Piano Lessons Play Analysis

The main focus of the play is the conflict between Boy Willie and Bernice regarding their legacy. Bernice wants to keep it while Boy Willie wants to sell it. Bernice took the piano with her when she migrated from the south to the north like many others in search of better living standards. We are told that even though she is need of money but she doesn’t want to sell the piano. Why she wants to keep the piano is quite unclear but one can say that she wants to keep it as reminder of her past even though she believes that “it got blood on it” ( Wilson 10). Her daughter Maretha takes Piano Lessons on it but she herself doesn’t touch it. According to Doaker she hasn’t touched it for almost seven years. According to Devan Boan for Bernice “it’s
It introduces us to a number of ghosts along with the treatment the Charles family bore. They were, like most of the blacks, victims of violence and when violence exceeds its limit it results in haunting. The haunting which the coming generations have to bear. The haunting in this story is the result of the forced separation of the members of the Charles family.
Just as Bernice and Boy Willie disagree on how to utilize the past they also disagree on the ghosts Boy Willie doesn’t believe in Sutter’s ghost till the time he physically encounters him and Bernice doesn’t believe in the Ghost of the Yellow Dog in other words both of them deny one or other aspect of their legacy of trans-generational haunting. There are always a number of ghosts in a person’s life. We inherit them in the form of secrets and these secrets when unleashed become the ghosts of our lives and in order to solve this entire problem both if them will have to encounter the ghosts themselves.
The entire problem of the trans-generational hauntings in the play is resolved with Bernice invoking the ghosts of her family to save them from Sutter and in this way the phantom of their painful past is finally put at