The Piano Lesson

“You know she won’t touch that piano. I ain’t never known her to touch it since Mama Ola died. That’s over seven years now. She say it got blood on it. She got Maretha playing on it though. Say Maretha can go on and do everything she can’t do. Got her in an extra school down at the Irene Kaufman Settlement House. She want Maretha to grow up and be a schoolteacher.”

Doaker describes how Berniece is raising Maretha to have the opportunities that she never had herself. For Berniece, the piano is haunted because she knows its history. But Maretha has a fresh start without the knowledge of her grandfather’s brutal death and her grandmother’s 17 years of mourning and communing with his ghost, so to Maretha, the piano is just an instrument. The Irene Kaufman Settlement House was a real place run by volunteers that offered enrichment classes to primarily Jewish immigrants, but also non-Jewish immigrants and Black Americans.

“That’s why I come up here. Sell them watermelons. Get Berniece to sell that piano. Put them two parts with the part I done saved. Walk in there. Tip my hat. Lay my money down on the table. Get my deed and walk on out. This time I get to keep all the cotton. Hire me some men to work it for me. Gin my cotton. Get my seed. And I’ll see you again next year.”

Boy Willie makes his plan sound simple and straightforward, despite the many variables that are likely to interfere even before he walks out with a deed. But his dream is especially articulated in the last three sentences. The seeds that he will get from ginning his own cotton will belong to him. They represent the future and the self-sustainability in owning a piece of land. This brief piece of dialogue helps the audience understand why Boy Willie is so obsessed with this goal.

“I ain’t thinking about Sutter. And I ain’t thinking about staying up here. You stay up here. I’m going back and get Sutter’s land. You think you ain’t got to work up here. You think this the land of milk and honey. But I ain’t scared of work. I’m going back and farm every acre of that land.”

Boy Willie serves as a mouthpiece for August Wilson’s views on the Great Migration by denouncing Lymon’s view of the North as some sort of paradise where he won’t have to work. Lymon will still have to work to survive, although he will escape farm labor and being forced to work for free for Stovall. Boy Willie believes that he can work hard and achieve something that belongs to him.

“They think the train’s supposed to go where they going rather than where it’s going.”

Although Doaker has been working for the railroad for almost three decades, he prefers stability and staying in one place. He views the railroads as steadfast and stable because they always go in the directions that they are supposed to go. They’re predictable. They represent the larger social structures that have shaped the way people live for centuries. Boy Willie has gotten as far as he has in his plan by riding on a rickety old truck, kept running by the sweat of his and Lymon’s brows. If he gets on the train, he needs to understand that the train will always go where it’s supposed to go, and he shouldn’t expect the social order to bend to him.

“If everybody stay in one place I believe this would be a better world.”

Doaker’s statement can be interpreted as Wilson’s commentary on the Great Migration. He describes how often he sees someone who has sent a telegram to the person they’re coming to see, but by the time they arrive, the person has forgotten to show up at the station. Doaker says that of all the reasons that people leave where they are, they’re mainly leaving because “they can’t get satisfied” (23). His brother, Wining Boy, has spent his life wandering and still hasn’t found satisfaction. Doaker is suggesting that they should all stay where they are and set down roots.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with being a preacher. You got the preacher on one hand and the gambler on the other. Sometimes there ain’t too much difference in them.”

Wining Boy, who is a gambler, talks to Doaker about Avery Brown becoming a preacher. Preachers, like gamblers, make their living on the faith that they are making the right choice. Avery changed his entire life based on a dream in which Jesus spoke to him; he had faith that it was more than just a dream. Wining Boy is making the point that anything based on hope and faith is a gamble.

“I ain’t worried about nobody mistreating me. They treat you like you let them treat you. They mistreat me and I mistreat them right back. Ain’t no difference in me and the white man.”

Although Boy Willie is fundamentally correct that there is no difference in how a Black man and a white man should be treated, this obviously doesn’t bear out in the real world of racism and racial violence. Boy Willie has the same stubbornness as his father, determined to demand what he deserves even if he dies for it.

“WINING BOY: Now that’s the difference between the colored man and the white man. The colored man can’t fix nothing with the law.

“BOY WILLIE: I don’t go by what the law says. The law’s liable to say anything. I go by if it’s right or not. It don’t matter to me what the law says. I take and look at it for myself.

“LYMON: That’s why you gonna end up back there on the Parchman Farm.”

Wining Boy has just told a hypothetical story about a Black man buying land from a white man who twists the law so he can take the fruit that the Black man grows on the land, illustrating not only that the law is not on the side of Black Americans, but that white people have the power to distort the law even when it is. He is warning Boy Willie that owning land in the South may not be the empowerment that he hopes it will be. Boy Willie has demonstrated that his statement about disregarding laws that aren’t fair is true. He takes what he feels he deserves, such as the wood he was stealing. He is insisting on justice and fairness, although as Lymon says, that is likely to land him back in incarceration if he is caught.

“I give that piano up. That was the best thing that ever happened to me, getting rid of that piano. That piano got so big and I’m carrying it around on my back. I don’t wish that on nobody.”

Wining Boy is talking about the piano in the abstract rather than the literal piano at the center of the play, but playing the piano for him is a similar burden to the weight of the titular piano for Boy Charles and Mama Ola, for Berniece, and for Lymon and Boy Willie when they try to take it. Wining Boy is afraid of growing roots, and he has self-destructively left anything and anyone that he loved, like Cleotha. Playing the piano gave him an identity as a pianist, and he felt trapped when he was put in front of a piano and expected to stay rooted to the spot. But he also can’t let those things go. He still saw Cleotha as holding a place for him that was home, and he still plays the piano in the play. When Boy Willie and Lymon try to carry it out, he starts playing it to keep them from taking it.

“BERNIECE: Money can’t buy what that piano cost. You can’t sell your soul for money. It won’t go away with the buyer. It’ll shrivel and shrink to know that you ain’t taken on to it. But it won’t go with the buyer.

“BOY WILLIE: I ain’t talking about all that, woman. I ain’t talking about selling my soul. I’m talking about trading that piece of wood for some land. Get something under your feet. Land the only thing God ain’t making no more of. You can always get you another piano.”

Boy Willie refuses to see the piano as a spiritual object, because that would require him to admit that selling it isn’t so simple. Their father died for it, and their mother made it a stand-in for her dead husband’s body. Berniece’s statement suggests that both of their souls are also tied to the piano, as are perhaps all the souls of their family and ancestors. Boy Willie insists on seeing the piano as nothing but a piece of wood that isn’t being used enough to justify keeping it. Land is the only path to a future. Notably, Berniece’s husband also died for pieces of wood.

“You always talking about your daddy but you ain’t never stopped to look at what his foolishness cost your mama. Seventeen years’ worth of cold nights and an empty bed. For what? For a piano? For a piece of wood? To get even with somebody? I look at you and you’re all the same. You, Papa Boy Charles, Wining Boy, Doaker, Crawley…you’re all alike. All this thieving and killing and thieving and killing. And what it ever lead to? More killing and more thieving. I ain’t never seen it come to nothing. People getting burned up. People getting shot. People falling down their wells. It don’t never stop.”

As Boy Willie tries to steamroll Berniece and force her into letting him take the piano, Berniece articulates the part of their family history that the men choose to ignore: the cost of their actions to the women who love them. Boy Charles died for the piano—a story of bravery, sacrifice, and martyrdom that presumes that Boy Charles’s life was only his to give. His death was terrible, but his life was over in a few moments. Mama Ola mourned for 17 years. Similarly, Berniece has mourned Crawley for three. She blames Boy Willie and all other men who put their masculine pride on the line with their lives, always leaving women by walking away or dying.

“I agree with Berniece. Boy Charles ain’t took it to give it back. He took it ’cause he figure he had more right to it than Sutter did. If Sutter can’t understand that…then that’s just the way that go. Sutter dead and in the ground…don’t care where his ghost is. He can hover around and play on the piano all he want. I want to see him carry it out the house.”

Doaker has suggested that the piano is the reason that they are being haunted by Sutter’s ghost, because he saw the ghost at the piano before he was even given news of Sutter’s death. But Wining Boy sees the Charles family as the rightful owners of the piano, asserting that Boy Charles wouldn’t have wanted them to sell it. Sutter may be there trying to assert his own right to possess the piano, a right that his surviving family would have under the law, but the Charles family’s right to ownership goes much deeper than the law. Sutter, a white plantation owner and former slaver, is a terrifying figure to have invading their house. But Wining Boy points out that the ghost is just a shadow of Sutter. It can’t do anything to them, much less to the piano.

