“Master Harold”…and the boys
by Athol Fugard
Directions: Fugard’s play is set in South
Africa in 1950, two years after
apartheid became the law. Fugard, who
is a white South African, wrote this play
in 1982 as a way to atone for a
boyhood incident that haunted him for
many years.
To help you process what you’ve read,
please view the following link to a study
guide written by a lit professor at WSU:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/fugard.html
Review all notes and questions on the guide. Respond in
writing to any 10 questions or prompts that appeal to you
and write one original discussion question from the analysis,
synthesis or evaluation level of Bloom’s so you’ll have 10
questions and responses plus an original 11th question that
you’d like to pose for discussion in your group.
A couple details to note: the numbers on the left refer to
page numbers. Not everything next to a page number is a
question; some are text notes. Read all the questions and
text notes and then choose 10 questions or prompts to
write responses to. Be sure to re-write the questions you
are answering and underline or bold them.
Type and print for next class.
Why are we reading this?
Be thinking of how this play fits our unit on POWER. How
does Hally assert his power? In what way does apartheid
give or take power away from these characters? What’s the
true conflict for Hally?