In The Piano Lesson the Charles’ family is shown as very stubborn and frank. Since almost all members of the Charles’ family are like this they all tend to argue a lot. The Charles’ family also has a very interesting background filled with scandal, slavery, and a piano that has been through it all with the Charles’ family and even could be blamed for all their problems. Their family history negatively impacts Bernice, who struggles with the toll her father’s death over the piano took on her family revealing the importance of legacy and how it builds people’s character. This play shows the importance of legacy through the Charles’ family past in slavery and her father’s death. In The Piano Lesson Bernice chooses to willfully ignore her family’s past but is then forced to embrace it at the
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Sutter’s wife missed the slaves that were traded to get the piano and this led to Berniece’s grandfather carving not only those slaves but also important events that happened to the Charles’ family such as “... when him and Mama Berniece got married… when my daddy was born… Mama Esther’s funeral… He got all kinds of things what happened with our family.” (1228) on the piano. In Harry Justin Elam’s essay “The Dialectics of August Wilson’s Piano Lesson” he states “Willie Boy’s act of carving the piano operates as an enabling gesture of cultural intervention that empowers him and implicitly declares the Charles family’s agency. Through this act, the piano and its “songs” become the property of the Charles family.” (370). The piano symbolizes Willie Boy’s action of defiance and also symbolizes the Charles’ family in slavery and their struggle to be free. Berniece’s father was so obsessed with the piano. Doaker states that “Boy Charles used to talk about that piano all the time. He never could get it off his mind…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… so, on the Fourth of July, 1911… me and
Sutter’s wife missed the slaves that were traded to get the piano and this led to Berniece’s grandfather carving not only those slaves but also important events that happened to the Charles’ family such as “... when him and Mama Berniece got married… when my daddy was born… Mama Esther’s funeral… He got all kinds of things what happened with our family.” (1228) on the piano. In Harry Justin Elam’s essay “The Dialectics of August Wilson’s Piano Lesson” he states “Willie Boy’s act of carving the piano operates as an enabling gesture of cultural intervention that empowers him and implicitly declares the Charles family’s agency. Through this act, the piano and its “songs” become the property of the Charles family.” (370). The piano symbolizes Willie Boy’s action of defiance and also symbolizes the Charles’ family in slavery and their struggle to be free. Berniece’s father was so obsessed with the piano. Doaker states that “Boy Charles used to talk about that piano all the time. He never could get it off his mind…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… so, on the Fourth of July, 1911… me and