“You trying to tell me a woman can’t be nothing without a man. But you all right, huh? You can just walk out of here without me—without a woman—and still be a man. That’s all right. Ain’t nobody gonna ask you, ‘Avery, who you got to love you?’ That’s all right for you. But everybody gonna be worried about Berniece. ‘How Berniece gonna take care of herself? How she gonna raise that child without a man? Wonder what she do with herself? How she gonna live like that?’ Everybody got all kinds of questions for Berniece. Everybody telling me I can’t be a woman unless I got a man. Well, you tell me, Avery—you know—how much woman am I?”

Berniece is responding to Avery’s implication that she is losing her femininity as he tries to persuade her to marry her before it’s gone. She is a hardworking, single mother who has made a life for herself and her daughter after losing her husband. She often exposes the way the men treat women unfairly, or the ways that the women bear the pain of men’s decisions. Avery is attempting to use the double standard that judges women for being unmarried but not men, trying to make her afraid of losing her womanhood and becoming undesirable to men. But Berniece is very much aware of the tricks that society plays on women, and she is insulted that Avery buys into them.

“He caused it to happen. God is the Great Causer. He can do anything. He parted the Red Sea. He say, ‘I will smite my enemies.’ Reverend Thompson used to preach on the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog as the hand of God.”

Avery demonstrates the way Christianity as a colonizing religion subsumes African spiritualities by incorporating them rather than denying them. There may be nothing in the Bible about the ghosts of murdered people going around for decades and killing their murderers, but the notion of a vengeful god can explain any supernatural act of vengeance as a manifestation of that god’s desire to smite.

“BOY WILLIE: Who’s Leroy? You ain’t said nothing about no Leroy.

“GRACE: He used to be my man. He ain’t coming back. He gone off with some other gal.”

Grace is yet another woman who is a victim of men who wander and refuse to put down roots. She is like Cleotha. Leroy has a key to her house, which means that he can come back any time he wants, but he isn’t there for Grace at all. Her house isn’t her own space. Her situation echoes Berniece’s statements about how women are treated as less womanly without a husband, but husbands are free to leave and roam. Later, Boy Willie reveals that Leroy did indeed come back, asserting his ownership over Grace after violating his own commitment to her.

“I figure I was taking a chance with that eleven hundred. If I had told him twelve hundred he might have run off. Now I wish I had told him twelve-fifty. It’s hard to figure out white folks sometimes.”

Boy Willie demonstrates, for the second time in the play, that despite his stealing and his big talk about seeing himself as equal to white men, he doesn’t know how to avoid letting white men take advantage of him in negotiation. He already agreed to pay Sutter’s brother $2,000 for the land when Stovall was going to pay $1,500. Now he’s struggling to negotiate a good price for the piano. Both the land and piano have sacred and sentimental value to the family. He’s admitting that when it comes down to dealing with white men at the bargaining table rather than trying to swindle and steal, he doesn’t know how to assert himself and his best interests.

“Go on and cut it half in two if you want to. Just leave Berniece’s half sitting over there. I can’t tell you what to do with your piano. But I can’t let you take her half out of here.”

Doaker is playing King Solomon, who told two mothers who claimed the same baby to cut the baby in half. The woman who immediately offered the baby to the other woman to save its life was judged to be the real mother. Doaker doesn’t have the power of a king, but he is trying to exert authority over his house on both his and Berniece’s behalf. Like a baby, a piano is useless to everyone if it’s cut in half.

“Hell, I ain’t scared of dying. I look around and see people dying every day. You got to die to make room for somebody else. I had a dog that died. Wasn’t nothing but a puppy. […] I prayed real hard. […] I got up […] and the dog still dead. […] I say, ‘Well, ain’t nothing precious.’ And then I went out and l killed me a cat. That’s when I discovered the power of death. See, a n***** that ain’t afraid to die is the worst kind of n***** for the white man. He can’t hold that power over you. That’s what I learned when I killed that cat. I got the power of death too. I can command him. I can call him up. The white man don’t like to see that.”

