Pittsburgh Cycle Play Analysis

August Wilson, as chronicler of the African American diasporas, has written “Pittsburgh Cycle Plays,” that consists of ten plays, each play set in a different decade. August Wilson aims to sketch the Black experience such as anger, agony, aspirations, and spiritual trials of the African Americans in the twentieth century.
Wilson has not written about historic events or the pathologies of the black community, but presented the unique particulars of the black culture on stage in all its richness and fullness. So it is apt to say that he has written a social history of his time. Wilson’s constant theme is–you honor the past to refresh the future.
Wilson wanted African Americans to hold their past to refresh the future. He gave the black audiences

He begins the century of the Pittsburgh Cycle with Gem of the Ocean. This play is the first in the chronology of the Pittsburgh Cycle plays, set in 1904. It is a play with a blend of comedy, tragedy, and spiritual discovery and is considered to be an American classic. This play looks back to slavery, black migration from agrarian South to industrial North, quest for individuality and spiritual burden of the first decade twentieth century African Americans. It portrays the revolution of the blacks against whites, new arrivals against those already there and workers against mill owners-fighting the slavery of the mills. Gem looks back to middle passage of the slave ships and mid-Atlantic City of Bones. The pathologies of the black diaspora, first, from Africa to America and second, from the agrarian south to the industrial north that lead to fragmentation of the blacks, lacking to locate them are presented in Gem of the ocean. Gem of the ocean discloses the troubled quests of the protagonists of the play–Citizen Barlow, a new arrival from Alabama who quests to wash his soul since his unintentional murder; Black Mary, a strong angry young woman who has been serving Aunt Ester, struggles to find her role: Solly Two Kings, a fiery quester, fighting the slavery for the people; Caesar, quests for money and power by all means; and Aunt Ester, a tribal elder and healer, quests to find a suitable

His attempt to escape from all such worries ends with the death of an innocent, which eats up his soul. Purgation, that is what Barlow is looking for. Aunt Ester guides him to undergo a soul-filling journey to the City of Bones. City of Bones is a shinning City, gruesome and grand with twelve Gates, “It’s only a half mile by a half mile but that’s a city. It’s made of bones. Pearly white bones. All the buildings and everything is made of bones…That’s the center of the world” (II.i.54, 55). Citizen Barlow takes up the journey and surprises when he reaches the City of Bones. He thus says, “There it is! It’s made of bones! All the buildings and everything. Head bones and leg bones and rib bones. The streets look like silver. The trees are made of bones…I see the Gate… (II.ii.71).
Aunt Ester guides him to get through the journey and makes Barlow to see Garret Brown there. Barlow gets excited when he finds the gatekeeper, a familiar face, “The Gatekeeper … the Gatekeeper…it’s Garret Brown the man who jumped in the river…It was me. I done it. My name is Citizen Barlow. I stole the bucket of nails