What is a character analysis of Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson?

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 of ten plays exploring the African American experience in the 20th century. Nine of the plays, including The Piano Lesson, are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood, and each play is set in a different decade. The Piano Lesson is set in 1936, in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Boy Willie Charles is described by Wilson in the stage notes in the published version of the play.

BOY WILLIE is thirty years old. He has an infectious grin and a boyishness that is apt for his name. He is brash and impulsive, talkative and somewhat crude in speech and manner.

Boy Willie and his friend, Lymon, have driven for two and a half days and 1,800 miles from Sunflower County, Mississippi, in a beat up old watermelon truck which broke down three times on the way, with a full load of watermelons they plan to sell. Boy Willie want to sell the family piano and use the money to buy a share of land that he's sharecropping in Mississippi where his ancestors once worked as slaves.

Boy Willie's sister, Berneice, who is half-owner of the piano, is opposed to selling the piano. She considers the piano a family heirloom. Their father, Boy Charles, died stealing the piano, and the piano represents to her the family's history and legacy, as well as a reminder of their ancestors's enslavement and emancipation.

Despite his boyish attitude and infectious grin, Boy Willie is loud, stubborn, and prone to getting into fights and breaking the law, which is the reason he was sent to Parchman Farm, a prison plantation in Mississippi, from which he was only recently released.

Boy Willie is also a dreamer. He dreams of becoming a landowner and a farmer in his own right, unlike his father, Boy Charles, who never owned any land.

Boy Willie is also practical and unsentimental. He doesn't see the piano as a family and cultural treasure but simply as a means to accomplish his dreams. He's not above using his father's failures, and even his father's death, to support his argument for selling the piano to make something of himself, equal to any white man in the Jim Crow South of Mississippi.

BOY WILLIE. If my daddy had seen where he could have traded that piano in for some land of his own, it wouldn’t be sitting up here now. He spent his whole life farming on somebody else’s land. I ain’t gonna do that. See, he couldn’t do no better. When he come along he ain’t had nothing he could build on. His daddy ain’t had nothing to give him. The only thing my daddy had to give me was that piano. And he died over giving me that. I ain’t gonna let it sit up there and rot without trying to do something with it. (Act 1, scene 2)

Ultimately, and with the help of the Charles family ghosts, Boy Willie comes to realize the importance of the piano and what it represents to him and to his family.

What lessons does Boy Willie learn in The Piano Lesson?

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 debilitating degree). Boy Willie is fixated on the idea of buying the land of the family that once owned his own family during the time of slavery.

Over the course of the play, Boy Willie expresses his attitudes toward race, death, power, justice and crime, ultimately suggesting that he feels forced to “make his mark” on the world through whatever means are available. His feelings are uncompromising and his mind is made up.

However, despite his certainty as to the path he must follow, Boy Willie comes to realize that dwelling on the past is not going to help him move on in the future. Boy Willie’s wrestling match with the ghost of Sutter is symbolic of his struggle to conquer the past and its demons. He discovers that this is a battle that he cannot win, but more importantly, this is a battle that he does not have to continue to fight.

If he chooses to let go of the past, the past will let go of him.

What character traits does the opening scene reveal about Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson?

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 Sutter is dead. His sister then blames Willie for pushing him in a well and runs off. She later says that she sees Sutter's ghost. Boy Willie has been serving time in prison in Mississippi. He has plans to sell the piano, that has been in his family for generations. It now belongs to his sister and she refuses to sell it. In the opening scene, we see that Boy Willie is rash and doesn't think before he does things.

Later on in the story we begin to see what Boy Willie really cares about. He wants to sell the piano and buy the land that Sutter had owned. The land was the land that his ancestors worked on as slaves. He believes that owning the land will make him just as important as the white man. All he cares about now is power and standing in the community. He doesn't care about family legacy. The land represents to him, the chance to prove that he can own land as a free person. He doesn't want just because his family worked on it, he wants for selfish reasons. He believes that the piano is actually his birthright from his father.

"If my daddy had seen where he could have traded that piano for some land of his own, it wouldn't be sitting up here now. He spent his whole life farming on somebody else's land. I ain't gonna do that. See, he couldn't do no better. When he come along he ain't had nothing he could build on. His daddy ain't had nothing to give him. The only thing my daddy had to give me was that piano. And he died over giving me that. I ain't gonna let it sit up there and rot without trying to something with it"

He said this showing that he thought his father owed it to him. In the end, however, he realizes that remembering the past and learning from our ancestors is truly important.