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The Lesson By August Wilson Character Analysis

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In August Wilson’s The PIano Lesson , Boy Willie, struggles with controlling his anger towards his family past slave owner family, the sutters, generations before he was born which reveals to accept your past and and do not attempt to get revenge or it’ll consume you and take over your life in dangerous ways. Throughout the whole novel we can see how angry and eager he is to sell the piano and his hatred towards his family’s ex owners family especially the last one to die which is why he had traveled to the north from Mississippi to Pittsburgh where his sister Bernice lives and the current location of the symbolic family piano. Throughout the whole play Boy Willie is on a mission. He is attempting to sell his family’s piano in order to buy land and make a living out of the land. The …show more content…

A few generation ago the family were owned by a white slave owners whose last name were the Sutters. Some people in town believe one of the sutter’s was the one who set fire to a box car killing Berniece and Willie Boy’s dad Papa Boy Charles after he had stolen the piano from their house. Legend also said one was killed by the ghost of the people the sutter killed when setting fire to the box car when he was pushed into a well and drowned. In Harry Justin's passage five he talks about the importance of Boy Charles taking back the piano. Elam writes “ Rather than submitting to the hegemony of sutter and the painful legacy of slavery, Papa Boy Charles liberates the piano and is willing to face death as the price of his action” (p.g #373- 374) here he talks the piano being an object that represents freedom of his family’s past which includes freeing themselves from the Sutter home after slavery was abolished in the U.S. Boy Charles reclaims the family history through appropriating the piano, Boy Willie hopes to further his father’s goals by buying the land. Hence the fact that he really wants to sell the

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Thank you.” Bernice comes to terms with her family’s past, through her actions and acceptance of the piano and the history behind it. She changes from having this anger towards the piano and her brother to developing an acceptance towards his actions and playing a song upon the piano once more. This acceptance leads to a harmony between her and her brother from the previous blame of her husband’s death and a higher harmony for the entire Charles family after Sutter’s spirit is

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