The Lesson the Piano Teaches The play, “The Piano Lesson”, takes place in Pittsburgh in 1937. It uses The Great Depression as a backdrop and hints of the black migration from South to North after the end of the Civil War and before desegregation in the South. The play is about a dispute between a sister, Berniece, who has moved to Pittsburgh and her brother, Boy Willie, who still lives in Mississippi. The brother wants to sell a family heirloom, a piano, to buy land down south. The sister wants to keep it in the family because of its family history and association with tragedy. The piano has carvings on it done by their great-grandfather and depicts important events in the lives of the Charles family during slavery. There is also the ghost of John Sutter, a member of the Sutter family who owned the Charles family during slavery times. He hovers over the piano and seems to not want the piano to be disturbed. The title of the play suggests that the play is about someone teaching a piano lesson, but the story is really about the lesson the piano teaches. The piano teaches this family that their ancestry and history are important but that one should not dwell in the past or base the future on dreams of symbolic retribution. Berniece and Boy Willie are the great grandchildren of Berniece and Willie Boy Charles, slaves owned by Robert and Ophelia Sutter. “Chattel slavery contributed significantly to pre–Civil War economic growth in the United States. The invention of the cotton gin (1793) dramatically increased the demand for slaves by lowering the cost of cotton production and inducing landowners to expand production beyond coastal areas. Approximately one million African Americans were redeployed from the upper to the lower South via a well-organized urban-based internal slave trade (African Americans).” As slaves they were not entitled to own property because they were property. In fact, Robert Sutter sold Berniece and her son for a piano that he gave to his wife for their anniversary.
Originating with the birth of the nation itself, in many respects, the story of the domestic slave trade is also the story of the early United States. While an external traffic in slaves had always been present, following the American Revolution this was replaced by a far more vibrant internal trade. Most importantly, an interregional commerce in slaves developed that turned human property into one of the most valuable forms of investment in the country, second only to land (Deyle). Mr. Sutter’s wife loved the piano very much but soon became despondent at the loss of Berniece and her son because she missed “the way she would cook and clean the house and talk to her and what not…. And the way he would fetch things for her (Wilson).” After a failed attempt to get the slaves back, Mr. Sutter had Willie Boy carve the images of his wife and son into the piano. Willie Boy did not stop at the pictures. He continued to carve other important images into the piano. He carved his own parents’ faces as well as his mother’s funeral, his own wedding day, the day his son was born, and the day they were sold. The piano stays in the Sutter family until it is stolen by Boy Charles, the grandson of Willie Boy and the father of Berniece and Boy Willie. The consequences of this action end in his death, but the piano is now possessed by members of the Charles family, Berniece and Boy Willie. The piano also seems to be possessed by the spirit or ghost of John Sutter.
For Berniece the piano symbolizes a connection to a tragic past that she feels she should not let go of. It is a connection to their mother, grandparents and great grandparents. She feels that the piano has a soul. She tells Boy Willie that “money can’t buy what that piano cost. You can’t sell your soul for money (878).” She goes on to tell Boy Willie to,
Look at this piano. Look at it. Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hand bled. Then she rubbed the blood in … mixed it up with the rest of the blood on it. Every day that God breathed life into her body she rubbed and cleaned and polished and prayed over it… 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? (879)
Bernice refuses to play the piano but she will not let it go. Her daddy died over it. For Boy Willie that is all in the past. He says that, “If my daddy had seen where he could have traded the piano for some land of his own, it wouldn’t be sitting up here now (875).” Boy Willie feels that he is “supposed to build on what they left me (878).” For him, that means selling the piano and purchasing some land. The acquisition of land was an important first step for many former slaves and their descendants. Owning land would mean freedom from the legacy of slavery and help achieve economic and social equality with the white Americans. After the Civil War, some American lawmakers proposed various plans to compensate former slaves for their labor by offering them forty acres of land to farm and a mule to plow it. However, such plans never came to fruition (Askeland). This lead to millions of slaves and their descendants, like Berniece, moving to the North toward better economic opportunities and away from the racial repression in the South (Great Migration). The African Americans who remained in the South often labored for white employers for low wages or sharecropped the same land they were enslaved to, never becoming self-sustaining (Askeland). By purchasing land, Boy Willie believes he can achieve a version of the American Dream. The land he intends to purchase belongs to the Sutter family, the same family that owned his family during slavery times. “As far as Boy Willie is concerned, in this contest for the piano, aesthetic and sentimental value must not take precedence over socio-economic value or the ideal of finally being able to avenge years of unpaid labour through black property ownership (Alexandre).” Boy Willie makes the statement that his dad,
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 is sit up there and rot without trying to do something with it (875).
