August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle

If We Must Die: Violence as History Lesson in Seven Guitars and King Hedley II

A ugust Wilson’s Seven Guitars (1996) and King Hedley II (2001) each present a man: seductive guitarist Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton and headstrong ex-convict, King Hedley II, respectively, who negotiates for control of his environment. Floyd loses his struggle for control, dying at the hands of his friend, Hedley, who is King’s father. Although King meets a similar fate, King Hedley II imbues the protagonist’s death with a significant difference, one that challenges the social codes established in each play. Floyd’s death creates a subtle sense of lawlessness in Pittsburgh’s Hill District of 1948; however, the burgeoning cultural codes in Seven Guitars proliferate exponentially in King Hedley II, presenting a world governed by the mantra “blood for blood.” The violence that permeates the 1985 Hill District of King Hedley II portends apocalyptic repercussions . Attempting to instate rules in a world seemingly governed by chaos, King and the other characters do not realize that, as Stool Pigeon, a soothsayer , forecasts in the prologue to the play, “the story’s been written. All that’s left now is the playing out” (7). Therefore, King’s choice at the end of the play to enact his own law in order to end the cycle of violence creates a historical detour that ruptures the chronological relationship between Seven Guitars and King Hedley II and enables a diachronic one with Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990). Seven Guitars , in other words, establishes a causal relationship with regards to social violence driven by the aphorism “an eye for an eye.” Initially, King Hed-­ ley II, which features some of the characters from Seven Guitars and children of those characters, depicts an intensified expression of reciprocal soyica diggs colbert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If We Must Die Violence as History Lesson in Seven Guitars and King Hedley II 98 soyica diggs colbert violence. Yet, like Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson, King Hedley II disrupts the naturalized chain of escalated aggression by depicting King’s refusal to enact vengeance. King Hedley II shows the redemptive power of sacrifice by hearkening back to the spilling of blood shown in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Wilson’s third play, which bends the trajectory of the plays as a whole. Through this detour, King Hedley II recoups the positive potential associated with the spilling of blood and specifies Wilson’s historical model as the cycle. Seven Guitars intertwines the circumstances of Floyd’s death with the advancement of his musical career and corresponding financial independence . The structure of the play establishes death as a possible by-product of the tension between progression and regression. The play materializes this tension through the singing that opens and closes act 1, scene 1. The first act ends with the disembodied sound of Floyd singing, creating a transition into scene 2, which depicts Floyd coaxing his estranged girlfriend Vera to listen to his song emanating from a radio. The airplay encourages Floyd to try to continue recording, but before he can return to the studio in Chicago he must get his guitar from a pawnshop and procure an advance from his manager, Mr. T. L. Hall. Of course, Floyd’s plans do not come to fruition; he experiences a number of setbacks culminating in Hall’s arrest for selling fake insurance. Refusing to accept that Hall conned him, Floyd devises another plan to amass the money he needs and decides to rob a loan office with Williard Ray Tillery, a neighbor, who is also known as “Poochie.” Although Floyd escapes with $1,200, the police shoot Poochie as he flees the scene. Later, when Canewell, one of Floyd’s former bandmates , finds the money Floyd buried in Vera’s yard, Floyd asserts, “Poochie took a chance. We both took a chance” (103), thus attempting to change the status as a wager Floyd knows he may lose. Canewell leaves Floyd with themoney,andtheyoungguitarist“beginstolaugh.Itisanoddmixtureof laughter and tears. He has waited many years for this moment” (103). Just then, Hedley, a neighbor who suffers from delusions—in part induced by tuberculosis—enters, mistakes the guitarist for someone Hedley believes owes him money, and kills Floyd with a machete when Floyd refuses to surrender the money. If We Must Die 99 Picking up—in more ways than one—where Seven Guitars ends, King Hedley II demonstrates how death and depravity may emerge...