40 pages • 1 hour read
Athol FugardMaster Harold and the Boys
Fiction | Play | YA | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
The Kite
The kite that Sam made for Hally when he was a child is the focus of one of Hally’s happiest childhood memories. Hally, who lives under the oppressive shame of his father, who has an alcohol addiction, and Sam, who lives with institutional racial oppression, both find momentary liberation in flying the kite. To Hally, the kite represents a freedom not usually granted to him. There was “something alive… at the end of the string, tugging at it as if it wanted to be free” (28). His father would never fly a kite with him, because of both his unkindness and his disability. Sam could not afford to buy a kite and made one from materials he found; with it, he finds freedom from institutionalized inferiority by acting as a surrogate father to Hally and encouraging him to look up toward the sky and find something to be proud of. Hally finds the ending of his memory disappointing: Sam returned to work instead of sitting on a bench with him to watch the kite. For Hally, the memory of the kite represents a brief but incomplete taste of freedom that he has never examined very closely.
Sam remembers the day with the kite differently. While Hally was certain that the kite would never fly, Sam believed it would. Unlike Hally, Sam has deliberately cultivated a sense of hope for liberation to help him cope with the oppression he faces in the present. Sam remembers the end of the encounter differently, too: He could not sit with Hally on the bench, because it said, “Whites Only.” Hally was too young or too naïve to notice. For Sam, the freedom the kite represents is conditional, because it can only exist within the confines of an unfree society. Nevertheless, at the end of the play, he suggests to Hally that they fly another kite together once the weather improves. He is suggesting that they reconcile, work together as friends and equals, and move toward a liberated society. Sam also says that Hally now knows what the bench said. He is still (figuratively) sitting there alone, but he could get up and join Sam and Willie instead. The kite, Sam feels, does not have to represent a flicker of conditional freedom. It could be the basis for lasting liberation if only Hally were able to meet Sam halfway.
Dancing
Willie and Sam are preparing for a ballroom dancing competition. It is very important to both, even though Willie is not a particularly good dancer. He is not even sure if he has a dancing partner anymore, as his girlfriend has been avoiding him since he beat her. Despite these setbacks, Sam and Willie practice their dancing several times throughout the play. For both, ballroom dancing is a source of joy and hope in an otherwise oppressive world. It is a chance for them to participate in, as they call it, a world without collisions. In their daily life, “collisions” abound: Their freedoms are heavily restricted, and they can face harsh punishments from white people at any time for the most minor of supposed infractions. Dancing allows them to escape that world and to imagine a fairer, better future.
Dancing also subverts one of the expectations of apartheid: Sam and Willie do not sit while on the job. According to John O. Jordan, “dancing and dance practice […] [provide] a welcome relief from the tedium of their work [and transform] the enforced posture of subordination into a mode of creative and liberating movement” (Jordan 466). Jordan concludes that by rehearsing the European dance steps, they are “transforming and appropriating white cultural hegemony for black cultural purposes” (Jordan 466). Hally cannot conceive of bridging racial boundaries in any form, so he struggles to understand the value of ballroom dancing. He is mired in pessimism and does not recognize the importance of working toward a goal alone or with others. He briefly sees the potential for a nonracial world, a world without collisions, but dismisses it again when faced with his father’s return from hospital. Ultimately he becomes a replica of his racist father. As Jordan writes, “to exclude oneself from the dance is to refuse participation in this vision of the future. Hally can sit, but he won’t dance” (Jordan 466). When Sam and Willie dance together at the end of the play, they are deliberately choosing to retain their hope for liberation, even if they must work toward it without Hally’s help.
The Ruler
When Hally acts out in school, he receives corporal punishment: six hits with a ruler or a rod on his backside. He is clothed when this punishment takes place. In South Africa (as in many other parts of the world), corporal punishment was common practice at the time. It is a way for Hally’s teachers to demonstrate and reify their power over him and the other students, instilling in them pain, fear, and shame. This punishment—caning on the backside—has long been associated with children. In the British Royal Navy, for instance, men were typically whipped on the back as punishment, but those whipped on the backside were said to be punished “as a boy.”
Sam describes the same punishment being used in prison; the detail he gives implies that he is speaking from experience. In prison, however, the person being beaten person has their clothes removed, making the punishment both more painful and more humiliating. Hally vacillates between horror and lurid fascination at Sam’s description. Later in the play, Hally hits Willie on the backside with his ruler. At the same time, he accuses Willie and Sam of “behaving like bloody children” (37). He is reaffirming the association between this punishment and childhood. This allows him to put himself in a position of greater power over Sam and Willie: Although they are both older than him, he can refer to them as “boys” and punish them as children, because he is white, and they are Black. He uses Shame and Systems of Power to effectively reclaim his power and compensate for his low self-esteem.
Related Titles
By Athol Fugard
