Defamiliarizing the Piano in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson

The paper aims at applying the concept of defamiliarization to the piano. It is an attempt to point out how the piano acquires a value that surpasses its material being as a wooden musical instrument, and a stage prop. It turns into a focal point, around which almost all the action of the play revolves. It is transformed from a static inanimate piece of wood into a dynamic object acquiring different meanings and values for almost all the characters of the play, dead or alive, white or black, seen or unseen, each of whom has his/her special perception of it. . In short, it turns into an animate being with the importance of a protagonist.
In The Piano Lesson, Wilson is able to defamiliarize the piano, its music, its songs and its lesson. It is used as a device for character revelation, and a decisive factor in character transformation.Wilson’s piano is highly dynamic. It keeps on taking different meanings, allowing for diverse forms of evaluation and new perceptions. Through this instrument one can perceive character, legacy, suffering, self-realization, melancholia, oppression, violence, action, inaction, love, hatred, self-assertion, dehumanization, enslavement, freedom, myth, tradition, power, courage, identity, loss of identity and struggle.