The Piano Lesson

All the siblings in The Piano Lesson are ambivalent toward the piano, which is strongly connected with their enslaved ancestors’ painful experiences. Berniece, however, stresses the importance of...

The Piano Lesson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by American playwright August Wilson. The Piano Lesson is the fourth play in Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle," also called his "Century Cycle": a series...

I think that Doaker's work on the railroads represents a couple of elements. The first is that it shows consistency and a sense of constancy in a world of mutability and change. Doaker does not...

Two siblings. One piano. Two very different ideas of what to do with that piano. Boy Willie is determined to sell it and use his half of the money to buy some land. Berniece is just as determined...

In many respects, I think that this becomes one of the central issues of the play. The desire to sell the piano or keep it represents the notion of discarding the past or being tied to it. Boy...

The play opens in Act 1 in the kitchen and parlor of Doaker Charles' home, which he shares with his niece Berniece and her daughter Maretha. This is Pittsburgh in the 1930s. The most arresting...

Boy Willie is probably the most dynamic character in the play The Piano Lesson. He begins the play as an “all talk, no action” character who is dogged by the past to a very significant (if not...

In August Wilson’s 1990 play “The Piano Lesson,” the significance of the piano is only hinted at through much of the first act, when Boy Willie and his friend Lymon show up at the door of Boy...

The South is the home of slavery. It is the birthplace of "the original sin," something that is carved on the piano, the narratives of the characters in the drama, as well as what it means to be...

The carvings on the piano represent the past. There is a very profound implication here. On one hand, Miss Ophelia felt bad that the slaves to whom she had grown attached were now gone because of...

In the final analysis, there are many different ironies that emerge in Wilson's The Piano Lesson. I think that one of the most interesting ironies is how a source of historical pain can end up...

In The Piano Lesson, Boy Willie has one over-riding goal - to buy Sutter's land. Boy Willie has two ways to get the money for this purchase. He wants to sell the truckload of watermelons and to...

The sense of identity felt by Boy Willie and Berniece is focused on their family's accomplishments. This is expressed for Boy Willie in his pursuit of the land in Mississippi where his family was...

There are many reasons to read August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson. Among the first reasons that come to mind is the idea that this is a (relatively) contemporary work of American drama. Much of...

The Piano Lesson by August Wilson centers, unsurprisingly, around a piano. This piano has a complicated history, but it begins as a simple musical instrument given as a gift to Ophelia Sutter by...

Wining Boy is described as being exploitative and selfish even before he comes on stage in this play. This is not necessarily a negative trait, but it is Wining Boy's nature to "play the angles" or...

The Piano Lesson was written by August Wilson, son of a white German-American father and black mother born in 1945. The play premiered in 1987 and opened on Broadway in New York in 1990. The story,...

The idea of the piano is significant in detailing the family's freedom from oppression. The piano's "lesson" is one of valuing the past and understanding how the narrative of oppression and the...

It is difficult to link Grace to any specific plot actions definitively as her appearance is so brief. Some consider her entrance and the seduction scene between her and Willie to act as a foil or...

The complex relationship that people have towards the past is evident in the divergent approaches that different characters take towards the piano. For example, Doaker Charles recognizes that the...

Boy Willie is 30 years old and has come to Pittsburgh from Mississippi to sell watermelons. His actions soon become clear on why he is there. Boy Willie goes to see his sister and to tell her that...

I think that the opening of the play with the watermelons is significant. Lymon and Boy Willie have stolen the truck and loaded the melons on it in order to sell it and split the profit. This is...

In August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson, there are a total of 8 characters: Berniece, Boy Willie, Doaker, Lymon, Maretha, Avery Brown, Winning Boy, and Grace. There is also Sutter's ghost, who is...

Berniece enhances the discussion in Wilson's play because it raises the issue of gender in being as important as that of race. In the subject matter of the drama, the "scars" caused by slavery,...

Through focusing on a material object, August Wilson explores the abstract concepts of heritage and legacy. The siblings Berniece and Boy Willie in particular have highly contrasting views on the...

The piano which is the featured object in The Piano Lesson by August Wilson is full of family history and represents a lot of family suffering for both the original owners and for Berniece's...

I think that Pittsburgh has some significance in the drama. The first would be for background purposes. The drama is inspired by the Bearden portrait of the same name, and Bearden made Pittsburgh...

Given the nature of the content, it needs to be serious. On the other hand, the comedy therein provides necessary relief from intense suspense. Enotes provides a very good commentary about what the...

This is a guess on my part, but a carving of a family story could not be accomplished in most musical instruments because there simply would not be enough space. The other idea that comes to my...

I think that the piano represents the past and the question then becomes how important is past ownership of "the past." In my mind, Wilson seems to be making a complex statement about a complex...

In The Piano Lesson, however, Wilson traces the play's historical complications back three generations, to an incident in the family's slave legacy that has left them to face the present in terms...

This is an interesting point of discussion. On one hand, the piano represents a particular level of talent and focus required to play it. This is seen in Berniece. While she no longer wishes to...

I think that there could be several different approaches to this particular question. I would say that one distinct ending would be for Berniece to give the piano to Boy Willie. I think that it...

In Wilson's The Piano Lesson, the piano is a key symbol in the play. It represents something different to each character, especially the two central characters. To Berniece, it has blood on it and...

The South is referred to as "down home" often in The Piano Lesson. This is where every character in the play has come from, though the action of the play takes place in Pittsburgh. Like the actual...

The most significant undercurrent of this play is slavery’s continuing influence on the family. The story of the piano in The Piano Lesson essentially encapsulates and symbolizes the family’s...

This play takes place in the early Fifties, which was a time of enormous African-American migration from the South to the North. Black people moved to Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other cities...

I think that the tension of racial ownership relates to how different characters understand their own past and the condition of slavery. This tension is brought out by the piano, itself. The very...

The Charles family stole the piano from the Sutters, the family which had owned them as slaves prior to Emancipation. The piano had originally been obtained by selling two members of the Charles...