Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Piano Lesson": Ambivalence And Legacy
The piano of August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson" is symbolic of the complex and ambivalent relationship Bernice and Willie have to the land their ancestors toiled as slaves, and the ability of African-Americans to re-tell and re-interpret their ancestral history of slavery in a positive and empowering manner. At the beginning of the play, Willie wants to sell the piano so he can symbolically defeat the attempts of the Sutter family to own his family. His sister Bernice sees the enduring presence piano as symbolizing her family's freedom, forged by her father.
Long ago, the family's images were carved into the piano after Willie and Bernice's ancestors were traded for the piano. Bernice's father came to believe that if another person owned the piano, the family would still be in bondage, so he took the piano and crafted its wood into a living testimony of the family. Bernice and Willie's father: "say we was still in slavery," while the piano rested in the hands of another person, Bernice recalls (45).
On one hand, Bernice hates the piano because it reminds her of her legacy as a slave and the Sutter family who owned and traded her ancestors, and because she fears that it is full of ghosts. But the piano is also inlaid with carvings made by her father's own hands. Bernice's ambivalence is also exemplified in the fact that Bernice refuses to sell the piano, yet she also refuses to play the instrument, for fear of waking the spirits within it. "I don't play that piano 'cause I don't want to wake them spirits" (70).
Bernice's brother Willie scoffs "ain't no ghost," which demonstrates his often limited understanding of the need to still retain a connection to his family's past struggles and legacy (104). However, when the ghost of Sutter comes, Bernice is able to gain the courage to play, and eventually she and her brother establish a kind of peace between themselves and their ancestors. Whether the ghost is real or not does not matter, what matters is that both sister and brother have exorcized the evil demons of the past, and resurrected the influence of the piano in a positive light. They have also forged a new, healthier relationship.
Works Cited
Wilson, August. "The Piano Lesson." New York: Plume, 1990.
Wilson, Fences August Wilson's Fences allows the ordinary objects of domestic life to acquire a larger symbolic significance in their dramatic use. The play uses these symbols to dramatize a crucial moment in African-American history: the 1950s, when the great advances of the Civil Rights era are taking place, but when an audience might very well question what tangible effect they had on the lives of actual African-Americans. In presenting
Fences" August Wilson The Influence of Sports in Fences Sports is one of the principle motifs in Fences, a play written by August Wilson, and is utilized to facilitate the other themes that this work of drama explores. The protagonist, Troy Maxson (Gilmore), is a former Negro leagues baseball player who is still attempting to reconcile his attempts at a career in professional baseball with the fact that he was not
Black Bottom August Wilson introduces the importance of Christianity in African-American lives, especially in the characters of Toledo, Cutler, and Levee in the play "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." This play is not overtly about religion, but it is about the African-American experience and cultural identity. Religion plays a major role in the personal and collective identities of African-Americans. Christianity has an ambiguous and paradoxical position within African-American culture. As the religion
Fences" August Wilson Breaking Out: Autonomous Independence in Fences One of the principle characters of August Wilson's play entitled Fences is Cory Maxson, whose role as the son of the play's protagonist, Troy Maxson (Gilmour 2010), is fairly integral to the thematic issues that the author chooses to demonstrate within this dramatic work. As one of Troy's several sons, Cory represents the distinct ideology that is fairly endemic to all parents
His father cannot see him as a new hope; because he is too busy trying to protect him from the past. However, he cannot protect him, and in fact, he lets the past influence his own decisions. Wilson seems to be saying that many black men cannot learn from their past, instead they keep perpetuating the same mistakes generation to generation. Troy is a liar, which also gives a clue
When a person understands the history of baseball, much of what Wilson has to say makes more sense, because the jargon of the book can be problematic for others who have no concept of the game. This does not mean that the book cannot be enjoyable to people who have no real concept of baseball, but most people in America today at least know the basics about the game of