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Compare / Contrast Essay Assignment

Compare / Contrast Essay Assignment. on Fences and The Piano Lesson b y August Wilson.

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Compare / Contrast Essay Assignment

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  1. Compare/Contrast Essay Assignment on Fences and The Piano Lesson by August Wilson

  2. August Wilson is most celebrated for writing The Pittsburgh Cycle, a 10-play series that explores each decade of African-American experience in the 20th century. Although he wrote these plays in the 1980s, The Piano Lesson is set in the 1930s, and Fences is set in the 1950s. Pictured above is Wilson’s childhood home (left) and the piece of art by Romare Bearden that inspired The Piano Lesson.

  3. Compare and contrast what these two plays say about the past, and the ways in which humans are affected by the past. In what ways can our connection with our personal or ancestral past help us, and in what ways can it hinder us? • In the final scene of Fences, Rose tells Cory, “Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn’t … and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was” (97). Compare and contrast what these two plays say about the relationships between parents and children. Compare and contrast the motif of debt (owing/being owed) in both plays. How does this motif help illuminate the meaning of each work as a whole?

  4. Compare and contrast how Wilson uses spiritual and supernatural elements in the two plays. In what ways do these elements help illuminate the meaning of each work as a whole? • Compare and contrast the role of songs and music in the two plays. In what ways does music help illuminate the meaning of each work as a whole? Compare and contrast Wilson’s use of symbols and metaphors in the two plays. How do these symbols and metaphors (piano, fence, baseball, etc.) help illuminate the meaning of each work as a whole?

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