44 pages • 1 hour read
August WilsonGem of the Ocean
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: August Wilson
August Wilson was an African American playwright, best known for his Century Cycle of 10 plays (alternatively titled the Pittsburgh Cycle), each depicting one decade of the 20th century. The cycle is set primarily in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the historically Black neighborhood where Wilson himself grew up. Two of these plays were awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Fences in 1987 and The Piano Lesson in 1990.
Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel to an African American mother and a German father in Pittsburgh in 1947. He grew up during the era of Jim Crow laws and widespread institutional racism. Although Wilson was a bright and dedicated student, he experienced so much prejudice during his adolescence that he transferred schools multiple times and ultimately dropped out. He continued his education autodidactically, reading widely and developing an appreciation for African American history and culture.
As a young man, Wilson served in the US Army, worked odd jobs, and began to write poetry. By the late 1960s, Wilson had become part of the burgeoning Black Arts Movement, and he co-founded the Centre Avenue Poets Theatre workshop, where he met many other artists who would become lifelong friends and collaborators. It was during this period that his interest in playwrighting was born. In 1978, Wilson moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he became a company member of the Penumbra Theatre and began to write the plays that would become his Century Cycle. In 1990, Wilson moved to Seattle, where he continued to write plays and play an active role in the local theatre scene. Wilson died of liver cancer in 2005.
A prominent figure within African American drama during the late 20th century, Wilson spoke to the experiences of Black Americans both in his home neighborhood in Pittsburgh and more broadly in the United States. Thematically, he touched on historical phenomena such as the enslavement of Black Americans, the Great Migration and the years immediately following emancipation, the Jim Crow era, institutional racism, gentrification, redlining and housing discrimination, mass incarceration, and the continued climate of inequality during the final decades of the 20th century. He also painted an intimate portrait of African American culture, depicting Black spirituality, the development of the blues and jazz, African American family life, and the enduring strength of Black communities.
Series Context: The Century Cycle (The Pittsburgh Cycle)
Wilson’s Century Cycle consists of 10 plays, each set during one of the decades of the 20th century. All but one of the plays are set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. The Hill District, a group of historically Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, plays a significant role within the plays. Wilson’s setting has in some way shaped all of his various characters, and his representations of people and places are inextricably linked. He also intended, through the Century Cycle, to create an in-depth, dynamic portrait of a neighborhood in flux: The area underwent many changes between the events depicted in Gem of the Ocean and those he wrote about in the cycle’s last play, Radio Golf. In writing the plays, Wilson borrowed from his own family’s history, included bits and pieces of local lore, and showcased the particular experiences of his community throughout time.
Wilson also wanted his plays to speak to the 20th-century African American experience writ large. Thus, the Great Migration emerges as an important thematic focal point in multiple dramas. Many of the plays set during the early decades of the 20th century also share an interest in the way that formerly enslaved individuals and their children came to terms with their shared history of trauma, formed and maintained supportive Black families and communities, and attempted to better themselves economically. All of his works in some way address both person-to-person prejudice and systemic racism. In Gem of the Ocean, systemic racism takes the form of laws and employment practices that are inherently unjust. Chronologically later plays such as Radio Golf address racism in housing policy and redlining, while Fences and The Piano Lesson are notable for their depictions of African American family life. Gender roles in African American communities, particularly Black masculinity, is another recurring theme in Wilson’s work, shaping the narrative of multiple plays.
Although Fences and The Piano Lesson, as Pulitzer Prize winners, are the most famous and most frequently performed of the cycle, each of the plays is thematically complex, rife with symbolism, and an important standalone work in its own right. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set during the 1910s, shares many themes and even the character of Rutherford Selig with Gem of the Ocean. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set during the 1920s, chronicles the history of jazz in America. The Piano Lesson, set during the 1930s, shares with Gem and many of the other plays in the cycle an interest in the legacy of enslavement. Seven Guitars, set during the 1940s, and Fences, set during the 1950s, share an interest in Black masculinity. Two Trains Running depicts the social upheaval of the 1960s, and the later plays Jitney, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf represent changing experiences for Black people during the final decades of the 20th century. The continued legacy of racism, gentrification, and shifting identity patterns emerge as themes within these final installments of the cycle.
Socio-Historical Context: The Great Migration
The largest mass migration in United States history, the Great Migration was the post-emancipation movement of more than 6 million Black people from the rural South to cities in the North. Driven by racialized violence such as lynching, Jim Crow laws, inequality, and the lack of economic opportunity, many Black Americans sought jobs and better lives in the rapidly industrializing North. The end of the Civil War in America came during the Industrial Revolution, a time of widespread urbanization, industrialization, and modernization in both the United States and Europe. Prior to this period, populations on both continents were largely rural and agrarian. The Industrial Revolution created entirely new classes of jobs such as factory and mill work, and this resulted in a massive migration from rural areas into urban centers. In the United States, these jobs were available to both white and Black Americans, and formerly enslaved people flocked from the South, hoping for better lives and economic freedom.
This was not always an easy journey, and Gem of the Ocean depicts the way that white Southerners often tried to prevent Black people from leaving. Solly’s sister Eliza wants desperately to escape the oppression and inequality of the South but is afraid to make the journey because white people in her area have set up roadblocks. However, once north, Black people also faced discrimination, and the indentured servitude of the tin mill workers such as Garret Brown and Citizen Barlow in Gem of the Ocean illustrate these prejudicial practices. Workers were charged money for room, board, and basic necessities, meaning that they were forever in debt to their employers. Although ostensibly free, they were not, in reality, free to leave these jobs, and much of the drama in Gem of the Ocean can be read as the result of this inequality.
Related Titles
By August Wilson
