The Blues and the Piano in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson
This essay examines the symbolic role of the heirloom piano in August Wilson's 1986 play The Piano Lesson as an embodiment of the blues tradition and African American historical memory. The paper analyzes the central conflict between siblings Boy Willie and Berniece over whether to sell or preserve the piano, reading that conflict as a debate about how African Americans should relate to a past marked by slavery and suffering. Drawing on specific scenes and dialogue, the essay argues that, while the piano's legacy is deeply troubled, neither erasing it nor being wholly consumed by it represents a viable path forward for the community.
- Introduction: The Blues as African American Tradition: Blues tradition and the piano's central symbolic role
- The Piano as Family Legacy and Ancestral Symbol: Piano as ancestral link Berniece feels compelled to preserve
- The Troubled Legacy of Slavery in the Piano's History: Slavery's painful history carved literally into the piano
- Berniece's Defense of the Piano and Her Own Identity: Berniece's armed defense as act of self-empowerment
- The Danger of Living Only in the Past: Play's critique of excessive attachment to the past
- Conclusion: Neither money nor memory alone is sufficient
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What makes this paper effective
- It grounds its thematic argument in specific textual evidence, citing page numbers and direct quotations from the play to support each analytical claim.
- It maintains a clear central tension throughout — sell the piano or preserve it — and consistently reads that tension as symbolic of a larger cultural and historical debate.
- It avoids a simplistic binary conclusion, acknowledging that both an exclusive focus on money and an exclusive focus on the past are shown to be inadequate in Wilson's play.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close textual reading as an analytical method. Rather than summarizing the plot broadly, it selects key moments — the carved slave figures, Berniece's confrontation with the shotgun, Winning Boy's comical attachment to the past — and unpacks their thematic significance. This technique shows how literary analysis moves from specific textual detail to broader interpretive claims.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by defining the blues tradition and introducing the central symbolic object. Two body paragraphs establish the piano's significance and its troubled origins in slavery. A third body paragraph analyzes the climactic scene in which Berniece defends the piano. A final body paragraph introduces nuance by acknowledging the play's critique of excessive attachment to the past. The essay concludes implicitly within that final paragraph rather than in a dedicated conclusion.
Introduction: The Blues as African American Tradition
The blues is a uniquely African American musical tradition, combining folk music, traditional work songs once sung by slaves, jazz, and other musical forms to describe both personal suffering and to create an oral history of all those who have performed it. In August Wilson's 1986 play The Piano Lesson, an heirloom piano comes to embody the blues tradition for its central protagonists — Boy Willie and his sister Berniece. Whether to transform the piano into money, as Boy Willie wishes to do, or to preserve it, becomes symbolic of the role of the blues in African American history and society. The blues, like the piano itself, is problematic because of its ties to the history of slavery, but it cannot and should not be eradicated, given the profound loss this would create for the community.
Works Cited
Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson. Turtleback Books, 1990.
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