Matthew Kizior Kizior 1

11/05/2014

Dr. Laurence Glasco

Out of the Desert and into the Kingdom of Heaven:

The Chosen People of the Hill District

August Wilson’s plays Seven Guitars and King Hedley II introduce us

to a cast of characters that have bright and at times

enthusiastic personalities. They have been scarred and bruised by

the past, but they propel onwards and attempt to grasp a better

and brighter future for themselves. They are the product of

similar circumstances, of a tribe of people taken out of their

homeland, made to be slaves to rulers in a land that hold nothing

but pain and loneliness for them. As playwright and storyteller,

Wilson injected fact and meaning into the narrative of the

history of his people. Continually throughout Conversations with

August Wilson, Wilson makes it clear in interviews that he believes

Africans to be inherently more spiritual than those of European

descent. Not only that, but also Wilson believes “the whole

history of black America demonstrates the resiliency of the human

spirit,” (Conversations, 103).

Infusing the characters of these plays with the “resiliency”

of black identity, Wilson also adds an extra layer to their story

– a biblical layer. Much like the Israelites who found their way

out of slavery through the power of a chosen prophet and through

the strength of God, so has the African American community. Out

of the desert, and through the sacrifice of a messiah in King

Hedley II, African Americans find themselves connected to their

spiritual home and to a redemptive future. In the eyes of August

Wilson, the history of black America, as encapsulated through the

stories of his characters, is the journey of a chosen people.

Through prophetic, kingly, and messianic figures, Wilson displays

his view of the black experience as one infused with divine

meaning and divine justice. Just like the prophet Moses and the

warrior Jacob, the wise king Solomon and Jesus the Christ, the

narrative of the black experience includes redemption, drama, and

even salvation.

Summary

The plays of August Wilson not only encapsulate biblical

paradigms, but tell the story of a black community and people

searching for a better promise. This is especially true in Seven

Guitars and King Hedley II. Seven Guitars begins as the central

characters of the play are coming from a funeral. The funeral was

for their friend Floyd Barton, who had just recently died. As

they talk about the funeral and the angels they may or may not

have seen there, the scene goes back to when Floyd had just come

back from Chicago and jail. Guitarist Floyd Barton comes back

from Chicago after successfully recording a blues album, which is

a hit in his native Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In

between going to Chicago and coming back home, he spent some time

in jail because of how white police officers distasted the way he

talked to them. When he comes back, he finds out his bandmate and

friend, Canewell, met the same fate as well for playing his

harmonica on the sidewalk. Floyd finds his girlfriend Vera angry

and unforgiving of him because he took another woman with him to

Chicago. They reconcile and soon enough all of his old friends,

Canewell, Hedley, Red Carter, and Louise soon all come back

together and talk and play cards in their backyard.

Throughout the play, Floyd continually proclaims he will go

back to Chicago to find his success and fortune, and he will take

Vera with him. However, as he proclaims his intentions to anybody

that will listen to him, circumstances do not work in his favor.

He is not able to get his guitar out of the pawn shop, his agent

is arrested, and cannot convince the members of his band to go

back to Chicago with him to record another album. While this is

all taking place, another character, Hedley, is sickly, but

ignores it and instead proclaims how the famous trumpeter Buddy

Bolden shall bring him his fortune when he is not citing

Scripture. Both of these characters go to extreme means in their

lives to obtain what they want – Floyd robs from a bank to get

the guitar and money he needs to make it in Chicago, and Hedley

buys a machete to protect himself from the menace of white

society, a society he does not trust to make him better. In the

end, Hedley’s paranoia coupled with his flights of fancy

concerning the trumpeter Billy Bolden bringing him his fortune,

and Floyd desperately hiding the money he stole, leads to Hedley

drunkenly using the machete to kill Floyd for the money.

In King Hedley II, we are presented with another character, King,

fresh out of jail, only to come back into a Hill District that is

not doing so well for itself. King and his friend Mister are

pawning off refrigerators on Hill District residents while King’s

mother, Ruby, who is Louise’s niece and is featured in Seven

Guitars, live with him and his fiancé Tonya. While all this is

happening, Stool Pigeon, Canewell from Seven Guitars, proclaims

biblical passages and messages about the black community just as

his old friend Hedley, King’s supposed father, did forty years

earlier. Stool Pigeon is the seer and history keeper of the Hill

District, and he announces to King and the others the death of

Aunt Esther, a character of Wilson’s from Gem of the Ocean. Aunt

Esther was the embodiment of African American spiritual and

earthly wisdom through the years of slavery and freedom, being

366 years old herself. After she dies, Stool Pigeon is stolen

from and his house is set on fire, while King’s relationship with

Tonya goes into dire straits and Ruby’s old lover, Elmore, comes

to Pittsburgh to visit her.

Things seem to fall apart around our characters, but around

the ruin of the Hill District, the inner lives of these

characters come to light. Through different conversations, we

learn of the complexity of their personalities and how they seek

not only personal reformation and goodness, but through those

efforts, seek to create a better community around them. A series

of conversations about either their criminal histories (King and

Elmore), having a child in a world that seems to be screwed up

around them (King and Tonya), or their aspirations and pursuits

(King, Mister, and Ruby). It is the conversations between King,

Stool Pigeon, and Elmore later in the play that bring to light

the central theme of the play: identity. King learns about who

his father really is, is given the legacy of the man he always

thought his father was, and comes to embrace the fact of who he

is at the end. While a fight between Elmore and King

inadvertently leads to King’s death, Wilson’s message of

redemption and a new life for the Hill District in King Hedley II is

a message meant to outlast the death of its main character.

Context

August Wilson understood Christianity to play a large role in

the lives of those in the African American community, and even

says “the Christian Church is one of the reasons that

[the African American community is] still here…spiritually, the

Christian Church has been important for us,” (Conversations, 176).

While Christianity historically stands as the religion of those

who oppressed Africans and enslaved them, through Christianity

slaves were also able to find a way to bring a certain context to

the way their lives had totally and utterly transformed in a way

they could not have foreseen. They needed to put their suffering

into a certain context, to see it in a light that made it

something more than pain and loss. Christianity as a religion

provides this context, as the religion itself deals with the

issues of suffering and what it means to suffer in a flawed

world.

In the Old Testament stories, the stories that form the

backbone of the Jewish faith, the Israeli people are made to

suffer as slaves, in the desert, and through war to claim their

homeland. The central figure of Christianity, Jesus Christ, is

said to have himself suffered death by being crucified by the

Roman State so that he may bring redemption to the world

African slaves could find in Biblical stories similar themes of

men and women suffering, people who had been chosen by God, rise

above it to make their world brighter and overcome any obstacles

in their path. In this sense, we can see Christianity as not only

a narrative vehicle August Wilson uses as a foundation for his

characters, but as a way the African community has constantly

uplifted themselves to actively work to escape slavery and find

the better qualities of this world. They are a people who waited

to be taken out of their Egypt, the South, and once they were,

they suffered and sojourned throughout the desert as

sharecroppers and vagabond workers in the North. In many ways,

African Americans are still awaiting the day when they find their

Promised Land. Through Seven Guitars and King Hedley II, Wilson shows

the Promised Land for the African American may be the community

he finds himself already in if he lets it be.

1. Floyd Barton as Old Testament Warrior & King

In Seven Guitars, the African American community seems to be

thriving, while not economically, then in and through the

richness of personality. Floyd Barton has just had his album

become a hit, the woman he loves, Vera, has forgiven him of his

past transgressions, and he is on a road to success. Even so,

Floyd and his friends are still a tribe in exile. One way or

another, each of Floyd’s friends have lost their way in life. For

Vera, the way Floyd left her has made her feel betrayed and has

left her questioning the role of love in her life, still

recovering a year later. Her fellow tenants, Louise and Hedley,

have had life hit them hard too in the way of love, both

experiencing loss in their lives, leaving them emptier than they

were before (Seven Guitars, 14, 31, 70). These characters do not find

themselves in a literal desert, but in their interior lives has

been left a barren wasteland where they have all been exiled.

However, the land of milk and honey is closer than they expect.

Floyd Barton, while not exactly a prophet in their midst,

comes bearing good news. He believes that if he goes back to

Chicago to record another album he will find the success and

security in life he is not able to find in the Hill District. He

comes to back to as Vera for a second chance and to bring his

friends to a land he believes is flowing with milk and honey.

Floyd’s bandmates, Canewell and Red Carter, disagree, seeing

nothing for them in Chicago (Seven Guitars, 23, 34). Floyd is not

dissuaded, and continues to try to find a way back there to make

music, and craft a new song for his album and for himself. Wilson

does not make Floyd a blues musician as an arbitrary decision. As

a playwright who has studied his culture as best he could, he

feels that within the blues are “the cultural responses of blacks

in America to the situation that they find themselves in.

Contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work,”

(Conversations, 63). Floyd’s person, his soul, is tied to the music

of his people. He is tied to the destiny of his people. Though he

is no prophet, he plays a part in leading his friends out of the

desert, to lift them up from their spiritual emptiness into a new

consciousness.

Floyd is a warrior, a warrior that fights with music instead

of a sword. August Wilson has injected into his plays what he has

referred to as the “warrior spirit” of the African American

community. The drive of the warrior spirit not only brings out

the best of black men and women, but is indicative of the

struggle they undertake to improve their lot in life. The warrior

spirit encompasses the struggle of “the affirmation of the value

of oneself,” (Conversations, 79). Floyd is seeking a path in a

world that keeps cutting down all the ways he could possibly have

to success, impeding his progress either from within or outside

of his community. Yet, he never loses his resolve, going to any

lengths to find the success he feels he needs and deserves.

Instead of using a sword, he brandishes his guitar as his weapon,

using it for the purpose of being victorious over any obstacles

that stand in his way. Hedley, a prophetic voice in Seven Guitars,

tells Floyd that he has been marked for greatness, that he is

“like a king,” but that his enemies seek to take away from him

all he has gained (Seven Guitars, 71). Whether knowingly or

unknowingly, the white men who help Floyd make his music are part

of a system designed to impede the progress of the African

American community. But Floyd stays undeterred, as he is close to

the Promised Land, and he shall soldier on.

This conception of Floyd as a warrior has a basis in the Old

Testament. Within the pages of the Book of Exodus, we are

introduced to Moses, the prophet of God who shall free his chosen

people, the Israelites, from slavery under the Egyptian pharaohs.

Moses fights for their freedom and leads them away from the land

they were slaves in and into the desert. However, in the desert

they face hardship, and because this hardship made them question

and disobey God, they are made to wander in the desert for forty

years until the can enter the Promised Land. Moses dies before

they are able to enter the Promised Land, but in his stead his

puts a warrior named Joshua in charge. Joshua leads his fellow

Jews in battle against the Canaanites, who inhabit the Promised

Land. Joshua, while no prophet, is what his people need at that

particular time and place – a warrior.

Floyd, while a warrior meant to fight for a better future

for himself and for his people, is not able to ultimately live up

to the role. He has tasted the fruits of the Promised Land and

will do anything in his power to taste them again. What was once

supposed to be a gift has turned into a trap, and as Canewell

alludes to in the play, the Devil can speak louder than God. In

this case, this is what has happened. Hedley had reminded Floyd

that he was like a king, one anointed for greatness – a warrior

that shall rightfully claim his throne if he stays on the path

God has laid out for him. However, just like King Saul, Floyd

fell not only from grace but out of God’s favor. He betrayed not

only his mission and purpose, but his people. He turned to

dishonest means and leading to a man’s death all for the sake of

his dream to come true. Floyd’s well-meaning intentions leads to

avarice, an avarice leads down a path of sin and darkness away

from God, back into the desert.

In the Old Testament, the first king of Israel had been

Saul, anointed by the prophet Samuel to lead his people. Once a

mighty and reliable warrior like Joshua, Saul had turned away

from God and the ways of his faith, going astray and becoming

drunk with the power of his position. This is as motif that is

all too common for the Kings of Israel in the Old Testament.

Kings were warriors tasked by God and the priests to protect the

land God had given them, and to adhere to the Commandments.

Instead, one way or another, they all erred. Saul had summoned

Samuel’s spirit through dark magic forbidden by their God. His

successor, King David, was overtaken by lust for another man’s

wife, Bathsheba, whose husband Uriah who was a soldier in David’s

army. David sent Uriah to his death in battle so that he marry

the woman he loves, much in the same way Poochie died helping

Floyd steal money for the bank so that Floyd would have enough

money to get to Chicago with Vera (Seven Guitars, 96-97, 102-103)

Unlike these kings, Floyd would never make it to the city of his

dreams, his Promised Land, to sit on his throne, to record his

album and find his fame and fortune.

