In the comment section of this page, please answer the following question before viewing August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.
If you were provided an opportunity to purchase the land that your family sharecropped from Reconstruction into the 20th-Century would you do it? This purchase will cost you a piano.
Please place your response to the following question in the comments section. Now that you have viewed The Piano Lesson, would you make a different choice in regards to selling the piano to purchase the land?
I look forward to reading your responses.
I am very family oriented therefore I don’t believe I could sell the piano. I believe in passing things down. It’s important to keep up the history in the family.
I feel like you cant sell the piece. I feel like it brings so much family history and art to ones home and family.
I personally would’ve given that piano away too. Although it probably holds certain memories, but sometimes you have to let go of certain things because something better will come.
I would personally have sold the piano. It does holds more value family wise and it should be passed down to the other generations but sometimes you have to lose some things in order to level up.
I feel like even though the piano has rich family history sometimes you have to make sacrifices to move up in life so I feel like I would’ve sold it to get the land which could benefit me more than a piano.
I would sell the piano because i feel like having land would benefit you more now and in the long run. You can’t do much with a piano. Even though it does hold a lot of sentimental value, i feel like it’s smarter to do what would help out you, and your family. Having land can make them so much more money than a piano ever will.
That piano was very important and held generations of family history. i wouldn’t sell because id be selling apart of myself.
Before and after watching this I would not sell the piano just because I know it is a very sentimental piece that can brings people together and that makes it worth so much more than land.
I personally would not sell the piano. Selling the piano would mean I would be selling my families history away. I would indeed find any other way to try and help my family.
With so much value to the piano and the fact when they played it and ended the spirits makes it even more special and just is a hard decision to look upon. to sell or not to.
I’m a very dent person and would personally keep the piano with all the heritage instead of selling to keep land especially if there was something else I could do to help my family
As the wise tend to say “All that glitters is not gold”. MONEY’s not everything and you for certain cant put a price on family. That piano has moral and emotional worth and essentially is a family heirloom. It holds a rich history that’s rather irreplaceable. No amount of compensation is worth losing a piece of you and your heritage. It’s just simply not worth it.
The main thing that everyone was fighting about was that piano and it almost tore their family apart until Bernice started to play on it. In the end Willy Boy realized that she basically saved his life by playing it and getting rid of the spirits in the house. This made him have a change of heart because they actually started to tolerate each other. Overall, I would not sell the piano because it means so much more than just an instrument.
It was a very interesting movie. I would not sell that piano because it has sentimental value.
I would not sell the piano selling the piano would be equivalent to selling my families history. And without my families history I would simply be adrift in the world. Money is simply not worth it. Ill have to finad another way to acquire land.
Honestly … watching this movie made me understand a lot about myself and my own personal dreams. If it was me I would have just discussed with my family how they felt and what they felt I should do then prayed on it to make a decision.
I would most definitely sell the piano. Land is so much more useful than a piano that just sits in the house. They could be making so much more money by owning land and using it.
When I began watching the movie initially I determined that I would sell the piano in order to buy the land. After all it was the land their family worked and died for. After doker explained the family history of how the slaves were traded for the piano and how the carvings each had a meaning, I changed my mind. Ownership of land is important and Boy Willy could find the money for the land somewhere else. That piano was personal and irreplaceable. I liked the sharecropping song they sang at the kitchen table, the rapper J cole sampled that song.
I would sell it. Ghosts and all. Especially for land! I understand the ultimate deep meaning behind the piano, it’s carvings, and the care it received, but I agree whole heartedly with the brother. If the piano was doing something, being used to make money, it just collecting dust. Then I would sell it. Now if I didn’t NEED to sell it, I wouldn’t. If I had nothing, if I saw that my family’s trajectory was doing downward, if the days of uncertainty lead to my children asking for money, there isn’t any part of me thinking twice about selling it. I understand the sentimental value, it’s historical value, but people got to eat. “Land is the only thing God isn’t making anything more of”.
If I had the chance to get a purchase the land that my family worked on , it would be hard. It’s a bubble between having your own land with your name on it or let go of something meaningful in order to achieve your dream. I would honestly talk to my family to work something out but I wouldn’t let go of something valuable . That’s history and it could be worth millions on the long run.
If the only thing I had to give up was a piano to get my family’s land I would. Sharecropping was a big money maker and if we owned the land that we were sharecropping we would receive a lot more money.
After watching the video I see some issues and also had to reconsider my initial statement especially since my family had an issue such as this when my great-grandparents died. A lot of people are so hung up on trying to make extra money that they forget what certain items in the family passed down through generations actually represent. Here we see the piano had spirits that were a part of the family and at the end Bernice had to in a way reconnect with her ancestors in order to save her brother. To answer the initial question, with the knowledge I have now about the piano, I wouldn’t sell it because in a way it is selling a piece of my family (the spirits/ancestors) and a piece of my history. No amount of money is worth that especially since the spirits have strong bonds/ties to people even today.