It was through Doaker Charles' storytelling that revealed the true reason why Berniece did not want to sell the piano. Berniece did not want to sell the piano because her father died over it and her mother used to clean the piano by rubbing it until she bleed. Also, the piano has totems carved on the legs and other areas by a slave ancestor that told the whole family history of Boy Willie and Berniece. More revelations of their family history are told by the rambling, traveling, drinking man nicked named Wining Boy. He tells of a sordid relationship with Lymon's mother and brings news about home, which is Mississippi. The setting of this play further complicated the situation due to the storytelling of Doaker Charles and Wining Boy. Through the storytelling of Doaker Charles and Wining Boy, we find out why it is so important to keep the piano in the family and not sell it. The family piano has a long family history, a history that influenced the present and to sell it would be like selling a part of your past; a part of your heritage; a part of your soul.
"The Piano Lesson" had such writing elements as symbols. For instance, throughout the whole play, the piano played an important and central symbol. The piano symbolized Berniece's and Boy Willie's ancestral family tree with the cravings on the piano legs and other areas of the piano which in-turn represented African-American past (slavery) and at the same time it represented the future in Berniece's daughter, Maretha, who also loved to play on the piano.
A part of the story that I found confusing and paradoxical was Berniece's attitude towards her daughter, Maretha, playing the family piano and yet will not tell her of it's past. Berniece also sends her to a private school often chastising her not to show her color there. According to Berniece, she didn't want to burden her daughter with the past.
I got Maretha playing on it. She don't know nothing about it.
