The Piano Lesson

by

August Wilson

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Piano Lesson makes teaching easy.

Boy Willie Character Analysis

Boy Willie, Berniece’s brother and another of the play’s protagonists, is 30 years old. He is boyish, impulsive, talkative, and can behave a bit crudely. He comes across as optimistic and a bit naïve. In particular, Boy Willie is determined in his plan to purchase the property belonging to the Sutter family—those who enslaved past generations of the Charles family—and believes he’ll succeed in convincing Berniece to sell the old family piano so that he can save up the rest of the money he needs. He drives all the way from Mississippi to Pittsburgh in a dilapidated truck, along with his good friend and work partner Lymon, in pursuit of this goal. When Boy Willie gets his mind set on something, it’s impossible to turn him aside from it. Despite his sometimes comical stubbornness and his own light-hearted temperament, Boy Willie is also perceptive, especially when it comes to his sister’s feelings and motivations. And though he doesn’t often show it, Boy Willie also has a darker side; having encountered it squarely, he is unafraid of death and of anyone, white or Black, who wishes him harm. With Lymon, Boy Willie has served time on Parchman Farm prison for petty offenses. However, his general attitude about racism is that he simply treats others the way they treat him and disregards unjust laws. Although he repeatedly provokes Berniece about the piano and goes so far as to try to remove it from the house—even denying her belief that Sutter’s ghost is real—he changes his tune when the ghost engages him in a deadly struggle. After Berniece saves Boy Willie via exorcism of Sutter’s spirit, he relents about the piano.

Boy Willie Quotes in The Piano Lesson

The The Piano Lesson quotes below are all either spoken by Boy Willie or refer to Boy Willie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Racism and Self-determination Theme Icon
).
Act 1, Scene 1 Quotes

BOY WILLIE: Lymon bought that truck so he have him a place to sleep. He down there wasn’t doing no work or nothing. Sheriff looking for him. He bought that truck to keep away from the sheriff. Got Stovall looking for him too. He down there sleeping in that truck ducking and dodging both of them. I told him come on let’s go up and see my sister.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece, Lymon Jackson, Jim Stovall
Related Symbols: Truck
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

BOY WILLIE: Sutter’s brother selling the land. He say he gonna sell it to me. That’s why I come up here. I got one part of it. Sell them watermelons and get me another part. Get Berniece to sell that piano and I’ll have the third part.

DOAKER: Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

BOY WILLIE: I’m gonna talk to her. When she see I got a chance to get Sutter’s land she’ll come around.

DOAKER: You can put that thought out your mind. Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Doaker Charles (speaker), Berniece, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost), Mama Berniece, Papa Boy Charles, Robert Sutter, Ophelia Sutter
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

DOAKER: 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. Say she good enough she can teach on the piano.

Related Characters: Doaker Charles (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Maretha, Mama Ola
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:

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. Might even plant some tobacco or some oats.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece, Doaker Charles, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost)
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 11
Explanation and Analysis:

They got so many trains out there they have a hard time keeping them from running into each other. Got trains going every whichaway. Got people on all of them. Somebody going where somebody just left. If everybody stay in one place I believe this would be a better world. Now what I done learned after twenty-seven years of railroading is this…if the train stays on the track…it’s going to get where it’s going. It might not be where you going. If it ain’t, then all you got to do is sit and wait cause the train’s coming back to get you. The train don’t never stop. It’ll come back every time.

Related Characters: Doaker Charles (speaker), Boy Willie, Lymon Jackson
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes

BOY WILLIE: They looking for Lymon down there now. They rounded him up and put him in jail for not working.

LYMON: Fined me a hundred dollars. Mr. Stovall come and paid my hundred dollars and the judge say I got to work for him to pay him back his hundred dollars. I told them I’d rather take my thirty days but they wouldn’t let me do that.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Lymon Jackson (speaker), Jim Stovall
Related Symbols: Truck
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

WINING BOY: Alright. Now Mr. So and So, he sell the land to you. And he come to you and say, “John, you own the land. It’s all yours now. But them is my berries. And come time to pick them I’m gonna send my boys over. You got the land . . . but them berries, I’m gonna keep them. They mine.” And he go and fix it with the law that them is his berries. Now that’s the difference between the colored man and the white man. The colored man can’t fix nothing with the law.

