Investigating Masculinities Enactment and Its Psychological Undercurrents in Fugard's "Master Harold"…and the Boys

P a g e 90 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES Investigating Masculinities Enactment and Its Psychological Undercurrents in Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the Boys By JEGEDE, Francis Olabisi (PhD) English Language Education, College of Languages and Communication Arts Education, Lagos State University of Education, Oto/Ijanikin, Lagos. & Olusegun Jegede. E. (PhD) English Department, School of Languages, College of Education, Osiele, Abeokuta DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17751325 Abstract This paper explores masculinities enactment in a racial environment where men are treated as second class citizens. Traditionally, men have been made to carry the guilt of the oppression of women as the narrative has always been that men are originator and promoter of patriarchy. From Feminists’ perspective, men have enjoyed patriarchal privileges that give them undue advantage over women. Women scholars have supported this narrative for a long time until recently when studies confirm that men enact masculinities at different hierarchical levels and have different statuses in terms of role exhibition. Situated in racial clime, men are, therefore, made to carry a double yoke of emasculation by circumstances that challenge their manhood and racial discrimination that further place upon them the burden of oppression in all spheres. Using a combination of Psychoanalysis and Masculinities as tools of analysis, the study employs a qualitative approach which involves a literary text analysis of Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…. and the Boys. Findings reveal that not all men are macho and capable of exhibiting masculine traits constructed for them as men in their social milieu. Again, the study discovers that not all men exhibit provider roles as husbands and fathers as some men are actually emasculated having lost their breadwinning masculine role to their wives and become irresponsible fathers. The experiences of the Blacks in South Africa under the oppression of racial discrimination confirm W.E.B Du Bois’ assertion that Black men in a racial environment are carrying a double yoke. It is. therefore, suggested that men enacting hegemonic masculinities should be conscious of other weak men made so by poor economic circumstance that incapacitates them. Black men in a racial environment should purge themselves of toxic masculinity associated with hypo-masculinity enactment and instead embrace pro-feminists notion of masculinity which promotes cooperation of sexes. Keywords: Subordinated, Complicit, Hegemonic, Hypo-masculinity, Patriarchy P a g e 91 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES Introduction For the male gender, the perception of manhood is a function of cultural orientation from childhood to adulthood. He, therefore, grows to understand his role as a man who has to provide for and defend his family in all ramifications, as against the woman who is culturally subordinated to him in terms of power, control and emotional stability. As a result, the male gender is constantly struggling to validate, in all respects, his manhood which confers on him a sense of superiority to women. However, the male gender becomes confused when confronted with situations and circumstances that make the performance of his manhood impossible despite all the cultural definitions given to it. The rift between the cultural expectations of his masculinity and the reality of his male status as a result of changing economic, political and social circumstances put the man in dire strait. He is therefore either at the rung of the ladder as a subordinated masculine character or undefined masculine status called complicit in the enactment of his masculine status and role performance. On top of the ladder which is very rare is the masculinity hierarchal status fashioned after Anthonio Gramsci’s hegemonic concept (Gramsci 1971, Dobie 2009). However, what defines a man’s place on the masculinity ladder is his masculinity hierarchy. It goes to show how well he is able to perform his masculine gender roles and exhibit his status as a man. All these social nuances define and validate his manhood in the social environment where he grows up as a man. His social construction becomes the definition of his masculinity which also can be both the perception of himself as against how others see him. It is usually when there is a discrepancy between the way he sees himself and how others see him that aggression becomes activated to redeem self-image. According to Baumeister, Smart and Boden (1996) Aggression emerges from a particular discrepancy between two views of self; a favorable self appraisal and an external appraisal that is much less favorable. That is, people turn aggressive when they receive feedback that contradicts their favorable views of themselves and implies that they should adopt less favorable views…p.8 In the enactment of masculinity on the masculinity hierarchies are crises associated with the way the man is constructed in his social milieu and the way he is perceived by women either at home or his workplace. Hood-Williams 2001 opines that masculinity must be understood phenomenologically because “there is nothing in the character or structuring of the psyche that explains sexual difference”p.52. Masculinity Hood-Williams says does not express an inner, psychic, core ”but is the performative