In trying to find the means to find his way back to Chicago

so he may express his own song, Floyd instead gives up his song

and pays the ultimate price in the end because of it. Wilson

clearly believes in the stark difference between the

philosophical bases of the African and European mindsets. To

Wilson:

“Europeans look at man as apart from the world. In African sensibility, man is a part of the world…blacks in American societyhave had to respond to the way Europeans respond to the world in order to survive in the society. And they have not been allowed their cultural differences. I think that if we move toward claiming the strongest part of ourselves… so that we can participate in the society as Africans, we would be all the stronger for it” (Conversations, 57).

What does this exactly have to do with Floyd being the archetypal

biblical warrior and king? Instead of embracing his own song and

staying true to his own community, he strayed from his path. This

is another traits of the kings of Israel as well. King David was

guilty of straying from the path of being a righteous king, but

he prayed day and night, wearing sackcloth and covering himself

in ashes to repent for his sin of taking Uriah’s wife. The king

before and after him, however, were not so lucky. Saul strayed

from his path, and as punishment, God brought upon him an evil

spirit and eventually took away his crown, bestowing it upon

David. David’s son Solomon, heralded as a man of great wisdom,

eventually strayed from his path as well by

worshipping the foreign gods of his wives instead of worshipping

the sole God of the Israelites. Floyd strays from his path as

well, abandoning the righteous gift he was given to express the

song and philosophy of the way of his people through blues music.

He delves into sinful behavior, stealing money from a bank, an

act that leads to another man’s death. The sinner is one who

needs righteous punishment brought upon him, and the only one who

has the power to slay the anointed of God is the prophet of God

in this case.

2. Hedley as Old Testament Prophet

This prophet of God, the “Lion of Judah,” is Floyd’s friend

Hedley, a man who constantly quotes Scripture and proclaims that

God shall bring every abomination low in the end (Seven Guitars,

19). His hatred and fear, and outright refusal to participate, in

the mass white society of America show he is a man who trusts his

God more than he trusts his faith. Hedley consistently proclaims

throughout the play that he father promised that Buddy Bolden

shall come to him to finally give him his fortune and that he

shall be “a big man someday” (Seven Guitars, 16). Those who read the

play as is may think Hedley believes he is referring to his

earthly father, and he may be, but the way he is constantly in

awe of his father suggests there is more to this father than we

first think. Wilson even provides contextual clues as to the true

nature of Hedley’s reverence for his father:

“It is my father’s money. What he sent to me. He come to me in a dream. He say, “Are you my?” I say, “Yes Father, I am your son.” He say, “I kick you in the mouth?” I say, “Yes, Father, I ask youwhy you do nothing and you kick me.” He say, “Do you forgive me?”I say, “Yes Father, I forgive you.” He say, “I am sorry I died without forgiving you your tongue. I will send Buddy Bolden with some money for you to buy a plantation so the white man not tell you what to do.” Then I wait and I wait for a long time. Once Buddy Bolden come and he say, “Come here, here go the money.” I go and take it and it all fall like ash. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Like that. It all come to nothing” (Seven Guitars, 70).

Hedley’s friends may assume what Hedley dreams and sees in

his mind are all the musings and fantasies of a mad man, but this

thinking is far from what Wilson is actually trying to convey

through Hedley. Like Hedley, Old Testament prophets saw signs and

visions from God all the time. One of those Old Testament

prophets, Ezekiel, saw many signs and visages of holy angels and

divine encounters that are told through the book bearing his name

in the Bible. Hedley is no different. Wilson’s use of a capital

“F” in “Father” when Hedley speaks about his father is an

indication that he is talking to his heavenly father, not his

earthly one (Understanding August Wilson, 121). Hedley also embodies

the greatest prophetic figure of the Old Testament, Moses, in

that he speaks of coming out from under the oppression that white

man still imposes on the black community. As cited above,

Hedley’s intention with the money Buddy Bolden gives him is to

buy a plantation so that he may have a parcel of land away from

the white man and use what was once used to oppress slaves to

liberate their ancestors. What becomes of the dream of Buddy

Bolden and the plantation when we interpret them through a

biblical lens? Buddy Bolden clearly becomes a messenger angel

come to bring the word and power of God to Hedley so that Hedley

may one day rise up, out from under the yoke of the white man’s

society, to lead his people out from oppression into the Promised

Land (Understanding, 120). The rest of the task would be Floyd’s to

conquer and consolidate Israeli control of the Promised Land as

is the duty of a warrior and king, but Hedley, as a prophet must

carry out another duty that is always given to a man of God or a

prophet: to destroy all those who oppose the message of God.

