Topic > Lessons from The Piano Lesson by August Wilson - 951

What should you do with your inheritance and how should it be used? In the play “The Piano Lesson,” the Charles family faces this question and struggles to find the answer. The family's legacy is in the shape of a piano. On the piano there are engravings of their ancestors. The two main characters who have a conflict over the piano are Berniece and Boy Willie. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano so he can add the proceeds from the sale to the proceeds from the sale of the watermelons and buy some land from “Sutter”. Berniece does not want to sell the piano because it contains the memories and the blood that stains the wood (Gale, 2000, p255). He refuses to play the piano and hides his story from his daughter for fear of summoning spirits that might hide inside the piano. The main symbol of the work is the 137-year-old piano, an object that contains the piano key. family history. It takes on numerous meanings throughout his life. It was carved to make Miss Ophelia happy, the wooden figures of the piano indicate the interchangeable nature of slavery. As Doaker, who is Berniece and Boy Willie's uncle, notes, "Now he had his piano and his niggers too." (ACT I, p741) The slave is the gift and accessory of the master. The piano “visibly records the lost lives of Berniece and Boy Willie's ancestors, and is the only remaining tangible link between past and present” (Galens 2000). The piano also becomes a symbolic attempt to keep the family together. It is also therefore the physical documentation of the family history. Boy Charles primarily understands the engravings as narrative. As Doaker recalls: "... let's say it was the story of our entire family and as long as Sutter had it, he had us. Let's say we were still in slavery." (Act I, p741) It might seem that Being...... in the center of the card ......one's heritage finds such a simple answer. The living draw strength from the ghosts of the past, and the ghosts respond to the living because they speak from that very place. Works Cited Magill's Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition © 2007 by Salem Press, Inc. http://search.ebscohost. com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=MOL9830000328&site=lrc-liveSparkNotes Publishers. “SparkNote on Piano Lesson.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotesLLC. nd. Network. December 1, 2014."The piano lesson." Dramaturgy for students. Ed. David M. Galens. vol. 7. Detroit: Gale, 2000. 243-262. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Network. 7 December 2014. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CCX2693200025&v=2.1&u=bali98452&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=wWilson, August. “The piano lesson”. Booth, Hunter and Mays. Norton's introduction to literature. Portable ed. New York: Norton, 2006, p716-778.