work of acts, gestures, enactments” and consequently, “this means recognizing that masculinity must be understood phenomenologically” p.52. Ironically, in his attempt to validate his manhood, he becomes a victim of his own harmful behavior and lifestyle in what Chernova (2001, cited in Irina, N. Keth, p.,Jeff, H. et al, 2005) referred to as ‘masculinity crisis’’p.155. In this crisis are found low life expectancy and self-destructive practices such as hard drinking, alcoholism, drug abuse, smoking and gluttony. Part of this new crises also according to Whitehead(2002) is the “inability of men to cope with the new expectations of (feminism), combined with the demise of traditional work patterns and male roles…”p.53. Irina, Keth, Hearn et al (2005) discusses family socialization pattern with children in a home where it is believed social construction begins to shape the masculinity perception of the boy child. They believe that the “initiatives for changing a father’s role in the family are not adequately accompanied by gender-informed educational reforms and creation of societal awareness about the plurality of family models and their social valorization beyond a “universal” nuclear, heterosexual “normal” family” p.156. Michael and Scot (2005) believe that every society socializes children to learn and internalize “the shared rules and norms that drive collective behavior, thereby allowing them to become self-regulating participants in society” p.233. Cahill, 1986 calls it P a g e 92 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES “shared rules of interpretation and conduct” p.163. This is more or less the code of conduct every member of the society internalizes in order to function well in it (Elkin and Handel, 1989). So boys learn masculinity in the home under the tutelage of their fathers and other older boys or men according to the dictate of the society. In most cases, even mothers and other women help to reinforce this understanding by rewarding masculine acts and rebuking feminine behavior of the boy child. Ultimately, it is in the family that boys first have the understanding of the power and privileges associated with being a man and from there begin to learn masculinity enactment. It is also in the family that the boy grows to become a man and having learnt masculinities, begin to understand the dynamics and contradictions in these power and privileges bestowed through his social construction (Kaufman, 1999). Synopsis of the Play Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”...and the Boys (1982) is an autobiographical play about the personal life of the icon, Athol Harold Lannigan Fugard under an intolerable Apartheid clime. The play has won international distinction for daring to explore family ties in South African Apartheid setting. Fugard exposes in this play the racial circumstances that defined manhood and questions what racism has to do with being a responsible father and the pains and shame of failed expectations between father and son. Hally, a young, white South African boy with an irresponsible father from whom he supposed to learn masculinity, becomes emotionally attached to Sam, the black waiter in his parents’ restaurant. He grows up an unhappy child because of the shame and humiliation he gets from his father’s irresponsibility as a chronic alcoholic. Fugard himself confesses that “Master Harold”...and the Boys is a gamble because it was initially meant to be just a play about a seven-year-old white boy and his friendship with two black men. Hally grows up under the tutelage of these two black men who double as friends and parents. His father is never available for him. The little he knows about his fatherhood is learnt from his mother, as a wife of feeble irresponsible alcoholic. From his telephone conversation, he reveals his mother as the boss: “You are the boss…If he is going to behave like a child, treat him like one (p.1429). As a young lad, Hally learns masculinity first hand from his black friends because he is always left in their care. His father, Harold, constitutes nuisance at home, messing himself up, sometimes drunk and has to be taken home. Hally particularly wants him permanently kept at the hospital to be taken care of by the nurses and his mother. Any time, his father is around, his mother has to keep her bag away as he pilfers from it to get drunk. So addicted to alcoholism that he has to borrow from Hally the money meant for his science book. The hospital discharges his father against Hally and his mother’s disapproval and he becomes more irritated and disillusioned. His disillusionment takes the better of him as he smashes the brandy bottle he has picked from the shop for his father. The thought of going home to meet an infirm, weak, sickly, irresponsible and feeble father engenders psychological trauma in him. However, he takes this emotional trauma on the two black waiters who also double as friends and parents. As a mark of his transition from boyhood to adulthood, Hally demands of Sam, his mentor that he should be addressed Master Harold. This demand strains the relationship between them as Harry begins to give orders to Sam, reminding him he is just a servant to his family. The argument becomes hot between the two and as Sam made to go to avoid further damage, Hally calls him back and spits in his P a g e 93 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES face. Hally’s revulsion for his father’s shameful act that brings the family disrepute is at the heart of his psychological trauma. He loses sense of decency when Sam cautions him from using uncomplimentary words for his father. Sam reminds him that “it would have been so simple if you could have despised him for being a weak man. But he is your father. You love him but you are ashamed of him…That’s not the way a boy grows to be a man” (p. 1437). Sam forgives him even as Hally tries to veil his obvious disappointment in himself and his failed attempt to be a man. Sam tries to put everything behind him as a way of further teaching him that manliness is not when ‘you spit in people’s face but ability to control your emotion and balance your thought.’ Framework for the Study The framework for the study is Freud’s psychoanalysis. According to Kirszner and Mandell (2001) the “major points of Freud’s theories depend on the idea that much of what is most significant to us does not take place in our conscious life” (p. 1953). According to them, Freud believes that we have been compelled to force under-ground most of our desires and urges in order to comply with society’s demands and co-exist with other members of the society. Freud also believes that some of these repressed experiences and desires are “available to us through dreams and other unconscious desires” and that interaction could often be interpreted as ‘‘the reflection of our unconscious life” (p. 1953). Some of these complex issues in the subconscious state of the minds of characters are explored by the creative writer whose intention for such thematic exploration can also be psychoanalyzed in what is termed psychobiography. Freud’s principles of psychoanalysis, critics have argued, are as useful to modern works of art as they are to works that have been produced long before their inventions. This is possible because those principles discovered by Freud and those who followed him such as Jung, Ernest Jones, and Lacan “are inherent in human nature” (p. 1954). In this study, Freud’s tripartite psyche of the id, ego and the superego was applied to the investigation of the subconscious and the conscious states of mind of male characters in the play. As a tool of analysis, psychoanalytical theory was employed in the appraisal and examination of characters in the selected play. The analysis subjected the tools of psycho-analysis to the examination of emasculated characters and the social conditions that create them in the selected play. Therefore, the tools have helped the study to interrogate some actions to know why some characters acted the way they did. The notion of “why things are what they are,” “why characters act where they do” actually helped to know whether or not the identified characters have acted on the dictate of conscience, emotion or reason. Subordinated MasculinityEnactment, Race and the Unconscious Dynamics in “Master Harold”...and the Boys Subordinated masculinity is the form of masculinity usually enacted by male character with status and traits considered inconsistent with traits and behavior of real men. The traits and status expected of real men bother on the behavior, profession, position and some human qualities associated with male personality as defined by the society. So, any deviation in the exhibition of such traits and personality render the male character unworthy and incomplete. This sense of inadequacy emasculates the man leaving him in a quandary about his identity as a man constructed so by the society where he grows to learn manliness. Of course, this sense of inadequacy results to diminishing self-esteem, humiliation, P a g e 94 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES self-pity and transferred aggression. These are the experiences of male personalities enacting subordinated masculinity. All the male characters in “Master Harold” …and the Bys are conditioned to enact subordinated masculinity as a result of one social circumstance or the other. For instance, Sam and Willie are subordinated to Master Harold, his wife and their seventeen-year old boy, Hally as a result of the apartheid policy that confers on them an inferiority status as conquered people. The social system (apartheid) under which they operate is fraught with segregation, oppression and discrimination that force or compel them to be subservient to their white masters. In such social relations, servitude becomes a defining factor that separates masters from servants. Although Sam and Willie attempt to teach Hally how to be a man, by being available for him in place of his escapist, irresponsible father, their own manliness is striped off them by the apartheid condition that makes them less than men. They are waiters in Hally mother’s restaurant under a social circumstance a little better than slavery. As a matter of fact, Hally makes a passing reference to that when he reminds Sam that the white freed his forefather from slavery. According to him, rather than Abraham Lincoln, he should have mentioned William Wilberforce as his “man of magnitude”, as they attempt to probe “into the intellectual heritage of our civilization” (p. 1425). He says: Hally: I might have guessed as much. Don’t get sentimental, Sam. You’ve never been a slave, you know. And anyway, we freed your ancestors here in South Africa before the Americans. But if you want to thank somebody on their behalf, do it to William Wilberforce (p. 1425). Hally’s attempt at making Sam understand his underprivileged position, first as a waiter and second as a black man, calls to attention his subordination to him, his father and mother. Sam’s counsel that Hally should withdraw