Related Characters: Wining Boy (speaker), Boy Willie
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

Boy Charles used to talk about that piano all the time. He never could get it off his mind. […] He be talking about taking it out of Sutter’s house. Say it was the story of our whole family and as long as Sutter had it…he had us. Say we was still in slavery. Me and Wining Boy tried to talk him out of it but it wouldn’t do any good. Soon as he quiet down about it he’d start up again. We seen where he wasn’t gonna get it off his mind…so, on the Fourth of July, 1911…when Sutter was at the picnic what the county give every year…me and Wining Boy went on down there with him and took that piano out of Sutter’s house.

Related Characters: Doaker Charles (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Wining Boy, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost), Boy Charles
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

BOY WILLIE: All that’s in the past. 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.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Boy Charles
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands 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. “Play something for me, Berniece. Play something for me, Berniece.” […] 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?

Related Characters: Berniece (speaker), Boy Willie, Mama Ola, Boy Charles
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 2 Quotes

AVERY: You got to put all of that behind you, Berniece. That’s the same thing like Crawley. Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you. All you got to do is set them down by the side of the road. You ain’t got to carry them with you. You can walk over there right now and play that piano. You can walk over there right now and God will walk over there with you. […] You can walk over here right now and make it into a celebration.

Related Characters: Avery Brown (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Maretha, Crawley
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 5 Quotes

That’s when I discovered the power of death. […] [The white man] 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. He don’t like for you to stand up and look him square in the eye and say, “I got it too.’’ Then he got to deal with you square up.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:

You ought to mark down on the calendar the day that Papa Boy Charles brought that piano into the house. You ought to mark that day down and draw a circle around it . . . and every year when it come up throw a party. Have a celebration. If you did that she wouldn’t have no problem in life. She could walk around here with her head held high. […] You got her going out here thinking she wrong in the world. Like there ain’t no part of it belong to her.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece, Maretha
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:

AVERY: Berniece, I can’t do it.

(There are more sounds heard from upstairs. DOAKER and WINING BOY stare at one another in stunned disbelief. It is in this moment, from somewhere old, that BERNIECE realizes what she must do. She crosses to the piano. She begins to play. The song is found piece by piece. It is an old urge to song that is both a commandment and a plea. With each repetition it gains in strength. It is intended as an exorcism and a dressing for battle[.])

Related Characters: Avery Brown (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Doaker Charles, Wining Boy, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost)
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Piano Lesson LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Piano Lesson PDF

Boy Willie Quotes in The Piano Lesson

The The Piano Lesson quotes below are all either spoken by Boy Willie or refer to Boy Willie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Racism and Self-determination Theme Icon
).
Act 1, Scene 1 Quotes

BOY WILLIE: Lymon bought that truck so he have him a place to sleep. He down there wasn’t doing no work or nothing. Sheriff looking for him. He bought that truck to keep away from the sheriff. Got Stovall looking for him too. He down there sleeping in that truck ducking and dodging both of them. I told him come on let’s go up and see my sister.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece, Lymon Jackson, Jim Stovall
Related Symbols: Truck
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

BOY WILLIE: Sutter’s brother selling the land. He say he gonna sell it to me. That’s why I come up here. I got one part of it. Sell them watermelons and get me another part. Get Berniece to sell that piano and I’ll have the third part.

DOAKER: Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

BOY WILLIE: I’m gonna talk to her. When she see I got a chance to get Sutter’s land she’ll come around.

DOAKER: You can put that thought out your mind. Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Doaker Charles (speaker), Berniece, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost), Mama Berniece, Papa Boy Charles, Robert Sutter, Ophelia Sutter
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

DOAKER: 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. Say she good enough she can teach on the piano.

