Colorless Theatre

Anger has affected the history of the world in many negative ways. The hatred whites feel towards blacks is only one example of how anger manifests itself.  Racism, however, is not just a simple problem that can be cured through simple words or public announcements.  Rather, it is a problem that requires a dramatic change in one’s thinking.  This same concept applies to people who are suffering from kidney failure. Their blood must literally be exorcised from their bodies by an outside machine, which in turn, replaces the corrupt blood with new blood.  Just as with bad blood, racism has become ingrained within the culture of the world and must be replaced with tolerance and compassion.  Master Harold and the Boys takes place in the Apartheid capital of the world, South Africa.  Apartheid is the South African form of segregation based upon racial ethnicity, i.e.:  the separation of the blacks and the whites.  The Afrikaner National Party adopted the term, Apartheid, in the election year of 1948.  Since the play takes place in the year 1950 it’s easy to assume that Hally is more than aware of this system and it’s segregational laws and regulations.  The hatred that the whites felt then, and still feel today, toward the blacks cannot, and does not, stem from these “regulations” alone.   Rather, this hatred is in a large part due to a person’s upbringing and what they are taught to think and believe about others from a young age.  Hally’s abusive father had sown the seed of racism deep into Hally’s subconscious, which in turn, causes Hally to reject his only friends on false premises.  Hally’s father was an alcoholic who is constantly debilitated because of his addiction.  Hally had to grow up with the constant feelings of shame and embarrassment due to his father’s horrific condition.  As a result, the only people he could turn to were two black servants in his house.  Their names were Sam and Willie.  Sam, through his kindness and compassion for Hally, became the only real father figure Hally would ever have.  Willie became Hally’s comic relief because he could laugh at Willie’s antics.  The conflict Hally eventually has is between the racist teachings of his parents and the kindness shown to him by his two “black” friends.  His choice is to either follow his parents or to follow his friends in their quest to defeat the unjust rules of Apartheid.  To fully show the destructive nature of the virus that is racism, Hally, from Master Harold and the Boys, must reflect on the events of the fateful day when he rejected his only friends.  The best way to show this realization is not through a study of syntax or parallel structure, but rather to illustrate the conflict that hatred creates through an engaging story.  In this anecdote, the bitter Hally relives some of his memories from the past by seeing significant images that shaped his life.  The rain and a simple kite represent Hally’s life story.  It rained on the day Halley rejected Sam and Willie as his friends, and the kite was a gift from Sam to Hally as a token of their friendship.  In the following imaginative story, Hally’s reason for  having joined the army was to become mentally tough.  Additionally, he had also wanted to leave his father forever, and the military looked like a good excuse.  The setting of the graveyard is symbolic of the fact that racism is a form of death in a person’s soul.

It had started to rain.  A dark figure trudged through the dust of the road as the rain began to turn the dirt to mush.  The individual reached upward and pulled the collar up around his neck.  A dilapidated bus slowly drove by spraying flecks of mud onto his coat and shoes.  He didn’t seem to care and continued his journey down the path.

He had been walking for hours, and his legs were beginning to feel tired.  He had hoped to reach the next village before dark, but now he needed to find shelter from the rain.  His stomach growled.

“Great,” He mumbled under his breath.  “This is exactly what I need right now.”

A dog tag swung from around his neck and briefly reflected the name of Hally in the quickly fading light.  Hally quickly grasped the dog tag and tucked it in his shirt.  The rain was pounding harder now.

“Have to find some shelter,” Hally growled just as a flash of lightning ripped across the sky and illuminated the surrounding landscape.  Hally believed he saw, for a brief second, an assortment of buildings over the next hill.  He began to walk faster.  The road was becoming extremely slippery now, and Hally’s shoes were filling with water.

“Bloody weather!” yelled Hally over the increasingly noisy storm.  It seemed strange to him that there would be no lights coming from the buildings he saw, but he didn’t give it a second thought.  He began to run as he topped the hill.  When he reached the crest he waited for the lighting to strike again to show him where he needed to go.  Then, he slipped.  It wasn’t his fault because the hill had fallen apart and turned into a miniature mudslide.  Hally cursed out loud as his feet were swept out from under him.  He quickly plummeted to the bottom of the slope and came to a slow stop.  Infuriated, Hally stood up and wiped the grime from his eyes only to find himself face to face with a shallow and sunken visage.

“Oh SHIT!” screamed Hally as he pulled his pistol from his hip, jumped back and fired into the terrible face.  There was an explosion of sparks and a deafening crack as the stone statue’s head split in two.  Hally had fallen over and was breathless.

“It was just a statue,” stammered Hally in relief.  He stood up and composed himself while he looked around.  Small monoliths and statues cluttered the surrounding area.

