August Wilson's Century Cycle -- The Piano Lesson

 

The "lesson" of The Piano Lesson is learning the difference between value and price. Berniece and her brother, Boy Willie, view the piano with equal measures of devotion and sincerity. It is this sincerity -- and the struggle between value and price -- that makes the battle between the siblings so powerful and compelling an d won Wilson his first Pulitizer Prize.

When Wilson introduces Berniece's suitor Avery late in the first scene of The Piano Lesson, he describes him as "honest and ambitious" and one who is finding opportunities in the city that others aren't. That Avery is also a preacher and prophet is consistent with the playright's use of seers as guides for the other characters. Avery's description of the dream he said led to his calling is important, I feel, because it establishes, to whatever degree for audience members, his pastoral role and the important task that lies ahead for him as they try to expel Sutter's ghost, the residue of enslavement and oppression, from the house.

Near the end of Act 1, Boy Willie explains to Berniece and Doaker why he's so intent on selling the piano. "You can sit up here and look at that piano for the next hundred years and it's just gonna be a piano. You can't make more than that. Now 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. As long as I got the land and the seed then I'm alright." For Wilson's purpose, Sutter, of course, represents more than a dead white man. He epitomizes all that was taken from blacks in the South. And all that might be reclaimed.

The second half of Act Two Scene Three is the late night encounter between Lymon and Berniece, two bodies orbitting around Boy Willie, uncertain of their future but somehow, briefly, drawn together. Lymon is decked out in a suit he bought from Wining Boy and Berniece is in her night clothes. He's been outmanned by his friend while out on the town and comes to Berniece's alone with a bottle of cheap perfume and a little bit of hope. It's a touching scene, one of the tenderest Wilson crafted for this powerful play.

Wilson closes the play with the characters in a struggle with the terrible past. Boy Willie battles the ghost of the man he may or may not have pushed into a well and Berniece calls to her ancestors to give him strength to fight. The sound of train pulling in evokes the story of the Yellow Dog and the souls seemingly trapped for eternity in it. Wilson weaves together stark realism with the mystical and the fantastic, suggesting that the spirit world is never, ever far away.