The Piano Lesson Have you ever had one of those days where you remember your parents taking away all your baseball cards or all your comic books because you got a bad grade in one? of your lessons? You feel a little depressed and your prized possession has been stolen. This event is the same as August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. The story is about a sibling rivalry, Boy Willie Charles versus Berniece Charles, over an antique piano the family inherited. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano to buy the same Mississippi land his family had worked as slaves. However, Berniece, who owns the piano, refuses Boy Willie's request to sell the piano because she remembers the history that is their family heritage. He believes the piano is more important than the "hard cash" that Boy Willie wants. Based on this idea one might consider that Berniece is more ethical than Boy Willie. Berniece's action is more ethical because the history of a family can never replace a land. In one of their arguments, Berniece tells Boy Willie: “'Money can't buy how much that piano costs. You cannot sell your soul for money'” (50). Berniece is trying to open Boy Willie's mind by telling him that their family's legacy can capture their imagination after years, decades and centuries of happiness and pain. Each of the stories of their ancestors is a great novel that actually happened, even if it is a good or bad chapter. Berniece tries to show Boy Willie that the piano experienced more than pleasant events in those days. She interprets Mama Ola's pain by saying, “'Mama Ola has polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years he rubbed it until his hands bled... he scrubbed it and cleaned it and polished it and prayed on it... seventeen years of cold nights and an empty bed. For that? For a piano? For a piece of wood?” "(52). The tragedy of their mother Ola is an almost mythical quality in their unified imagination, but time has stolen it in Boy Willie's face. He forces himself to think of his mother Ola's suffering as a metaphor rather than to a real event. Luckily, Boy Willie sees everything that Berniece tried to tell him when Sutter's ghost arrived at Charles' house who tried to stop him from taking away the piano and caused great chaos...