Master Harold... and the Boys, by Athol

¶ … Master Harold... And the Boys," by Athol Fugard and "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. Specifically, it will discuss how both "Master Harold" and "Things Fall Apart" are set in periods or challenges of social transition or reform. "Things Fall Apart" and "Master Harold" both embody Africa during colonialism, when whites ruled supreme, and blacks were "put in their place." Both show the tragedy and hatred of prejudice, and how it affects everyone it touches.

SOCIAL TRANSITION

Both of these works are set in Africa, and both relate stories of how Africans have suffered at the hand of the whites that took their land, but most of all took away their way of life. Both stories also portray societies in transition, from the South Africa of "Master Harold," mired in apartheid and struggling to understand another race, to the Nigeria of "Things Fall Apart," mired in colonialism and struggling for freedom. They also illustrate how a society in transition can shape the way people view people, and a society that oppresses some of its members will eventually have to fall. Social transition and change does not end the underlying problem of hatred. When a society understands the damaging effects of hatred, then perhaps it can transform, but that does not happen in either of these works.

Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe tells the story from the native perspective, rather than the white colonists of Africa. The story recounts the tale of an African family named Okonkwo, who try to fit in to the white man's society. However, their own society was balanced, happy, and complete, and they did not really need to fit in with the white man. When they did, it ultimately destroyed their society, and way of life.

Master Harold," on the other hand, is told from the white man's perspective as he grows up surrounded by blacks in South Africa in 1950, when apartheid was at its height. The young white man cannot accept his best friend is a black man, but worse, he cannot accept the blacks are oppressed. He shows his lack of understanding and feeling when he tells his friend, "I might have guessed as much. Don't get sentimental, Sam. You've never been a slave, you know. And anyway we freed your ancestors here in South Africa long before the Americans (Fugard 20). Both viewpoints are valid, and help show the opposing sides of the race problem in Africa, and how it transformed society. Even though apartheid is ended, and Nigeria has her independence, race problems did not disappear, and hatred still festers among the societies.

In "Things Fall Apart," Achebe's goal is to show how the English language confused the natives, from the natives' point-of-view. They were not stupid, they knew what the English were doing, and detested them for it. The "white supremacy" of the apartheid mentality is blatant here; the blacks are surely lower class citizens who cannot speak a sophisticated white man's language.

When the presence of the white men becomes an established fact, the difference in language is offered by Obierika, one of the clan's elders, as the reason for the white man's violation of Ibo custom. When asked if the white man understands the customs of the Ibo, Obierika replies. "How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? (Achebe162)" (Iyasere 77).

Both stories are tragic in the way the whites view the blacks. They are also both tragic in how the blacks try so desperately to get along with the whites, but somehow, they can never manage to be their equals, they are always stranded on lesser ground. In "Things Fall Apart," a local proverb sums this up nicely. "Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break" (Achebe 21-22). The natives would like to get along, and they are wise enough to realize everyone's life would be much easier if they could live in harmony. "Master Harold" embodies the same theme, that everyone would be much happier if they could all simply get along with each other. As critic Errol Durbach remarks on the scene near the end of "Master Harold" when Sam tells Hally why he could not sit on a "whites only" bench and help him fly his kite:

This, in essence, is the psychopathology of apartheid. Growing up to be a "man" within a system that deliberately sets out to humiliate black people, even to the point of relegating them to separate benches, entails the danger of habitual indifference to the everyday details that shape black/white relationships and, finally, pervert them. It is not merely that racial prejudice is legislated in South Africa. It insinuates itself into every social sphere of existence, until the very language of ordinary human discourse begins to reflect the policy that makes black men subservient to the power exercised by white children (Durbach 510).

In both texts, the customs and the feelings of the blacks show more depth and understanding than the whites that surround them, and they show more compassion for living together. In "Things Fall Apart," the wise men of the village understand people must try to live together when he "There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?" Throughout the novel, this complex, dualistic nature of the customs and traditions of the Ibo society of Umuofia is made clear (Iyasere 64), and the complexity and warmth of the blacks in "Master Harold" is no different. Sam is older and much, much wiser than Hally, but because he is black, he is relegated to being a servant, not a friend and mentor, even though that is truly what he is, a father figure to a boy with a father who is not there for him.

Critic Durbach calls "Master Harold, "an anachronistic backward glance to a time when black men in their stoical optimism still dreamed of social change and when white boys might have been able to grasp the implications of "Whites Only" benches and choose to walk away from them" (Durbach 513), and this is the case for "Things Fall Apart," also. Both stories illustrate the hope of a black society that they will simply be treated equally and with respect, and a white society who does neither. Both narratives make it abundantly clear why blacks had to revolt to get what they wanted, some kind of equality, because they were not taken seriously by the white society until they rose up and said "no more." In both stories, the patient blacks sit back and offer many opportunities for the whites to change and grow, but the whites cannot change their thinking.