Prejudice In 'Master Harold And The Boys'

In the play “Master Harold and the boys”, the first sense upon reading it that there is a definite sense of segregation, first judgements based completely on the title, and while they are in the 50s, racism is still unmistakably divided into privilege and discrimination, and is purposely meant as one of the main influences and controversies of the play. Athol Fugard’s three characters are perfect for this play, antagonist is a seventeen year old white boy with a superiority complex. Hally’s prejudice starts of at racism, beginning from his father 's influences and growing from the normality of it swirling around his reality, but because of Hally’s egotism that was fed from years of white privilege and benefit, the prejudice turns from outright

Throughout the play, the main factor that runs through the story is the idea of elegance, and one of the main visualizations is the dancing that happens in and out of the story line. Sam and Willie are continually dancing and talking about dancing throughout the story, and while Hally doesn’t dance, he does orient the conversation and starts an essay about it, absorbing their excitement and gracefulness through osmosis. Hally lets himself be drawn into their world, although he isn’t a fan of dancing, outright expressing that dancing is a waste of time in his opinion, saying “...you 're not asking me to take ballroom dancing serious, are you?”(Fugard, 25). Moreover, Hally is no artist, and recounts something his art teacher had said, “...said I was no Leonardo da Vinci and that bad art had to be punished.”(Fugard, 9). In Hally’s eyes, art is useless and doesn’t get you anywhere in life, and instead focuses on people that he considers of importance. Perhaps it isn’t the fact that Hally believes art is pointless, it is more that he cannot do it himself and therefore prefers to think of it as something he doesn’t need, instead of attempting to dance and ending up tripping over his own