"Master Harold" … and the Boys Themes

“Master Harold”… and the boys is a play whose story is wedded to the complex racial relationships among its three characters, the two middle aged black workers, Sam and Willie, and Hally or “Master Harold,” their boss’s son, a white teenager on the verge of manhood. The racial tension among the characters is, in turn, informed by the play’s setting and context. In 1950, South Africa, including Port Elizabeth where “Master Harold” is set…

Abuse, oppression, and inequality are among the dominant features of the racism that “Master Harold”… and the boys takes as its main theme, but Athol Fugard also shows us that these more general aspects of racism are, to some extent, color blind. We learn very quickly, for example, that Willie’s dancing partner, Hilda, has run away because he gives her a “hiding” whenever she misses her steps, and, what’s more, his previous dancing partner…

The most readily apparent cripple in the play, Hally’s father, isn’t just a cripple in body but, it seems due to his alcoholism and attitude, is spiritually crippled as well. He is a broken man unable to give Hally the love and affection he needs, unable to teach him moral lessons. In that respect he is like the apartheid-era South Africa in which the play unfolds. He is unable to provide Hally with much…

Social dances like the foxtrot, quickstep, and waltz feature prominently in “Master Harold”… and the boys. The action of the play both begins and concludes with dance, and it is punctuated throughout with dancing lessons, and discussions about the significance of dance itself. Dance, it turns out, is an escape from the world as it is into a world without collisions, a world that seems effortless, an ideal, a dream. The significance attributed…