The Significance Of Kite Flying In Master Harold And The Boys

In Master Harold and the Boys, Athol Fugard uses kite flying to characterize the relationship between Hally, a white boy, and Sam, his black servant. In the play, both Hally and Sam view the kite with a positive outlook. To both Sam and Hally, kite flying is a happy memory of when Sam would take care and play with Hally. However, towards the end of the play, the memory becomes a lesson for Hally from Sam to teach Hally about the choices he can make moving forward as a white boy growing up in the apartheid. In the play, the kite flying is significant to Sam and Hally because it symbolizes their different hopes for the future and it characterizes their relationship to one another. To begin, kite flying is significant to Sam because it symbolizes …show more content…
Activities like kite flying are traditionally done by a father and his son, however, Hally’s father is not capable of acting as a father figure because he is a cripple and an alcoholic. In fact, instead of Hally’s father caring for Hally, Hally cares for his father by “emptying stinking chamberpots full of phlegm and piss” (48) and by picking him up “dead drunk on the floor of Central Hotel Bar” (57) with the help of Sam. Instead, Sam provides the fatherly care Hally needs by teaching Hally how to be proud of himself and how to “[grow] up to be a man” (58). By reminiscing their kite flying adventure, Hally even becomes more “conscious of [Sam’s] presence in his life” (31). Towards the end of the play, however, their father-son relationship becomes strained when Hally begins acting racist towards Sam, forcing Sam to refer to him as “Master Harold”. Yet, when Sam invites Hally to fly another kite as a way to amend their friendship, Sam does not refer to Hally as “Master Harold”. This shows how Sam still cares about Hally, and he wants to rebuild their relationship with another father-son