Related Characters: Doaker Charles (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Maretha, Mama Ola
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:

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. Might even plant some tobacco or some oats.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece, Doaker Charles, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost)
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 11
Explanation and Analysis:

They got so many trains out there they have a hard time keeping them from running into each other. Got trains going every whichaway. Got people on all of them. Somebody going where somebody just left. If everybody stay in one place I believe this would be a better world. Now what I done learned after twenty-seven years of railroading is this…if the train stays on the track…it’s going to get where it’s going. It might not be where you going. If it ain’t, then all you got to do is sit and wait cause the train’s coming back to get you. The train don’t never stop. It’ll come back every time.

Related Characters: Doaker Charles (speaker), Boy Willie, Lymon Jackson
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes

BOY WILLIE: They looking for Lymon down there now. They rounded him up and put him in jail for not working.

LYMON: Fined me a hundred dollars. Mr. Stovall come and paid my hundred dollars and the judge say I got to work for him to pay him back his hundred dollars. I told them I’d rather take my thirty days but they wouldn’t let me do that.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Lymon Jackson (speaker), Jim Stovall
Related Symbols: Truck
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

WINING BOY: Alright. Now Mr. So and So, he sell the land to you. And he come to you and say, “John, you own the land. It’s all yours now. But them is my berries. And come time to pick them I’m gonna send my boys over. You got the land . . . but them berries, I’m gonna keep them. They mine.” And he go and fix it with the law that them is his berries. Now that’s the difference between the colored man and the white man. The colored man can’t fix nothing with the law.

Related Characters: Wining Boy (speaker), Boy Willie
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

Boy Charles used to talk about that piano all the time. He never could get it off his mind. […] He be talking about taking it out of Sutter’s house. Say it was the story of our whole family and as long as Sutter had it…he had us. Say we was still in slavery. Me and Wining Boy tried to talk him out of it but it wouldn’t do any good. Soon as he quiet down about it he’d start up again. We seen where he wasn’t gonna get it off his mind…so, on the Fourth of July, 1911…when Sutter was at the picnic what the county give every year…me and Wining Boy went on down there with him and took that piano out of Sutter’s house.

Related Characters: Doaker Charles (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Wining Boy, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost), Boy Charles
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

BOY WILLIE: All that’s in the past. 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.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Boy Charles
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands 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. “Play something for me, Berniece. Play something for me, Berniece.” […] 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?

Related Characters: Berniece (speaker), Boy Willie, Mama Ola, Boy Charles
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 2 Quotes

AVERY: You got to put all of that behind you, Berniece. That’s the same thing like Crawley. Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you. All you got to do is set them down by the side of the road. You ain’t got to carry them with you. You can walk over there right now and play that piano. You can walk over there right now and God will walk over there with you. […] You can walk over here right now and make it into a celebration.

Related Characters: Avery Brown (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Maretha, Crawley
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 5 Quotes

That’s when I discovered the power of death. […] [The white man] 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. He don’t like for you to stand up and look him square in the eye and say, “I got it too.’’ Then he got to deal with you square up.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:

You ought to mark down on the calendar the day that Papa Boy Charles brought that piano into the house. You ought to mark that day down and draw a circle around it . . . and every year when it come up throw a party. Have a celebration. If you did that she wouldn’t have no problem in life. She could walk around here with her head held high. […] You got her going out here thinking she wrong in the world. Like there ain’t no part of it belong to her.

Related Characters: Boy Willie (speaker), Berniece, Maretha
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:

AVERY: Berniece, I can’t do it.

(There are more sounds heard from upstairs. DOAKER and WINING BOY stare at one another in stunned disbelief. It is in this moment, from somewhere old, that BERNIECE realizes what she must do. She crosses to the piano. She begins to play. The song is found piece by piece. It is an old urge to song that is both a commandment and a plea. With each repetition it gains in strength. It is intended as an exorcism and a dressing for battle[.])

Related Characters: Avery Brown (speaker), Berniece, Boy Willie, Doaker Charles, Wining Boy, Sutter (Sutter’s Ghost)
Related Symbols: Piano
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis: