters:

• Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, a thirty-five-year-old recently deceased blues musician with a hit record, “That’s All Right”
• Canewell, a former harmonica player in Floyd’s band who refuses to go back to Chicago
• Red Carter, a drummer who played with Floyd
• Vera Dotson, a woman who loved Floyd until he ran off with another woman
• Louise, a woman whose husband left her a gun
• Hedley, a West Indian mystic who kills and prepares chickens to make sandwiches to sell at market
• Ruby, Louise’s niece, who is moving to Pittsburgh from Alabama

The Play

Seven Guitars is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, shortly before Mother’s Day, 1948, in the backyard of a three-story tenement. The tenement is old, with rickety wooden stairs up its side, and it is home to Vera, Louise, and Hedley. The stage setting is cluttered, with a small, brick-lined garden, an occasional card table, and a makeshift slaughtering station where Hedley kills his chickens and turkeys.

The first scene of the play occurs in the narrative present, shortly after Floyd’s funeral. Floyd’s friends are sitting around drinking, eating a sweet-potato pie, and talking about the funeral. Red and Canewell have a brief comic spat over a conspicuously large piece of pie. Vera believes she saw angels at the cemetery take Floyd to Heaven, and the characters discuss whether the six men in black hats and ties who attended the funeral were angels. Canewell tells them that he pushed past the gravediggers and scooped a handful of dirt into Floyd’s grave, signifying the bond between friends in the black community. Vera plays Floyd’s hit record, “That’s All Right,” which continues playing into the next scene. Red Carter concludes the scene by contemplatively saying Floyd’s name.

The bulk of Seven Guitars is a flashback that reveals events leading up to Floyd’s death. In the flashback, Floyd has recently returned from Chicago, and he struggles to convince Vera to return with him on the heels of his successful record. He has already left Vera once, but he sees himself as a new man. Like Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences (pr., pb. 1985), Floyd’s dreams are myopic and self-centered, and they distance him from Vera’s real needs.

Hedley has tuberculosis but refuses to go to the hospital, despite Louise telling him, “It ain’t like it was before. They letting the colored people in the sanitarium now.” Hedley is a mystic, relying on natural forces to determine his fate. Canewell has come over carrying a goldenseal plant as a gift for Vera, creating an uneasy tone that escalates when Vera brings Canewell his hat, which he left in her apartment. Floyd quickly becomes suspicious, but Vera’s explanation appeases him. Canewell and Floyd leave to pawn a guitar and to visit Floyd’s mother’s grave. Later that evening, Floyd tells Hedley, Joe Louis will be fighting.

The final scenes of act 1 create a rise in action, leading to the symbolic climax of the play. Louise’s niece, Ruby, is moving to Pittsburgh from Alabama after a man has been killed by one of Ruby’s jealous boyfriends. Red Carter, Canewell, Floyd, and Hedley are talking about matters that inform their view of the world—Chicago, money, jail, and music. The conversation eventually leads Hedley to see a connection between the plight of the African American community and a rooster. Angry and unstable, Hedley cuts a rooster’s throat in front of the men, much to their bewilderment.

Floyd Barton cannot catch a break. He is owed money for work he did while incarcerated for “worthlessness” and vagrancy, but he has lost the work-ticket that he needs to verify the payment. He has a gig at the Blue Goose playing for a Mother’s Day dance, but he needs to get his electric guitar out of hock to play. Conversely, Hedley, whose deceased father visits him in a dream to tell him Buddy Bolden will arrive with money for a plantation, has found a tarnished gem in Ruby. She gives herself to him, takes him to church, and convinces him to go to the hospital.

Act 2 quickly progresses to the play’s denouement, when Canewell reads in the newspaper that Miss Tillery’s boy has been shot in the back during a robbery at a loan office. Noticing that the goldenseal plant’s roots are uncovered, Canewell attempts to fix them. In the process, he unearths a handkerchief full of money. He assumes it is Hedley’s stash, but Floyd claims ownership of it. The argument gets so heated that Floyd pulls a gun, and Canewell quickly realizes that Floyd was “Poochie” Tillery’s accomplice in the robbery. Hedley enters the scene and sees Floyd with the money. Drunk, Hedley mistakes him for Buddy Bolden, come to bring him his money for a plantation, but when Floyd refuses, Hedley goes downstairs, retrieves his machete, and cuts Floyd’s throat. At the play’s end, the crime is unsolved.

Critical Context

August Wilson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1945. In high school, He was accused of plagiarism when he wrote a paper on Napoleon I that was thought to be too scholarly for a sixteen-year-old. He was suspended from school and dropped out shortly thereafter, relying on the local library and life experiences for his education. Seven Guitars is one of a cycle of ten plays by Wilson that together portray the African American struggle in each decade of the twentieth century. The plays in this cycle won two Pulitzer Prizes, six New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play Awards (including one for Seven Guitars), and a Tony Award.

The reception of Seven Guitars was favorable; many critics noted the lyricism and subtle wit of the first act as particularly fine. The criticism of the play is generally the same: The second act is seen by most to be inferior to the first act, becoming muddled in a hurried attempt to resolve the plot. Few playwrights can rival Wilson in creating ethos amid careful construction and fluidity of prose. Seven Guitars is an eloquently composed play of unusual depth and variety, and while criticism can be directed toward the second act, a formalist reading might see the play’s conclusion as representative of the disintegration and death Hedley prophesied when killing the rooster.

Bibliography

Elam, Harry J., Jr. The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Full-length cultural analysis of Wilson’s drama, analyzed from a social and historical perspective.

Shannon, Sandra. “A Transplant That Did Not Take: August Wilson’s Views on the Great Migration.” African American Review 31, no. 4 (Winter, 1997): 659-666. Describes Wilson’s highly controversial views on the African American migration from the South. Outlines a theme central to all of Wilson’s plays.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. August Wilson: A Literary Companion. London: MacFarland, 2004. This reference guide comments on the major characters, motifs, and themes that permeate Wilson’s drama. Includes family genealogies and a useful study of the role of women in the plays.

Üsekes, Çiğdem. “’We’s the Leftovers’: Whiteness as Economic Power and Exploitation in August Wilson’s Twentieth-Century Cycle of Plays.” African American Review 37, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 115-125. Study of Wilson’s use of white characters as peripheral influences on the African American community.

Wolfe, Peter. August Wilson. New York: Twane, 1999. Employs an in-depth, formalist approach to the plays, focusing on symbolic meaning and its implications.