Wilson's The Piano Lesson Clip 3

Wilson's The Piano Lesson Clip 4

The Significance of the Final Confrontation

Indeed, the final climatic confrontation of the play does not occur between the two siblings but between the living and the dead. The members of the household lock themselves in a battle against Sutter's ghost. Sutter's exorcism involves the work of three characters—Avery, Boy Willie, and Berniece—and the blending of the family's various cultural inheiritances, such as Christianity, folk superstition, and African mysticism. As the preacher, Avery invokes the authority of God to cast Sutter out. Miming Avery's exorcism, his taunting cries and imitation of the holy water rendering it grotesque, Boy Willie dispenses with divine intermediaries and, as if a character from a folk tale, confronts the ghost himself. This struggle seems allegorical if not archetypal in nature. Note that Willie's last remark to Berniece ("me and Sutter liable to be back") suggests that they stage an old battle. Certainly Sutter's ghost evokes that of his grandfather, the slave master Robert Sutter. Similarly, Boy Willie functions here as a sort of revenant, embodying his own ancestors. As we have noted throughout the play, his namesake, and constant references to his paternal legacy make him the heir and incarnation of the familial spirits. Read allegorically, Willie and Sutter engage in a battle between the Sutters and Charles, white and black that stretches across the time. (Source)