The Piano Lesson

by

August Wilson

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Racism and Self-determination Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Racism and Self-determination Theme Icon
Spirituality and the Supernatural Theme Icon
Grief, Hope, and History Theme Icon
Love, Relationships, and Independence Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Piano Lesson, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Self-determination Theme Icon

In The Piano Lesson, a play about a Black family living in Pittsburgh in 1936, Boy Willie and his friend Lymon reflect different attitudes about self-determination, the process by which a person makes choices about and manages his or her own life. Both men have traveled from Mississippi to Pittsburgh to make some money while visiting Boy Willie’s sister, Berniece. They each want to create a new life for themselves—Boy Willie plans to take his earnings back to Mississippi and buy a farm, and Lymon hopes to remain in Pittsburgh and start over there. By contrasting Boy Willie’s and Lymon’s ideas about self-determination, Wilson suggests that African Americans in the 1930s faced inequality wherever they went, but that they used different strategies to confront that inequality—all of which were valid.

Boy Willie is determined to make a way for himself in Mississippi, buying the Sutter land that his ancestors worked while they were enslaved. He is selling a truckload of watermelons in order to save up some of the money for the place; the remainder he hopes to get by selling the family piano. Boy Willie is sure that when Berniece understands his goal, she’ll be willing to let him take and sell the piano. But Berniece refuses to let Boy Willie take the piano because her father, Boy Charles, died because of it (he was killed in retaliation after his brothers stole the piano from the Sutters). Boy Willie sees the piano differently than Berniece does: “All that’s in the past. If [Boy Charles] 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.” Basically, Boy Willie’s idea of success involves owning the property of the family who formerly enslaved his own family, and he’s certain that his father would approve of such independence—even if the piano Boy Charles died over turns out to be just a means to that end. Boy Willie argues that if Berniece were using the piano to help support herself, like by offering music lessons, that might be a different matter—but she’s just letting the piano sit there. He goes on, “I ain’t gonna be no fool about no sentimental value. […] [L]and give back to you. I can make me another crop and cash that in. […] But that piano don’t put out nothing else. You ain’t got nothing working for you.” From Boy Willie’s perspective, Berniece’s attachment to the piano leaves her stuck in the past, whereas his plan to sell the piano and purchase the Sutter land is a way of creating a new future for the family—turning objects of oppression (the piano and the Sutter land) into means of opportunity.

Lymon, on the other hand is uninterested in returning to Mississippi and hopes to start over in the North. He accepts that things won’t be perfect there but believes that he’ll ultimately have more choices about where to work and how to live his life. Lymon has come to Pittsburgh because he doesn’t have any options left in Mississippi. He was put in jail “for not working,” and when Mr. Stovall, a white man, paid his $100 fine, a judge ordered Lymon to work for Stovall to pay him back. When Lymon wanted to serve 30 days in jail instead, he wasn’t allowed. Now, rather than fight against an environment where he can’t meaningfully choose his future, Lymon would rather start fresh somewhere else. Berniece agrees that Lymon should fare better in Pittsburgh than in Mississippi, because he’s different than Boy Willie: “You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a job. It’s all in how you present yourself. See now, Boy Willie couldn’t get no job up here. Somebody hire him they got a pack of trouble on their hands. Soon as they find that out they fire him. He don’t want to do nothing unless he do it his way.” Berniece’s implication is that, in order to succeed in the North, a Black person has to be willing to accommodate to others’ norms—usually, the norms of the white majority (Berniece herself works as a cleaner for a wealthy white industrialist). But Boy Willie refuses to accommodate himself to anyone, meaning that he’d never succeed in Pittsburgh on his own terms. When Boy Willie’s and Berniece’s uncle, Wining Boy, argues that the difference between Black and white people in society is that “The colored man can’t fix nothing with the law”—in other words, that white people have power to shape society that Black people don’t have—Boy Willie doesn’t care. “I don’t go by what the law say. The law’s liable to say anything. I go by if it’s right or not,” he says in reply. Lymon observes wryly, “That’s why you gonna end up back down there on the Parchman Farm [prison].” Like Wining Boy, Lymon acknowledges that there are structural inequities in society. The difference between him and Boy Willie is that Lymon doesn’t want to continue fighting against those inequities in the same way he always has; he’d rather take the risk of starting a life elsewhere, even if he runs into different problems in the North.

Boy Willie’s and Lymon’s different attitudes reflect the struggles confronting African Americans in the Jim Crow South (where state and local laws enforced racial segregation). By 1936, the Great Migration had resulted in millions of African Americans moving from the South and settling in Northern cities like Pittsburgh. At least half of the country’s black population remained in the South, where segregation was more obvious, but both regions presented obstacles and dangers to black citizens. The two men’s attitudes allow Wilson to explore different yet equally valid paths in the common struggle for self-determination and dignity within a racist society.

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Racism and Self-determination ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Racism and Self-determination appears in each scene of The Piano Lesson. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Racism and Self-determination Quotes in The Piano Lesson

Below you will find the important quotes in The Piano Lesson related to the theme of Racism and Self-determination.
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 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.

Related Characters: Wining Boy (speaker), Lymon Jackson, Cleotha Holman
Page Number: 63
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: