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Athol Fugard's "Master Harold"

Athol Fugard's play, "Master Harold" . . . and the Boys takes place in a South African tea room--St. George's park Tea Room. The time is 1950, at the beginning of the apartheid era in South Africa, an era in which a more strict separation of the races was enforced and in which blacks were allowed in certain White areas only by day and only to work. This play in many ways reflects the history of black and white relations in South africa in this century, beginning on a note of tolerance and agreement and ending in rancor and racist epithets. Apartheid was a deliberate creation of the White power structure to prevent the Blacks from gaining political power, and while racial segregation had been the norm through most of this century before that, apartheid codified this and made it harsher and more certain than it had been before. In the context of this play, the White anger directed at Blacks was an anger that was general, meaning the Blacks were being made scapegoats for whatever other problems and concerns the Whites might have.

The youth of Hally is an important component in the play, for his innocence in the beginning is certain to appeal to the audience, while his racist anger at the end become that much more of a shock because of the shift involved. Indeed, his youth and exuberance fits with the way the play opens--it seems more like a musical as Sam and Willie rehearse for the upcoming dance contest:

In two weeks' time when the judges look at you and Hilda, they must see a man and a woman who are dancing their way to a happy ending (996).

The only tension in this opening scene is romantic as Willie complains about Hilda, and the two men are clearly cheerful as they sing and practice, all with an eye to success in the contest two weeks hence.

Hally enters as one of the boys, speaking to the two men who work for his mother as if they were equals, taking a conspiratorial tone as he refers to the weather and what it w...

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Athol Fugard's "Master Harold". (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:12, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692552.html