master harold

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Athol Fugard's 'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys is about Hally, a white young man, and the damage done by apartheid The play takes place on the southeast cost of South Africa, 1950 during the apartheid, in Hally's parents' restaurant. This is where two black servants, Sam and Willie, work for the white family. Sam and Willie have been a part of Hally's upbringing and are close friends. The play is a microcosm for the situation happening in South Africa a parallel time. As the whole play is a microcosm to a bigger picture, so to incidents through out the play are microcosms for other aspects of the 1950s in South Africa. These incidents have both a personal as well as political relevance for Fugard says “My plays are more than politics, but they are never removed from my homeland . My two subjects, myself and my country are one”. I think what he is trying to say is that he was living the struggle himself, he had the apartheid directly upon him, through out my essay I will discus if I agree with this statement. In 'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys, one can examine the kite, dance, bench, and disease incidents, these are the symbols of the conflicting forces competing for Hally's future. These can also be seen in a different light one on a more political level. The kite is an object symbolic of transcendence. Even as a child, Hally had an ingrain sense of defeat, disappointment, and failure; that is why Sam made him the kite. He wanted the little boy to be proud of something, proud of himself. Sam gave to him the phenomena of flying, the ideology of climbing high above his shame. The kite triggered neurotic thoughts but exhilarated the despairing boy. This is it, I thought. Like everything else in my life, here comes another fiasco. Then you shouted Go, Hally! and I started to run. I don't know how to describe it, Sam. Ja! The miracle happened! I was running, waiting for it to crash to the ground, but instead suddenly there was something alive behind me at the end of the string, tugging at it as if it wanted to be free. I looked back . . . I still can't believe my eyes. It was flying. . . I was so proud of us. . . I would have been suicidal if anything had happened to it. The kite conjured up ideas and feelings of believing in miracles, of being alive, and free. We see her “im so proud of us“that the whites took credit for lots of the work black labour d... ... middle of paper ... ...e Boys. Hally's father is sick in many ways: he is crippled, he is an alcoholic, and he is a racist. As a young boy Hally had to be sent to escort his drunken father home. He imposed horrible tasks on his son; Hally would have to clean up urine and empty the chamber-pot of phlegm and urine.; Hally was inheriting his father's social illness| disease of racism first not seemingly’ hello chaps’ but later evident ‘call me Master Harold’. . Hally's drunk father ignited his rage and apartheid made it acceptable to take it out on Sam. Their friendship disappeared with Master Harold's spit on Sam's face. Hally at the time was grown in some ways but still very young I others “long trousers yet still a young boy” When Hally or rather Fugard gets old enough to realise his mistake he declares it publicly through the play,Master “Harold…and the boys” is an autobiography of Fugard’s life, he write it as an apology to Sam. To some up I feel that Fugart described the way that he and the play paralleled beautifully, the play is about him and has shown all the effects the surroundings had on him both on a simple boys level to a grown man where he can now see where those surroundings were wrong.

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