“A graveyard?  Oh that’s just great,” Hally sarcastically remarked as he gazed at the broken statue in front of him.  “Where do I go now?” he angrily asked the mangled face.  Hally took a step back and saw that the statue’s outstretched arm was pointing to something off in the distance.

“I guess I have nothing better to do but follow your advice,” he said with an uproarious laugh as he began to follow the statue’s directions.  Hally hadn’t gone more than twenty yards when giant tomb with an umbrella-like covering in front of the door materialized out of the darkness.

“This will have to do for shelter,” Hally whispered as he ascended the narrow steps which led to the small covered porch in front of the door to the tomb.  This area was somewhat dry except for the cracks in the masonry that were profusely leaking dust filled water.  Hally quickly found the driest area of the porch and sat down.  He removed his shoes and emptied the mud and water onto the marble steps he had just ascended.  His socks were soaked, and his right ankle had been twisted when he fell.  He shivered.

“What a ghastly place” he thought to himself as he reached into his pocket and pulled out some saltine crackers.  Hally allowed some of the rain to wash his hands before opening the dirt-covered package.

“There has only been one other rainy day as miserable as this one,” Hally ruminated.  “That’s the day my father came home after drinking himself half to death.  I was at the restaurant and…” He stopped.  “Willie and Sam were there too.”  He sighed deeply.  “What I wouldn’t give to see their faces again.”

Lightning flashed across the sky again to reveal another statue at the foot of the stairs.  Like the other one, this one had a shallow face as well.  The dripping rain made it look as if it were crying.  

“Didn’t I get rid of you?” exclaimed Hally.  The statue went on crying while it’s stationary arm pointed at Hally.

“Go away!” screamed Hally as he took the crackers and threw them at the statue.  “Bloody Hell, look at me!  I’m talking to statues.  This is pathetic.  Where are you when I need you Sam?  Oh, that’s right, you’re just a black servant and I’m the mighty soldier who joined the army on my eighteenth birthday!  That got me nowhere, but where are you?  You died three years ago when you got run over by a streetcar!  Some good your dancing lessons did for you.  You couldn’t dodge that car with your little foxtrot, could you!?  You were nothing but a stupid, insignificant, piece of garbage unworthy to lick the dirt off my boots!  Ha!  Take that you malaria diseased freak of nature!”  The statue continued to cry.

The wind was howling, and Hally felt as if a thousand knives were penetrating his skin.  A buzzing noise, different than the howling, caught Hally’s attention, and he looked up.  A string was wrapped around one of the pillars that was holding up the stone umbrella above him. Perplexed by the sight, Hally stood up, walked over and grasped the string.  The string was attached to something off in the distance.  Hally then began to reel in the line.  As the line grew shorter the string began rising higher and higher into the sky.  Hally had to fight extremely hard to bring whatever was attached to the string down to where he could see it.  Suddenly, Hally saw a tail emerge from the darkness above.  Unexpectedly, the wind stopped.

“No, it can’t be!” Hally gasped as a solitary kite plummeted towards the ground.  It crashed at his feet.  The simple paper skin, which covered the skeleton of what appeared to be tomato-box wood, was drenched but miraculously not shredded by the wind.

“This is impossible!” screamed Hally as the wind began to pick up again.  The kite, as if possessed, rose up off the ground and flew off into the wind.  The only remaining piece was the broken string in Hally’s hand.

“Sam, is that you?” Hally asked the wind as he retreated to his corner beneath the stone umbrella.  “It has to be.  No one else but you, Willie and I know about that kite.”  

“What have I done?” lamented Hally.  “That day at the restaurant, the day I spit in your face, that’s the day I lost your friendship!  Why was I so stupid?!  It’s not my fault you were born black!  It’s not my fault that Apartheid is the law of the land!  It’s not!”

Lightning struck the bell tower in the graveyard sending out an enormous crash.  Hally was terrified.  

“All right!  It was wrong of me to treat you as if you weren’t human.  I was wrong!  I was wrong and you were right!  You were my best friend, and I loved you as a father.  I’m sorry that I said all those things.  I hate my father for many things but I hate him the most because he taught me to hate you.  And now it’s too late, and I have nothing.  Please, please, forgive me!”  Hally was shouting at the top of his lungs.  He shut his eyes as more lighting struck the graveyard around him.  He opened them and found the crying statue directly in front of him.  Hally froze in fear.  The statue’s arm rose up and pointed to the ceiling of the stone dome.  Hally slowly raised his eyes and saw that the dome was not a dome at all, but rather a gigantic gargoyle with his wings sheltering his face.

Hally reached for his pistol and first shot the crying statue and then the gargoyle.  The bullets easily penetrated the enormous wings.  Then, the wings crumbled and covered Hally in an avalanche of limestone.