The mission of the Old Testament prophet Elijah was to bring

the people of Israel back to worshipping God, otherwise known as

Yahweh to them, who they has promised to exclusively worship and

give praise. Due to foreign influences in the way of royal wives

and Israeli kings who are not fit for their role, Elijah must

make it emphatically clear that there are no places for foreign

gods. Jezebel, the wife of the current king, Ahab, opposes Elijah

by sending out hundreds of priests against him, these priests

representing the Canaanite god Baal. They are no match for Elijah

though, for with the power of God, he is able to easily destroy

Jezebel’s priestly forces. Elijah, in effect, is the Right Hand

of God, come to bring down judgment and retribution against all

those who have wavered from recognizing the Yahweh as their one,

true God. Hedley is also the Right Hand of God, for he strikes

down all those who have wronged God or strayed from his path.

Hedley is paranoid about being treated for his sickness, as he

does not trust the society of the white men and their medicine.

So, he aims to protect himself against a way of life and a

society that holds nothing for him in his eye other than

degradation and suffering. The way he does this is by purchasing

a machete (Seven Guitars, 86-87). In a way, he does come to use this

machete in the end. Floyd’s sins, of avarice, theft, his actions

leading to another man’s death, are all because Floyd was

desperate to participate in a society and a world that would be

fashioned for him by white society.

These men and women, these people who would facilitate the

lifestyle Floyd wanted for himself, are false idols. Floyd’s fame

and fortune would come from putting his trust into white record

executives, white men and women who work in the recording studio,

and white people who would pay to listen to his music. Through

the death of Poochie, Floyd has betrayed his own tribe, his

mission given to him by God to lead his people into the Promised

Land as a proud warrior and king. Instead, he has become both a

betrayer and a sinner for his false idols, and Hedley must strike

him down in much the same way Elijah struck down the priests of

Baal (Seven Guitars, 107). Hedley preached pride in the black

identity, an identity Floyd ultimately became ashamed of because

it only brought him to more dead ends, so he instead embraced

white society (Conversations, 106). Killing Floyd may seem to be a

senseless act of aggression of one friend against another due to

Hedley being in a drunken stupor, as prophet, Hedley carries a

flaming sword of judgment just as the angels in the Garden of

Eden had so as to protect the providence God had bestowed upon

his creation. But, by cutting down the old order, Hedley has

paved the way for a New Order to grow out of its ashes, for his

son, who he has proclaimed shall be a Messiah (Seven Guitars, 88-

89).

3. King Hedley II: John the Baptist & Jesus Christ

August Wilson’s sequel to Seven Guitars, King Hedley II takes forty

years after Seven Guitars in the 1980s, and the reason Wilson has

put this time span between the two plays is for the sake of

establishing biblical symbolism before the reader even opens to

the first page. After the Israelites disobeyed God, the

punishment of their deity was to wander in the desert for forty

years before they could enter the Promised Land. The punishment

works a bit differently in Wilson’s plays: Floyd Barton, the

Jacob of the black community, was supposed to stay true to the

path God had set out for him so he could lead his friends and

loved ones to the Promised Land, Chicago. Floyd turned his back

on God, and by punishing Floyd by taking his life, God had left

the African American community of the Hill District without a

true spiritual leader for forty years. Both the Israelite and

Jewish communities wandered in a spiritual desert and a forlorn

physical space, becoming weaker because of the void in their

community. However, it is a staple of the Bible that God never

forgets his chosen people for long. Bypassing themes and

storylines similar to such tales as the Babylonian Exile and the

Maccabean Revolt, Wilson delves right into the New Testament,

telling the story of a prophet and a messiah to illustrate the

resiliency, strength, and redemption of the black identity at a

time in the African American community when those words did not

seem to apply to the community Wilson was writing about.

