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Lymon Jackson
Wining Boy is Doaker’s 56-year-old brother. Once a successful musician, he worked with Doaker on the railroad for a time and nowadays spends much of his time drinking and gambling. His personal style is outdated, and he “lives [life] with an odd mixture of zest and sorrow.” The family jokes that he only shows up for visits when he needs money. Wining Boy deeply loved his ex-wife, Cleotha, who recently died, although he has always tended to stray romantically. A few years ago, Wining Boy had an empowering encounter with the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog in Mississippi and has always believed firmly in these spirits. Years ago, Wining Boy helped Doaker and their brother Boy Charles take the piano from the Sutters.
Wining Boy Quotes in The Piano Lesson
The The Piano Lesson quotes below are all either spoken by Wining Boy or refer to Wining Boy. 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:
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Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes
WINING BOY: A lot of things you got to find out on your own. I can’t say how they talked to nobody else. But to me it just filled me up in a strange sort of way to be standing there on that spot. I didn’t want to leave. […] I walked away from there feeling like a king. Went on and had a stroke of luck that run on for three years. So I don’t care if Berniece believe or not. Berniece ain’t got to believe. I know cause I been there. Now Doaker’ll tell you about the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog.
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The Ghosts of the Yellow Dog have been mentioned several times in the play, but they’ve never been fully explained. They aren’t explained in this quote, either, which adds to the vague, lingering sense of the supernatural that hovers over the play as a whole. However, this quote contributes to Wilson’s argument that each person must arrive at his or her own understanding of the supernatural, and that the spiritual realm is most significant where it helps a person deal with the tangible realities of life. Wining Boy describes an experience he had while standing at a railroad crossing in Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum
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.
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This quote is situated in the middle of a discussion between Doaker, Wining Boy, Boy Willie, and Lymon about relationships between Black people and white people. Lymon believes he’ll be treated better here in the North. Boy Willie says that he doesn’t worry about mistreatment—whether white or Black, he just treats others the way they treat him. At this point, Wining Boy interjects to say that, while Boy Willie’s position might be the ideal, it doesn’t reflect current reality. That’s when he offers the illustration of a Black person getting in trouble for picking berries on a white man’s unfenced Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ip
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.
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In this quote, Doaker is telling the story of the Sutter piano and how it came into the Charles family. His brother, Boy Charles (Berniece’s and Boy Willie’s father), was obsessed with the piano and the family history preserved in its carvings. Because the Sutters initially purchased the piano by trading enslaved members of the Charles family, the piano’s continued presence in the Sutter home symbolizes a kind of perpetual ownership of the Charles family, even though they’re now legally free. That’s why the brothers decided to reclaim the piano for themselves—it was an act of reclaiming their family story Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde
Act 2, Scene 1 Quotes
That’s how the whole thing come about between me and Lymon’s mama. She knew me and his daddy used to run together and he got in jail and she went down there and took the sheriff a hundred dollars. […] The sheriff looked at that hundred dollars and turned his nose up. Told her, say, “That ain’t gonna do him no good. You got to put another hundred on top of that.” She come up there and got me where I was playing at this saloon…said she had all but fifty dollars and asked me if I could help. […] I will give anybody fifty dollars to keep them out of jail for three years.
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Though this quote is mostly an aside from Wining Boy—evidence of the romantic wanderings that got him into trouble with his former wife, Cleotha, earlier in life—it also illustrates a painful reality of life in a racist society. After seeing Lymon for the first time in many years away from their shared Mississippi roots, Wining Boy recalls becoming briefly entangled with Lymon’s parents. It came about because Lymon’s father was in jail for unknown and possibly petty reasons, and his mother struggled to pay the bail. When she succeeded, the sheriff used it as an opportunity to extort additional money Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a.
Act 2, Scene 5 Quotes
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[.])
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At the end of the play, Boy Willie gets locked in a life-or-death wrestling match with the invisible spirit of Sutter. This climactic scene—mostly portrayed here through stage directions—especially touches on the play’s themes of the supernatural and the enduring pull of history. Berniece had initially tried to delegate the exorcism of Sutter’s ghost to her boyfriend, Avery, but now she discovers that Sutter can only be expelled by his oppressors. This is not so much a comment on Avery’s weakness as on Berniece’s strength; she finally acknowledges her spiritual power and decisively exercises self-sufficiency in this area of life. Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupt
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Wining Boy Character Timeline in The Piano Lesson
The timeline below shows where the character Wining Boy appears in The Piano Lesson. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1, Scene 1
Boy Willie and Doaker then discuss Wining Boy , Doaker’s brother. Wining Boy’s wife Cleotha died awhile back. Wining Boy visited Doaker and...
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...reminisces about his past job lining track for the Yellow Dog railroad, where his brother, Wining Boy , used to work with him. Doaker has been with the railroad for 27 years....
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Act 1, Scene 2
Three days later, Wining Boy , 56 years old, is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking, while Doaker washes dishes....
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Doaker also tells Wining Boy about Berniece’s lingering grief over her husband, Crawley, who died three years ago. He thinks...
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...them should sleep in the truck to guard the watermelons. Boy Willie starts talking with Wining Boy about Sutter and the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog. Boy Willie says the Ghosts have...
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Wining Boy explains that in 1930, he was at a low point in his life and decided...
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The men drink whiskey, and Wining Boy asks Boy Willie and Lymon about their time on Parchman Farm, where he’s done time...
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...he’s mistreated, he mistreats right back; there’s no difference between him and a white man. Wining Boy agrees that this might be the ideal, but it’s not true in real life. He...
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Then, Boy Willie encourages Wining Boy to play the piano for them, but Wining Boy declines. He says he’s given up...
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Doaker’s and Wining Boy ’s brother, Boy Charles (the oldest of the three brothers and Berniece’s and Boy Willie’s...
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Wining Boy sits down at the piano and begins playing and singing. Berniece and Maretha enter, and...
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Berniece turns to making Wining Boy ’s dinner, but Boy Willie keeps talking. He argues that the only thing that makes...
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Act 2, Scene 1
...his railroad uniform and cooking something on the stove, singing a song as he works. Wining Boy comes in carrying a silk suit which he was supposed to have pawned; he says...
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...needs to get rid of the piano, since it’s done nothing but cause trouble. However, Wining Boy figures that they have more right to the piano than the Sutters ever did, and...
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...extra sweet, and people believed him. While the younger men are still counting their money, Wining Boy brings in the silk suit and tells Lymon to try it on. He tells Lymon...
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While Lymon is trying on his new outfit, Wining Boy tells the others he knew Lymon’s father and that he, too, was always talking about...
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Act 2, Scene 3
...then breaks away and goes upstairs. Lymon happily strokes his “magic” suit coat, believing that Wining Boy was right about it.
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Act 2, Scene 5
...and returns with Crawley’s gun. She sends Maretha out of the way into Doaker’s room. Wining Boy also comes in and begins drunkenly playing and singing a song he wrote for Cleotha....
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...into the room, and Boy Willie comes downstairs, watching Berniece at the piano. He and Wining Boy decide to catch the train back to Mississippi at the last minute. He tells Berniece...
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