In Boy Willie’s eyes, since Bernice is not using the piano to teach or make a living, it makes sense for him to take it and sell it. Selling the piano and buying the former slave owner’s property allows him to let go of the past while at the same time achieving the ultimate payback. Berniece does not look toward a future for herself. She feels as if she is at the bottom of life and entwined too much with the past. Instead, Berniece looks to make sure her young daughter, Maretha, has the chance she did not. She has her playing the piano and going to school and studying to be a teacher. Berniece instills in her that, even though she is at the bottom, she does not have to stay there like her. Boy Willie tells Berniece that, “this might be your bottom but it ain’t mine… I ain’t gonna just take my life and throw it away at the bottom…The way I see it everybody else got to come up a little taste to be where I am… If you believe that’s where you at then you gonna act that way. If you act that way then that’s where you gonna be (905).” Berniece’s way of thinking was not uncommon among African Americans during this time period. Coming up from a segregated South were colored people were dehumanized and treated like dirt could take a toll on one’s self esteem. Boy Willie refuses to think this way. He has a heart that beats just as loud as others, it does not matter if they are black or white. Boy Willie is trying to make his mark on the world and to do that he needs to sell the piano so he can get him some land and make a life for himself (906). As the play comes to an end, the argument between Berniece and Boy Willie over the piano seems as if it is about to become violent. This is the time that the ghost of Mr. Sutter manifests itself. Boy Willie turns his anger toward the ghost and starts to fight with it. The stage directions say “[There are loud sounds heard from upstairs as Boy Willie begins to wrestle with Sutter’s ghost. It is a life-and-death struggle fraught with perils and faultless terror. Boy Willie is thrown down the stairs... Boy Willie picks himself up and dashes back upstairs (914).]” It is at this moment that Berniece realizes that she must play the piano to banish the ghosts, literally and figuratively. So she plays and she sings, calling on all her ancestors to help her. The ghost disappears and Berniece is left with a peace that she has not felt since before her Papa Boy Charles was killed after stealing the piano. She says “Thank You (915)” to her ancestors, and you can imagine her relief as she lets go of the past looks toward the future. A future free of the ties that had her bound. Willie Boy decides to leave the piano with Berniece, saying, “Hey Berniece… if you and Maretha don’t keep playing on that piano… ain’t no telling… me and Sutter both liable to be back (915).” This is the end of the play. The reader is not told why Boy Willie decided to give up his claim to the piano. One reason could be that, seeing Berniece let go of her past influenced him to give up his dreams of retribution and pursue other avenues to legitimize himself. Since we are not told what happens to these two siblings we can be left to ponder what other lessons the piano might teach later down the road.

Works Cited
"African Americans." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. William A. Darity, Jr. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 34-37. World History in Context. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.
Alexandre, Sandy. "[The] Things What Happened 'With' Our Family": Property And Inheritance In August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Modern Drama 52.1 (2009): 73-98. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
Askeland, Lori. "Forty Acres and a Mule." Dictionary of American History. Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 3rd ed. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 440. U.S. History in Context. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
Deyle, Steven. Carry Me Back : The Domestic Slave Trade In American Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Dec. 2015.
"Great Migration, 1910-1920." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. Ed. Thomas Carson and Mary Bonk. Detroit: Gale, 1999. U.S. History in Context. Web. 2 Dec. 2015 Wilson, August. "The Piano Lesson.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. By Kelly J. Mays. Eleventh ed. New York: W W Norton &, 2014. 119-21. Print