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In The Piano Lesson 1, August Wilson has captured the black experience comprehensively. The main question he has asked is about the past of the Afro-Americans. This past includes years of slavery and degradation. According to Wilson, the main concern, which black Americans have to address is, what they should do with their past legacy, firstly of African civilization and secondly of slavery in the American continent.
In their search for self-identity, this conflict of consciousness between past slave-selves and present independent selves has to be resolved. In The Piano Lesson, Wilson has offered a resolution. He invokes the past that is connected with the civilization of Africa in order to save the present and the future of the black Americans. This African legacy is also a balm to the sores of slavery. Wilson has presented the past, present and future of Afro-Americans as reconciled with the pagan African religion. In this way he has created a relationship in which African identity of the blacks helps the black Americans in their search for identity.
The identity of self is shaped by the past heritage of a people. This heritage includes myths, folklore, religion and rituals practiced by them. The black American community has a heritage of Africa as well as of slavery. According to Wilson: they are African people...
Theres something thats part of the bloods memory. Theres a sensibility thats still African, despite the fact that weve been on the North American continent for three hundred and seventy years. We walk down the street differently. Theres a certain style. We decorate our houses differently, our ideas about the world are very different, and those things have survived for hundreds of years 2.
Wilson seems to suggest that it is not possible to americanize the blacks in a way that makes no allowance for their cultural diversity. It is important to see what role the past has to play in establishing and promoting an essentially Afro-American identity. No community can retain a wholeness of self if it has to severe its connection with the past. Even if the past is traumatic the connection has to be established. The community has to come to terms with the trauma. It has to utilize it in such a way that it contributes to its sense of self and makes it whole.
If the past is not used this way then the self-identity of such a community will be fragmentary. The past connected with Africa has to be acknowledged and used for the construction of an essentially dynamic black American identity. The Piano Lesson has dealt with the question of the usefulness of past for the construction of a thriving sense of self-identity. It has explored the subconscious of a people. There dreams, legends and rituals, which constitute the collective consciousness, have been exposed in order to show the relation existing between their past and present sense of self-identity.
In The Piano Lesson the atmosphere of the play is permeated with a religious and spiritual air from the beginning. There are signs throughout the play that anticipate the battle of spirits in the last act. The description of the first scene is apocalyptic in nature. The dawn is beginning to announce itself but there is something in the air that belongs to the night. A stillness that is a portent, a gathering, a coming together of something akin to a storm. (Act 1, scene 1) These words are used to describe the atmosphere of the play. It seems to indicate that a storm is brewing.
It gives some warning of the crisis to follow that is the battle between Sutter's ghost and Boy Willie. The character of Berniece seems to suggest that she is a torchbearer of the black self. The way she acts in helping Boy Willie handle Sutter's ghost has a religious air to it. The character of the man of god, Avery is a sort of foil to her.
The search of self assumes the colour of religion in which salvation is attained by the achievement of black self-identity. Berniece and not Avery becomes the priest of this religion of the self. The play basically revolves around Boy Willies attempts at selling a piano, which his sister Berniece is trying to preserve. Boy Willie has a sense of future, which he is trying to realize. He is dreaming about working on land that belongs to him. He has been offered that piece of land upon which his forefathers had worked as slaves.
They had farmed that land for the white master Sutter, who is dead now. Since they were slaves they had no right to the land. Boy Willie has to collect money if he wants to buy that land. He has saved one third of the money, he will have two thirds of it when he sells his watermelons. The last portion of the money has to be raised. For this purpose, Boy Willie wants to sell the piano, which his father stole from Sutter.
This piano itself has a long history. It is a testimonial to the hardships through which Boy Willies family went through. There are carved figures on the piano. The whole history of the family is carved onto the piano. In this way the piano not only stands as an evidence of the hardships of a particular family of slaves but it also stands for the whole of the black American experience.
It becomes a symbol of the sufferings and humiliations of the black Americans in the days of slavery. The piano as symbolic of the past becomes a source of conflict between Boy Willie and his sister Berniece. She does not want to sell the piano because she has emotional associations with it. She does not want to part with the piano.
She has not been using it herself because she felt that her mother had wept over this piano with and asked her to play it. Since her mother is dead therefore Berniece does not play the piano anymore. Because of this association the piano has become an emotionally charged article. Berniece cannot play it because of the memories it invokes. She is handicapped by the past. Symbolically interpreted it seems as if Berniece is not ready for a future.
AVERY: How long you gonna carry Crawley with you, Berniece? Its been over three years. At some point you got to let go and go on. Lifes got all kinds of twists and turns. That dont mean you stop living. That dont mean you cut yourself off from life.
You cant got through life carrying Crawleys ghost with you. Crawleys been dead three years. Three years, Berniece. (act 2, scene 2) These lines show that Berniece is a victim of the past. She is not ready to let go of it. She refuses to look forward to her life. In a way her life has stopped.
The present is nothing to her but only a continuation of the past she has lived through. She is not using that piano for any purpose. She only wants to revere it, not use it. She tells Avery that: Berniece: I done told you I dont play that piano. Aint no need in you to keep talking that choir stuff. When my mama died I shut the top on that piano and I aint never opened it since.
I was only playing it for her. When my daddy died seem like all the life in her went into that piano. She used to have me playing on it... had Miss Eula come in and teach me... say when I played it she could hear my daddy talking to her. I used to think them pictures come alive and walked through the house.
Some time late at night I could hear my mama talking to them. I said that wasnt gonna happen to me. I dont play that piano cause I dont want to wake them spirits. They never be walking around in this house. (Act 2, scene 2) Berniece does not even want to use that piano for church work. The piano is more important to her than her religious impulses.
In a way the piano is a sort of diet to her. Her reverence for the piano seems to suggest that Berniece worships the past. She understands the value of the past, which is attached to the piano. She knows that the spirits of her dead are living in that piano. Her refusal to play it and use it in any manner suggests that she is almost scared of the burden of the past.
Though she worships the past, she is not ready to confront the past reality of herself in the context of present or future. At this stage in the play, Berniece lacks self-identity. The fact of herself as a black is too painful to be acknowledged in the present or the future because of association to slavery. She only want...
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Research essay sample on Act 2 Scene 2 Boy Willie
