The Piano Lesson

James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American Dream” in 1931 to describe the ethos of the country as promised and shaped by its founding documents. The Dream, which is at the core of American exceptionalism, promises that “each man and woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position” (Wills, Matthew. “James Truslow Adams: Dreaming up the American Dream.” JSTOR Daily, 2015). And of all possible signifiers of this “fullest stature,” the most sought-after manifestation of the American Dream was home and land ownership. But Black Americans have been systematically excluded from equal pursuit of the American Dream, a theme that resurfaces over and over in August Wilson’s Century Cycle. When slavery was abolished by the 13th amendment in 1865, newly freed Black Americans not only had little or nothing materially, but generations of enslavement had severed and distanced them from their familial inheritances and cultural roots. Attempts by Black Americans to pursue the American Dream were riddled with barriers and traps that would land them in the penal system, which was the new iteration of legal slavery. The first Black American Dream of self-ownership was fought for, acquired, and often taken away in a repetitive cycle. In The Piano Lesson, while the other characters cope with this constant threat to their freedom by keeping their heads low, (mostly) obeying the law, and tempering their ambitions, Boy Willie is determined to achieve the real American Dream—the dream of equality promised by the Constitution to all citizens.

The piano exemplifies the type of property kept and owned by white people that rightfully belonged to Black Americans. It was traded for two members of the Charles family who, once legally free, should have had rights to the instrument that their own bodies had been wrongfully sold to obtain. When Willie Boy, grieving over the sale of his wife and son, carved the Charles family history into the piano, it became a precious archival family record of faces and scenes that didn’t exist in any other form. It was also a manifestation of Willie Boy’s painstaking labor and craftsmanship. The acknowledgement that owning another person and their labor is unconstitutional should theoretically have solidified that the piano belonged to the Charles family. Sutter put none of his own money or effort into the instrument. But that wasn’t how property was claimed in the wake of slavery. The only way for the family to obtain what was rightfully theirs was to steal it. Notably, the three brothers broke in to take the piano on July 4, Independence Day. The piano becomes the first Charles family heirloom, soaked in their literal and metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears, and reclaimed at the high cost of Boy Charles’s life. It is Berniece and Boy Willie’s inheritance, a connection with their ancestors and otherwise lost family history. When Boy Willie sees the chance to own the land that his family worked during slavery—a piece of property also soaked in their blood, sweat, and tears—he wants it so badly that he ignores the spiritual significance of the piano. But as Berniece and Boy Willie’s father believed, selling the piano to white people is like selling their ancestors back into slavery. The inheritance of their family history and roots is even more important than owning a piece of land.