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Hally's 'Master Harold And The Boys': Response

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“Master Harold... and the boys” Response
From the start, Master Harold and the boys is a variety of assumptions, giving a misleading title that assumes a older man and two young boys, clear sense of segregation, and, since it is a play, a sort of anticipation that it would be some form of Shakespeare, complete with musty words and a higher sense of understanding that you must derive from dictionaries and googling certain phrases until you understand what’s going on. In actuality, the play is easy to read, and the ‘Master’ in the play is a seventeen year old white boy, while the young ‘boys’ are middle aged black men. Their races are important, a crucial element of the play, and from the start it is obvious that there is a stark difference in the way Hally views them and himself, depicting himself as naturally smarter, inherently superior to both Sam and Willie because of the color of his skin. Oh, Hally still acts friendly, and genuinely does not see a problem with the way he talks and acts to them, the racism born from years of his drunken father 's influence and from seeing Sam and Willie work under his mother, a white woman, for as long as he can …show more content…

Hally’s father is the definite cornerstone for Hally’s moods and actions, able to switch them and confuse Hally with just a phone call. It is apparent that Sam had tried to, in little ways, to parent Hally himself, to try and install manners and respect in Hally, but the actual parents obviously had more impact on Hally than Sam ever could.
In conclusion, “Master Harold...and the boys” is a play that not many could have written with the same drive and intensity that Athol Fugard infuses into his writing, using generic backgrounds and characters and turning them into something much more than letters on a

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