Dr. Jeckyll and Master Harold by Athol Fugard

Athol Fugard's "MASTER HAROLD"...and the boys deals with the problem of apartheid in South Africa during the 1950s. In the play, intellect and emotion are antithesis, and as a result of these opposing forces, Hally is forced into a bipolar state. Throughout the play, Fugard uses dancing as a metaphor for life, and Hally is faced with important realities concerning Sam and Willie's concept of dance, and his own bitter view. In the end, Hally realizes that the things that he "knows" have fallen through, and so Fugard means the audience to realize that emotions and intellect are not supposed to be so at war with one another and a body in which the two components fight is going to be unhealthy. Fugard turns Hally, a being whose inner components are not at peace with one another, into a microcosm of South Africa, where whites and blacks are socially and economically at different levels, even though they should be equals working together within society to make it a better place.

When dealing with the concept that Hally is a microcosm of Africa, it is important to point out the rivalry between emotion and intellect throughout the play. The most blatant example of this occurs when Sam and Willie are trying to explain to Hally that dance is a form of art:

HALLY. All right. So you make it sound like a bit of a do. It's an occasion. Satisfied?

SAM (victory). So you admit that?

HALLY. Emotionally yes, intellectually no. (763)

Here, Hally shows just how torn he is between what he feels, which is respect for Sam, and how he knows he should act and think, as per his parents and Old Doc Bromely, Hally's English teacher who "doesn't like natives" (764). The people in Hally's life who are supposed to guide him, i.e. his parents and teachers, have raised him to think that he is superior to Sam and Willie. However, emotionally Hally has let himself become attached to the black men and has a hard time dealing with the inner conflict.

This conflict turns Hally into a very disturbed character. His first instinct is to doubt everything that Sam and Willie say. For instance, he begins by scoffing at Sam and Willie because they believe that dance is a beautiful art (763), but after some of Sam's descriptions Hally becomes noticeably interested in the dance competition. However, he does not outwardly admit that he is wrong (even though Sam can read Hally and knows what he is thinking), and he has to end it by ruining Sam's description of a beautiful dance with the image of a cripple trying to dance (765).

At this point, Hally seems to be angry at himself for being able to see the beautiful images that Sam conjures and is forced to bring the lofty description to a crashing halt with his bitter remark: "That's what all our talk about a decent world has been...just so much bullshit" (766). Hally shows that the dance is a metaphor for life, and unfortunately ruins the image of the perfect dancers who never bump into each other. He entitles his essay on the subject "A World Without Collisions," which he knows is a world that does not exist. His bitterness forces him to see that the perfect dancers are unrealistic. Instead, he focuses on the fact that most of us "end up on our backsides on the dance floor" (767). It is obvious that he has been deeply affected by his internal conflicts and he takes it out on Sam and Willie.

In Hally's world nobody is treated with fairness, and Hally himself believes that he is unfairly treated. He is rude to his mother, his father, and Sam even though he loves them all. In one phone conversation with his parents, Hally's manic bipolarity is revealed when he goes from yelling at his mother because his father is coming home, to telling his father that his "being home is just about the best news in the world" (766). Hally treats Sam in the same bipolar way when he goes from thinking of the day that they flew a homemade kite together, to threatening Sam and making him call him "Master Harold." Hally's internal conflicts show in his outward behavior in his dealings with other people. His moods fluctuate so quickly that one cannot be sure what to expect from him at any given moment. Just when one thinks Hally is in a good mood, he ruins it by revealing another chunk of his bitterness.

In this way, Hally is very similar to South Africa itself. Both entities are plagued by internal conflict. Hally's emotions and social consciousness are so at war with one another that he is unwell just as South Africa is unwell. In South Africa at this time there is a facade of equality. The natives are technically "free," but they have no choice but to subject themselves to working for the whites as servants, which really does not qualify as freedom.

So, in the same way that Hally's social consciousness and intellect are forcing him to treat Sam and Willie as inferiors, another part of him, his emotions and another form of intellect, are telling him that Sam and Willie are people that he cares about and that he should ignore the color of their skin. He is so torn apart by the conflict that he punishes everyone around him so he is not the only person who suffers - he punishes his mother, his father, and even his teacher (he writes an essay on a subject he knows Doc Bromely will not appreciate), as well Willie and his other teacher, Sam. Because Sam is also a teacher to Hally, one cannot simply say that intellect and emotion are fighting in Hally. It actually seems as if Hally's intellect has been divided into two parts: One part that has had to memorize geography at school; and another part that has analyzed life with a man of a different social class.

The question becomes which is more valuable? And it is apparent that, although his close relationship to Sam is at fault for his internal struggle, it is also what has kept him from becoming like his father or Doc Bromely. Without this relationship with Sam, Hally would never realize that apartheid is ridiculous. He would have grown up in a strictly white world where he would have never been "Hally," he would have always been "Master Harold." The fact that Sam is more of a father to him than his own father is the root of his humanity. He sees things in a different way because he is torn between his white world and the native world that he cares about. And so, the internal struggle is a necessary part of Hally. It shows that he has compassion, even though he can be cruel, he is cruel to both the white side and the native side, but in the end he is ultimately cruel to himself as well.

The final page of the poem leaves the audience wondering how Hally will turn out. Throughout the play he has had to face the internal diversity, and one must assume that there will come a time, probably in the immediate future, in which Hally will have to decide which inner force to live by. He can either turn into a man like Doc Bromely or his father, or he can be the next social reformer just as Sam hopes he will be. As Sarah Vaughan's song goes "someone took your kiddy car away...little man you've had a busy day" (770).

Hally is forced to do a lot of growing up in a short amount of time, and he definitely fights it. This growing up is another internal conflict in him, because, he wants to still be the innocent little boy who flew the kite with the black man, but on the other hand, he wants to be the disillusioned "Master Harold." The fact that he is forced to choose between the two is another unhealthy step in his life - nobody should have to have such a drastic change of character as to have to choose between them. However, it would be better for him to just choose one - even the wrong one - rather than to be this "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" type character forever.

Work Cited

Fugard, Athol. "MASTER HAROLD"...and the boys. Rptd. In The Longman Anthology of Contemporary Drama. Ed. Greenwald, et. Al. New York: Pearson Education, 2004. pages 751-770.