Berniece has threatened to get Crawley’s gun to stop Boy Willie from taking the piano, but Boy Willie asserts that he isn’t afraid of death, and he isn’t afraid to kill. His experience with his puppy dying and his subsequent killing of the cat taught him that life isn’t special or sacred. His and any other life can be gone in an instant. During this era, white men hold the fear of lynching over Black people’s heads, and that fear keeps them in line. But Boy Willie claims that he refuses to fear death, which is how he does what he wants and ignores the laws that he doesn’t like. Berniece dismisses his speech, claiming that she doesn’t bother talking to Boy Willie, because all he says is stuff like this.

“Be still, Maretha. If you was a boy I wouldn’t be going through this.”

Berniece is combing Maretha’s hair as she shrieks in pain, and Boy Willie is highly offended on Maretha’s behalf, exclaiming that wishing she were a boy will hurt Maretha’s feelings. But Berniece also knows that the pain of sitting while her mother works a hot comb through her hair is just one type of pain that girls and women endure, not only to be beautiful in the eyes of men, but at the hands of men. Berniece speaks out repeatedly in the play about Black women who are often forgotten in narratives of Black oppression.

“What I want to bring a child into this world for? Why I wanna bring somebody else into all this for? I’ll tell you this…If I was Rockefeller I’d have forty or fifty. I’d make one every day. ’Cause they gonna start out in life with all the advantages. I ain’t got no advantages to offer nobody. Many is the time I looked at my daddy and seen him staring off at his hands. I got a little older I know what he was thinking. He sitting there saying, ‘I got these big old hands but what am I gonna do with them?’”

Boy Willie describes the plight of Black men who wander and leave women behind instead of staying and making families with them. He says that he doesn’t feel right bringing children into the world if he can’t give them land to claim and call their own, a reason for them to feel equal to white people. He criticizes Berniece for teaching Maretha that they’re “living on the bottom of life,” adding that “she’s gonna grow up to hate you” (91). But Berniece insists that she’s being truthful with her daughter and that living at the bottom doesn’t mean that she has to stay at the bottom. Berniece is placing hope for the future in the next generation, while Boy Willie is resisting creating a new generation until he has achieved something.

“See now… I’ll tell you something about me. I done strung along and strung along. Going this way and that. Whatever way would lead me to a moment of peace. That’s all I want. To be as easy with everything. But I wasn’t born to that. I was born to a time of fire.”

Boy Willie is the only character who hasn’t settled into a niche or a lifestyle. Even Wining Boy has set himself to a life of wandering that follows the predictable path of the rails. Boy Willie is obsessively driven and aggressively ambitious. His dream of a life on his own farm is one of peace, but he wasn’t born into a time when he might have inherited a firmly established family legacy. He was born with the fire for wanting more—fire that consumed his father. It’s a time when Black Americans are beginning to fight for civil rights.

“Something ain’t right here. I knew I shouldn’t have come back up in this house.”

Grace plays a small role with little stage time, but she looms large in Lymon’s dreams and fantasies. Lymon demonstrates his humorous naivete by picking up Grace in his truck with the promise of just a quick stop to pick up a piano (that first requires overcoming a stalemate between siblings and completing an exorcism). Grace’s untimely interjection is funny, but she also demonstrates that there is some kind of bad energy in the house that even she, as an outsider, can sense. She is Lymon’s excuse to exit, and he leaves Boy Willie to figure out the issue of the piano himself. Grace represents everything Lymon has come to Pittsburgh to find, although the audience doesn’t get to see whether the relationship lives up to his imagination.

“Hey Sutter! Sutter! Get your ass out this house! Sutter! Come and get some of this water! You done drowned in the well, come on and get some more of this water!”

Before charging off to fight Sutter’s ghost physically, Boy Willie starts to mimic Avery’s attempts to exorcise the ghost by sprinkling holy water. Boy Willie is splashing a pot of water around the living room. He draws a line to the significance of water, which appears throughout the Century Cycle. Water represents the enslaved people who died on the Middle Passage and were thrown overboard. Taking vengeance on those who burned the five men in the boxcar by drowning them in their wells is symbolic.