The Piano Lesson

The piano is the primary and most visually prominent image in the play, sitting as the centerpiece the middle of the parlor. It is the object at the center of the play’s main conflict over whether to sell it or keep it. It is the Charles family’s only inheritance with monetary worth, but Berniece and Boy Willie can’t agree on whether the piano’s emotional and spiritual worth outweighs the financial opportunity that comes from selling it. The original owner traded it to slaveholder Robert Sutter for their great grandmother Mama Berniece and her son (their grandfather), Papa Boy Charles, as a gift for his wife, Ophelia. Sutter later instructed Papa Boy Willie to carve the faces of his own wife and son into the piano to soothe Ophelia’s sense of loss and loneliness. Papa Boy Willie was a brilliant woodworker, and he carved not only his wife and son but his entire family history. To Ophelia, these wooden likenesses were enough to replace the mother and child whom she viewed as property, and she was happy again. The stealing of the piano by Papa Boy Charles’s sons—Wining Boy, Doaker, and Boy Charles—was an act of emancipation, as Boy Charles couldn’t stand the idea of the piano that represented his family being owned by the white people who once enslaved them.