August Wilson's The Piano Lesson

The Link Between Past and Future in The Piano Lesson
Sara Macdonald / November 15, 2006

“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” - William Faulkner

Romare Bearden’s Piano Lesson
• “When I saw his work, it was the first time that I had seen black life presented in all its richness, and I said, ‘I want to do that – I want my plays to be the equal of his canvases” – August Wilson on Romare Bearden

“Heart-stopping… The play’s real music is in the language”
Boy Willie: Who’s Leroy? You ain’t said nothing about no Leroy.
Grace: He used to be my man. He ain’t coming back. He gone off with some other gal.
Boy Willie: You let him have your key?
Grace: He ain’t coming back.
Boy Willie: Did you let him have your key?
Grace: He got a key but he ain’t coming back. He took off with some other gal.” Act II, Scene III (p. 73)

Doaker: Now why people going? Their sister’s sick. They leaving before they kill somebody…and they sitting across from somebody who’s leaving to keep from getting killed. They leaving cause they can’t get satisfied. Act I, Scene I (p. 19)

The Relationship to Family History – “Life In All Its Richness”
• A richness that comes from acknowledging the past while still looking forward
• The piano that cost Boy Charles his life
• History carved into a piece of wood
• The (inescapable?) connection to slavery

Berniece vs. Boy Willie
“You ain’t taking that piano out of my house. Look at this piano. Look at it. Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands bled. Then she rubbed the blood in… mixed it up with the rest of the blood on it. Every day that God breathed life into her body she rubbed and cleaned and polished and prayed over it. ‘Play something for me, Berniece’... You always talking about your daddy but you ain’t never stopped to look at what his foolishness cost your mama. Seventeen years’ worth of cold nights and an empty bed. For what? For a piano? For a piece of wood? To get even with somebody? I look at you and you’re all the same… all this thieving and killing and thieving and killing. And what it ever lead to? More killing and more thieving. I ain’t never seen it come to nothing. People getting burned up. People getting shot. People falling down their wells. It don’t never stop.” Act I, Scene II (p. 52)

“Now, I’m gonna tell you the way I see it. The only thing that make that piano worth something is them carvings Papa Willie Boy put on there. That’s what make it worth something. That was my great-granddaddy. Papa Boy Charles brought that piano into the house. Now, I’m supposed to build on what they left me. You can’t do nothing with that piano sitting up here in the house. That’s just like if I let them watermelons sit out there and rot. I’d be a fool. Alright now, if you say to me, Boy Willie, I’m using that piano. I give out lessons on it and that help me make my rent or whatever. Then that be something else. I’d have to go on and say, well, Berniece using that piano. She building on it… I want to get Sutter’s land with that piano. I get Sutter’s land and I can go down and cash in the crop and get my seed then I’m alright… that land give back to you. I can make me another crop and cash that in. I still got the land and the seed. You ain’t got nothing working for you. Now, the kind of man my daddy was he would have understood that. I’m sorry you can’t see it that way.” Act I, Scene II (p. 51)

• Both siblings looking to past generations
o But what do they see when they look back?
• “One of Wilson’s important distinctions in the play is the difference between Boy Willie and Berniece. Each has an understanding of the world that demonstrates a certain nobility of vision, but their understanding of each other’s visions is so limited that they seem, at times, not to have shared the same heritage.” (Boan)
• “The divergence of Boy Willie’s and Bernieces’s attitudes toward the piano indicates specific relations to their common past—and therefore, with identity and connections with the future.” (Bissiri)
• In the final scene, Berniece does what Boy Willie needs her to do (to exorcise the ghosts of the past), and he does what she needs him to do (to respect what the piano stands for) and the potential that this generation has to end the cycle of violence?

Berta, Berta
O Lord Berta Berta O Lord gal oh-ah / O Lord Berta Berta O Lord gal well / Raise them up higher, let them drop on down oh-ah / Raise them up higher, let them drop on down well / Don't know the difference when the sun go down oh-ah / Don't know the difference when the sun go down well / Berta in Meridan and she living at ease oh-ah / Berta in Meridan and she living at ease well / I'm on old Parchman, got to work or leave oh-ah / I'm on old Parchman, got to work or leave well / O Alberta, Berta, O Lord gal oh-ah / O Alberta, Berta, O Lord gal well / When you marry, don't marry no farming man oh-ah / When you marry, don't marry no farming man well / Everyday Monday, hoe handle in your hand oh-ah Everyday Monday, hoe handle in your hand well / When you marry, marry a railroad man, oh-ah / When you marry, marry a railroad man, well / Everyday Sunday, dollar in your hand oh-ah / Everyday Sunday, dollar in your hand well
O Alberta, Berta, O Lord gal oh-ah / O Alberta, Berta, O Lord gal well

• Parchman Farm
o “Parchman approximated a second slavery… [a]fter emancipation, he notes, black southerners became vulnerable to new forms of legal oppression.”” (Reidy)
o The past is still very much… present?

Ownership (And Ownership of Identity)
• Doaker: See, our family was owned by a fellow named Robert Sutter… he was looking to buy his wife… an anniversary present. One thing with him… he ain’t had no money. But he had some niggers. So he asked Mr. Nolander to see if maybe he could trade off some of his niggers for that piano…So Sutter lined up his niggers and Mr. Nolander looked them over… See, everything my granddaddy made Mr. Sutter owned cause he owned him. Act I, Scene II (p. 43-44).
• Commodification
o Boy Willie wants to capitalize on something that plays a huge role in his family’s history
• When the Charles family has been a commodity for so long
• Walk in there. Tip my hat. Lay my money down on the table. Get my deed and walk on out. This time I get to keep all the cotton. Hire me some men to work it for me. Gin my cotton. Get my seed. Boy Willie, Act I, Scene I (p. 11). See also: Skip James epigraph
• “Wilson argues that it is only by assuming Africanness that the black American attains a sense of plentitude and eventually comes to understand who he or she is.” (Bissiri)
o And the history of “Africanness” in Black America IS slavery?

Ghosts and History
• If I was you I’d get rid of it. That’s the way to get rid of Sutter’s ghost. Get rid of that piano. Boy Willie, Act I, Scene 1 (p. 15)
• Morality, the driving force governing the social and cosmic orders, lies in an harmonious relationship with the past” (Bissiri)
• Ghosts are driving the play
o Sutter
o “Wilson has pointedly remarked that ‘Blacks in America have been wrestling ghosts of the white man for decades, trying to exorcise them from their lives’ (Bissiri)
• “Boy Willie is never able to take charge of his own narrative; every move he makes in his attempt to escape the legacy with which he has been left is made in response” (Boan)

Works Cited (and websites worth checking out)
Bissiri, Amadou. “Aspects of Africanness in August Wilson’s Drama: Reading The Piano Lesson Through Wole Soyinka’s Drama. African American Review 30.1 (1996): 99-113. Accessed online [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1062-4783%28199621%2930%3A1%3C99%3AAOAIAW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N].

Boan, Devon. “Call-And-Response: Parallel ‘Slave Narrative’ in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.” African American Review 32.2 (1998): 263-271. Accessed online [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1062-4783%28199822%2932%3A2%3C263%3ACP%22NIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W].

Reidy, Joseph. “’Worse Than Slavery’: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice” (review). The Journal of Negro History 82.2 (1997): 263-264. Accessed online [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28199721%2982%3A2%3C263%3A%22TSPFA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23].

Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson. Toronto: Plume, 1990.

http://www.tpac.org/education/hot/guidebooks/GBpianolesson.pdf

http://www.newworldrecords.org/linernotes/80252.pdf