Fugard's powerful play Master Harold and the Boys concerns
relationships--relationships between blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa as well
as father/ son relationship. Halle is taught several lessons during this play. Whether
or not he actually learns them is up to him.
1. Becoming a
man demands personal integrity; it is not a given. Just because Hally can release his
anger toward his father on his black friend Sam does not mean that he should. Making
Sam call him "master" is the mentality of a little boy, as Sam tells
him.
2. Hally realizes that he does indeed love his father
even though he is still very much ashamed of him. His father is alcoholic growing
through rehab. Hally does not want his father to return home where he will embarrass
his son once again. But he acknowledges through Sam's help that he always loved his
father.
3. The sins of the father are passed down to the
son. Because Hally's father was a poor father, Halle never learned how to be a
man.
4. Once the race card is played, there is no going
back. Once Hally asserts himself as the master of Sam and Willie, their relationship is
forever changed. The friendship is damaged.
5. It is
possible to be a better man than one's father. Hally has every right to feel contempt
for his father, but a better man would treat his father with respect rather than
contempt, not because his father deserves respect but because it is the right thing to
do.
6. Hally is shown that although he has had an education
superior to that of Sam's, he is not wiser. Hally is very much ignorant as to the
inequalities of apartheid and the disadvantages that Sam has undergone as a result of
his race. Sam informs Hally that his favorite memory of their flying a kite together
was brought to end, not because Sam had to go back to work, but because Hally had sat
down on a "whites only" bench, and that Sam could not sit with
him.
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