In the 1980s, Black America was suffering from a host of

problems such as an AIDs outbreak, a problem in finding

affordable housing, and issues of crime and violence that were of

great concern. In summary, the forecast for the African American

community appeared to be bleak, with no end in sight. We get a

glimpse of this state of affairs in King Hedley II: King and his

friend Mister rob a jewelry store, Stool Pigeon has his money

stolen and his collection of newspapers put aflame, and King’s

wife Tonya wanting to abort the child they will have together

because she fears the person their child may become will only

adopt into the destructive habits her first daughter has fallen

into (King Hedley II, 38-40, 66-68). The prophetic figure of King

Hedley II, Stool Pigeon, makes it clear to the reader that times

are not good for the African American community in the Hill

District: “Times ain’t nothing like they used to be. Everything

done got broke up. Pieces flying everywhere” (7, King Hedley II).

Stool Pigeon’s message is similar to that of Old Testament

prophets, who proclaimed to the people that they need to turn

back to God. His message is similar to Hedley’s in that it deals

with the black identity, and brings forth Wilson’s theme of the

African American community’s resiliency. Instead of his message

being about turning back to God, Stool Pigeon asks his community

to remember and respect their past. When the character Aunt

Esther dies, the embodiment of the ancestral history and wisdom

of the black community, Stool Pigeon is the first to proclaim of

it. He says she died hanging her head due to her worrying about

the current state of her community (King Hedley II, 19-21). He also

understands the young of the Hill District do not understand

their own history, and instead they burn it and leave it to

nothingness (King Hedley II, 69). This leaves Stool Pigeon the only

one with any form of context as to the story and state of his

people, understanding that God is the only one writes the story

of life and death and knows where everyone is going. As a prophet

and knowledgeable man, Stool Pigeon may see where the story of

his people are headed, and as a man versed in the Bible, has seen

where it has led an oppressed and chosen people before (King Hedley

II, 8). Stool Pigeon is able to see where the future is leading his

community because he is the only one who has reverence for the

past of his culture and society and has not been swayed by the

whims of a white, capitalist society like the prophet before him,

Hedley, also rejected. Where others have given over to

worshipping and craving false idols, he walks a righteous path,

and because of the clarity of his prophetic vision, he is able to

see another man who also walks a righteous path, a messiah – King

Hedley II. Aunt Esther, though wise and full of history,

represented the old order, and Stool Pigeon understands she could

be here for when God sends his Messiah who shall usher in a new

world Aunt Esther would not be able to survive in (King Hedley II,

21).

King Hedley II, or King for short, is a very human character

who happens to have a profound insight and faith into his own

moral character. Early on in the play, he talks about a dream

where he saw a halo over his head and asks other people if they

can see it as well. Even though they may think him odd for asking

the question in the first place, when they tell him there is no

such thing over his head, he does not cease to believe (King

Hedley, 14). The halo is a sign of those who are holy and

considered men and women of God. Like many saints before him,

King has sinned, his particular sin being murder, and the marker

of his moral slight is on his face in the form of a scar a man

named Purnell who would not respect him under any circumstances

(. While a scar is a symbol of “moral shortcomings or divine

displeasure,” (How to Read

Literature, 194) in literature, those who God uses to send his

message out into the world are usually not the people one would

expect. King is not intended simply to be a saint, but also a

messiah figure. This may raise a few eyebrows, as the Christian

conception of the messiah is that of a Son of God who is free

from sin or any other type of moral blemish.

The messiah of Christianity, Jesus Christ, embodies the

perfectness of being that humans themselves cannot achieve.

However, while King shares many similar features to Jesus Christ

as a messiah figure, King’s character embodies the message of

Jesus as to where holiness can truly lie (How to Read Literature, 119-

120).1 Instead of holy people being priests or especially pious

people, Jesus preached we can find both God and holiness in the

lowest of society. In prostitutes and the poor, in the sick and

homeless, in tax collectors, murderers, and anyone who may be a

societal outcast. King has been a few of these things, cast out

of his society and into prison, a man guilty of the sin of murder

and theft (King Hedley II, 22-26). However, he is different from

Floyd Barton in that he does not turn his back on God or on his

friends and family for his own self-gain. He does not leave an

1We are informed King is to work for the Contractor, Hop, on tearing down a hotel in East Liberty. Jesus Christ, being a carpenter, also worked with his hands, both helping to tear down old institutions to help build something new.August Wilson’s description of King puts him in his thirties – Jesus was in his thirties when he started his ministry and was crucified. King also spent some time away in the wilderness, except his wilderness was prison, but he came out of the experience a better man, even if he does not regret the murderhe committed. We also see King tempted by the Devil, in that Elmore gets King to gamble at the very end, a sin, and cheats him, bringing King close to killing Elmore.

innocent man to die, but instead did to Purnell what the Bible

says to do, and that is to “return an eye for an eye.”

