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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Piano Lesson, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Self-determination
Spirituality and the Supernatural
Grief, Hope, and History
Love, Relationships, and Independence
Summary
Analysis
Boy Willie is attaching wheels to a wooden plank. Maretha is sitting by the piano and Doaker sits at the table. Boy Willie tells Maretha the story of the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog. He explains that this is the name given to the men who died in the burned-up boxcar. They’re named after the Yellow Dog railroad line. Nobody can see the ghosts—but sometimes, if you call upon them at a certain railroad crossing, they might show up to help you.
Boy Willie takes the initiative to tell Maretha bits and pieces about her family’s past, since he believes that Berniece isn’t doing this adequately. The connection between the Ghosts (which presumably include Boy Willie’s and Berniece’s father, Boy Charles) and the piano is also confirmed.
Themes
Berniece gets home and sends Maretha upstairs. Since Maretha’s still scared of Sutter’s Ghost, Boy Willie goes with her. Berniece asks Doaker what’s been going on, and he explains that Boy Willie and Lymon are getting ready to move the piano. Berniece says that she’s done playing around with Boy Willie; she warns her brother that she’s got Crawley’s gun in the house. Boy Willie tells her he isn’t scared of dying, and he recalls a time when his pet dog died. He prayed and prayed for it to come back to life. When nothing happened, he went out and killed a cat, and this made him realize the power of death. When a Black man holds that power, Boy Willie says, he no longer has to be afraid of a white man.
Berniece’s exchange with Boy Willie reveals a deeper, darker side to her brother. The point of Boy Willie’s chilling story about the dead animals is that Boy Willie has reckoned with the power of death personally and does not fear it—he is neither afraid to kill nor to die. This power means that he can meet a white man, who otherwise holds power he cannot access as a Black man, on relatively even ground. This story suggests that there are deeper layers to Boy Willie’s seemingly blithe, superficial attitudes about racial inequity earlier in the play.
Themes
Berniece ignores Boy Willie and starts doing Maretha’s hair. When Berniece scolds Maretha for resisting the painful hairstyling, Boy Willie criticizes Berniece. He tells her that she ought to tell Maretha about the piano instead of acting like she’s ashamed of it. She should celebrate the piano and its entrance into the family instead of acting like nothing in this world belongs to Maretha.
Maretha becomes the locus of disagreement between Berniece and Boy Willie, as she represents both Berniece’s attitudes about the past and the future. Boy Willie argues that by ignoring the piano’s history, Berniece fails to pass down anything meaningful to her daughter in which Maretha can take pride.
Themes
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Boy Willie goes on to say that there isn’t any great mystery to life—it’s a matter of going out and meeting it head-on. That’s why he’s determined to become a landowner, so that he can stand on equal footing with the white man. If Berniece keeps teaching Maretha that she doesn’t have anything, she’ll grow up resenting Berniece. He believes he’s living at the top of life. If someone believes they’re at the bottom, that belief governs how they’ll behave, too. As for himself, he’s determined to make a mark in the world.
Boy Willie argues that a person’s attitude about life determines their willingness to make something out of themselves. If Maretha is raised with the message that she doesn’t have anything, then she won’t strive for anything. This is how, in Boy Willie’s view, Berniece’s attitude about the family’s past is dangerous—it directly impedes the family’s potential in the future.
Themes
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Avery arrives then with his Bible and chats with Doaker about his growing congregation. He says that he’s ready to bless Berniece’s house. Boy Willie mocks the idea, saying that the haunting is all in Berniece’s imagination. Before Avery can start, Lymon enters with a rope for the piano, saying he’d run into Grace and bought her a drink. As he and Boy Willie start wrestling with the piano again, Berniece disappears upstairs and returns with Crawley’s gun. She sends Maretha out of the way into Doaker’s room. Wining Boy also comes in and begins drunkenly playing and singing a song he wrote for Cleotha. Grace shows up in search of Lymon.
As events build to a climax, all the characters converge on the Charles house, suggesting that a significant shift will soon take place in regards to the piano. Both Boy Willie and Berniece show that they mean to proceed with their respective plans for the piano: Berniece is still clinging to the memories (albeit painful ones) that the piano represents, while Boy Willie still believes that acquiring Sutter’s land should be the Charleses’ priority.
Themes
As Lymon and Boy Willie get ready to move the piano, everyone senses the presence of Sutter’s ghost. Grace leaves, uneasy, and Lymon runs out after her. Berniece tells Avery to go ahead and bless the house, but Doaker interjects that the piano is what needs to be blessed. Avery hands Berniece a candle and begins sprinkling water on the piano as he commands Sutter’s spirit to be cast out. As Avery continues reading from the Bible, Boy Willie mockingly throws water around the room and calls for Sutter’s ghost. Suddenly, Boy Willie is thrown backward by an unseen force and begins to be choked. He runs upstairs in pursuit of the force.
With Lymon’s and Grace’s exits (and apparently happy ending together), the cast of characters is now reduced to just the Charles family and Avery. Up to the last minute, there’s disagreement as to the nature of the haunting, or even its existence—Doaker rightly suspects that the piano has been the problem all along, while Boy Willie persists in denying anything that would keep the piano out of his hands. He gets his comeuppance here.
Themes
Everyone hears the sounds of a bitter struggle from upstairs. At one point, Boy Willie is thrown down the stairs, but he runs back up. Avery admits to Berniece that he’s powerless to expel Sutter’s ghost. After a few stunned moments, Berniece abruptly realizes what she has to do: she sits down at the piano and begins picking out an improvised song. The song grows more confident and powerful as she repeats it. Berniece begins singing and calls upon Mama Berniece, Papa Boy Charles, Mama Ola, and other ancestors to help her. Just as the sound of an approaching train is heard, the struggle upstairs subsides.
Avery’s inability to exorcise the ghost doesn’t so much point to Avery’s powerlessness, but to the fact that the ghost is a family matter which only Berniece can deal with. She does this by calling upon the ancestors whose presence she’s suppressed all her life—and her song apparently releases them from the pictures on the piano. They overpower Sutter’s ghost, suggesting that Sutter haunted the family because the tie between the Sutter and Charles families needed to be decisively broken. The sound of the train whistle recalls the story of the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, hinting that their victims have been dealt with for good.
Themes
Berniece begins to chant, “Thank you. Thank you.” Calm descends over the house. Maretha comes back into the room, and Boy Willie comes downstairs, watching Berniece at the piano. He and Wining Boy decide to catch the train back to Mississippi at the last minute. He tells Berniece that if she and Maretha don’t keep playing that piano, maybe he and Sutter’s ghost will both come back. He leaves. The play ends with Berniece voicing a final, “Thank you.”
Accepting the reality of Sutter’s ghost, Boy Willie changes his mind about the piano. He also accepts that the piano will have a valuable role in the family’s future. For her part, Berniece is now at peace with the grief of the family’s past and is therefore able to look to the future with real hope.
Themes
