Oppression, Freedom, and Self-Worth Theme Analysis

Boesman and Lena centers on a night in the life of its two title characters, a Coloured couple living in 1960s South Africa. Facing the brutal policies of apartheid, Boesman and Lena have been forced out of their pondok (shanty) by a white man bulldozing the land. The play begins in a visceral way: the two overburdened characters enter the stage carrying everything they own to a new location, exhausted from their journey and with little prospects for the future. This cycle of wandering and the burden of carrying one’s entire life is in and of itself a form of oppression, and one that Fugard highlights as a centerpiece of his play. As Boesman and Lena grapple with the questions of whether they are truly free people and whether their lives are worth anything, Boesman (and Fugard) comes to the horrifying conclusion that they are not free—that they are not even people, because the oppression they face has rendered them into “rubbish,” constantly picked up, thrown away, with no way to escape the society that minimizes them.

Fugard highlights the insurmountable oppression with which Lena and Boesman are faced as he demonstrates how the couple is unable to escape the cycle of destitution that South African society pushes onto them. This hardship is relentless even though they are technically able to go to any town that is accessible to Coloured people. Boesman and Lena are constantly forced out of their homes by white South Africans, who seize the land on which they are living and clear it with bulldozers. Lena describes how their forced removal and journey to the Swartkops (and all of the previous times they have been forced to walk away from a home they’ve built) burdens them: “That last skof [spell] was hard. Against the wind. I thought you were never going to stop. Heavier and heavier. Every step. This afternoon heavier than this morning. This time heavier than last time. And there’s other times coming.” Lena viscerally feels the oppression she and Boesman are up against, and knows that it only becomes worse and worse each time she is forced to pack, because their lives are reset each time. The sheer number of times that they have had to start over becomes apparent at the end of the play, as Boesman names 14 other similar “walks” that they have experienced leading up to this one—each time carrying all of their possessions to a new location.

Because of this constant cycle, Boesman and Lena are also forced to continuously rebuild their lives from anything they can find. As a result, they feel like they have become trash and, that their lives don’t actually have any worth. When Boesman and Lena arrive in the Swartkops, Boesman starts to build a shelter from anything he can find: a piece of corrugated iron, an old sack, a few pieces of wood, an old motor-car door. Lena relays that she is sick of being stuck in the pondok because it is a home made of trash, and it gives her the sense that she has no worth. Boesman explains more explicitly how they themselves have become trash: “We’re whiteman’s rubbish. That’s why he’s so beneukt [fed up] with us. He can’t get rid of his rubbish. He throws it away, we pick it up. Wear it. Sleep in it. Eat it. We’re made of it now. His rubbish is people.” The fact that they have become so steeped in trash as a result of their oppression makes them feel worthless. This feeling of being rendered worthless prompts Lena to wonder what her life has meant, since she has done so little with it. She says, “I wasn’t born today. I want my life. Where’s it?” Boesman expresses the same idea about his own life: “Show it to me! Where is it? This thing that happens to me. Where? Is it the pondok? Whiteman pushed it over this morning. Wind will do it to this one. The road I walked today? Behind us! Swartkops? Next week it’s somewhere else. The wine? Bottles are empty. Where is it?!!” Boesman and Lena are unable to make sense of their lives and identities or establish a lasting sense of self-worth, because they are always ultimately left with nothing to show for their struggles.

Boesman ultimately reveals that he was able to find a sense of freedom when the “whiteman” pushed over the pondok that morning, because he was able to “stand straight” and the world was “wide open.” The irony of this is, of course, that the very system that is oppressing him had left him feeling free because it untied him from the waste that he had come to rely on. Fugard quickly reveals this to be a false sense of freedom, however. Boesman and Lena picked up their things and continued to walk after this incident, but Boesman felt weighed down by the fact that Lena kept suggesting the “rubbish dumps” where they had been before. Even though the world felt new to him, they have no realistic way to escape the oppression of apartheid.

By the end of the play, both Boesman and Lena have tried to walk away from each other and find a new way of life, but they are unable to do so. They cannot find a way to escape their society, nor their dependence on each other. The play ultimately implies a call for change, particularly because Fugard originally performed the play at a university for white audiences. It is a demand for the people with power to recognize the humanity and worth in the people without power, and help them escape that oppression.