In Conversations, Wilson relates the message of his character Boy

Willie from the play The Piano Lesson that one cannot believe

halfway in the Bible. They must believe all the way or not at

all. While some may think it a stretch to say King was only

following Biblical law, he only did what any warrior or Judge of

the Old Testament may have done (Conversations, 176). Even so, this

does not excuse him of his sin, but even in his sin he is able to

find his moral center, and through his moral center he is able to

propel himself to do the right thing and want a more stable life

for him and his loved ones (King Hedley II, 56-58) Where Mister,

Tonya, Elmore, and Ruby have succumbed to the weight of wandering

in the desert aimlessly for forty years, discarding all hope in

the goodness of their community, King sees his community, and

himself, can grow into something greater. Due to his unwavering

belief in himself and his community, he is able to rise up from

the poor conditions that plague his community to make something

better out of himself.

King’s hope in his community, his belief in its inherent

goodness, is represented by the way he takes care of his garden.

His garden is symbolic of the community, and while other

characters may step on it and not care for it, King believes it

can grow into something wonderful. Not only that, but where

others murder, steal, and hurt each other in the Hill District,

at the very end King transcends the baser aspects of the Hill

District’s code of ethics. Choosing not to kill his mother’s old

flame, Elmore, after he cheated at gambling, King lays down

Hedley’s machete, seeking peace instead of more death. While

Christ may have proclaimed he came into the world to bring a

sword a not peace, he also asked us to turn the other cheek and

show mercy to our fellow man. King is not only the rightful

messiah because he was able to turn towards peace when it was

necessary, but he is also the warrior Floyd could not be,

embracing his community instead of turning his back on it.

King is a messiah insofar as his actions are indicative of a

man who has been brought to this world to help his people find a

better life, to renew their community and themselves through the

renunciation of violence and a reawakening to their possibilities

to craft better lives for themselves. The community need not turn

to violence and turn against each other to survive; in fact, it

is not about surviving – it is about truly living once again.

Aunt Esther had given King a key ring that Stool Pigeon proclaims

is the key to the Kingdom of Heaven, and just as Jesus died to

bring salvation to his people, so King had to be sacrificed so

that, as the key, the gates to Heaven could once again be opened

and the African American people can be reconnected with their

spirituality, history, and ultimately connected to a better

future (King Hedley II, 58, 83, 97-104).

August Wilson was able to put the trials and tribulations of

his people into a meaningful context borrowed from the Bible that

allows the African America community to not only understand the

suffering of their past and present, but to see the inherent

greatness that resides within them as a community. Just as the

chosen people of God in the Bible ran into many difficulties and

disappointments, so has the African American community. The

people of God may be in dire circumstances from time to time, but

to Wilson, it was evident that the God of the Bible does not

abandon his people for long. While the world can be a cruel place

and the hardships and evils we suffer may not have any inherent

meaning to them, when we give meaning to our suffering, when we

construct a narrative around it, then we are able to see not only

the larger picture but also the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Biblical journey embodies this, as it is the tale of

individuals overcoming whatever trials they have, having faith in

not only themselves, but something bigger than they could ever

fathom. Through Seven Guitars and King Hedley II, Wilson conveys such a

message to his community that though times may be rough, and the

centuries have been considerably kind, the African American

community has great potential and an even greater story ahead for

them. For God has already written the ending of the Book of Life

like Stool Pigeon states (King Hedley II, 8), but Wilson has read the

Bible and knows God is the kind of writer who enjoys a happy

ending.

Bibliography

Bogumil, Mary L. Understanding August Wilson. Columbia, SC: U of South

Carolina, 2011. Print.

Bryer, Jackson R., and Mary C. Hartig, eds. Conversations with August

Wilson. Jackson: U of Mississippi, 2006. Print.

Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature like a Professor: A Lively and

Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines. New York: Quill, 2003.

Print.

The New American Bible. New York: P.J. Kenedy, 1970. Print.

Wilson, August. King Hedley II. New York: Theatre Communications

Group, 2005. Print.

Wilson, August. Seven Guitars. New York: Dutton, 1996. Print.