despicable statements about his father, only further emboldens Hally to put him where he belongs. He warns him to stop meddling in his family affairs and face the job for which he is paid. Although Sam has been playing the role of a father, trying to help the young boy to have confidence in himself in the absence of his irresponsible father, the time has come for that to end as Hally grows to recognize his manhood and privileged position as a white boy in an apartheid enclave. To subordinate Sam has been a morally difficult task for Hally considering what they have gone through together and how he has helped cover up for his father’s shameful behavior. However, as Hally becomes conscious of his status as a white young man growing to adulthood, he begins to properly place Sam, his erstwhile father figure. He warns Sam: Hally: All that concerns you here, Sam is to try and do what you get paid for… keep the place clean and serve the customers. In plain words, just get on with your job. My mother is right. She’s always warning me about allowing you get too familiar. Well this time you’ve gone too far. It’s going to stop right now. (p. 1435). Sam is shocked beyond words. All the sense of being an “acting father” providing the moral stability for a young white boy growing to become a responsible young man pale into insignificance as Hally P a g e 95 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES moves to assert his authority. Sam’s subordination is a function of his status as a man of colour under a discriminating apartheid policy, the age difference between him and Hally coupled with being a waiter at Harold’s restaurant. The age difference is a strong indicator of his subordination. Sam, a man in his mid-forties made subservient to a seventeen year-old white boy. The feeling of inferiority cows Sam so much so that when Hally addresses him like a small boy, he could not respond, even though he wishes to. In an attempt to provoke a response, Hally reminds him “you are still a servant here, and don’t forget it. (still no response) And as far as my father is concerned, all you need to remember is that he is your boss” (p. 1435). Sam’s humiliation gets to its head when Hally orders him not to walk out on him. “Don’t turn your back on me! I haven’t finished talking” (p. 1435). Hally tries his hands on a couple of things not only to humiliate Sam but to put him down, in order to whip him to submission. He demands that Sam should start addressing him as ‘Master Harold’ like Willie: Hally: It’s good news. Because that is exactly what Master Harold wants from now on. Think of it as a little lesson in respect, Sam, that’s long overdue, and I hope you remember it as well as you do your geography. I can tell you now that somebody who will be glad to hear I’ve finally given it to you will be my Dad. Yes! He agrees with my mum. He’s always going about it as well. “You must teach the boys to show you more respect, my son” (p. 1436). Sam enacts subordinated masculinity like Willie, his friend, basically because of apartheid social system that also compels economic dependency. All these factors combine to emasculate them. Both Sam and Willie are carrying double yoke first as men of color and secondly, being subjected to social and economic deprivation. He feels diminishing self-esteem when Hally spits in his face. The man in him dies. He feels empty and despised as a failure. In an emotion-laden voice he says: Sam: (his violence ebbing away into defeat as quickly as it flooded) You don’t know all of what you’ve just done… Master Harold, it’s not just that you’ve made me feel dirtier than I’ve ever been in my life… I mean, how do I wash off yours and your father’s filth?... I’ve also failed. A long time ago I promised myself I was going to try and do something, but you’ve just shown me… Master Harold… that I’ve failed (p. 1437). The verbal assault above is a function of self-violation, self-pity and a sad reminder of Sam’s open sore bruised by a young boy he suffers so much to raise in the absence of his drunk father. Hally also enacts subordinated masculinity due largely to the psychological emasculation he suffers as a young boy who has to live with the shameful behavior of his father. He feels ashamed of his father who is not only physically disabled but weak, effete and irresponsible. His father’s behavior as a shameless drunk gives Hally the image of a son of an irresponsible father. To him, this image is a stigma he continues to fight to stave off without success. The image becomes to him a moral burden he strives to cast off in order to assert himself as Master Harold especially to Sam. This explains why he doesn’t want his father at home, rather he compels his mother to hold him down on the hospital bed. P a g e 96 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES No wonder when his mother says she has discharged Harold from the hospital, Hally becomes agitated, furious and rude. He queries his mother: Hally: Why did you do it, mum?... Well, I just hope you know what you’ve let us in for! It’s the end of the peace and quiet we’ve been having… I told you to be firm with him… then you and the nurses should have held him down, taken his crutches away… I’m sick and tired of emptying stinking chamber pots full of phlegm and piss (p. 1434). However, when Hally tries to assert his authority in an attempt to probably prove his manhood, his father’s shameful image comes haunting him as a prelude to the humiliation and self-hurt that will eventually humble him. Sam has counseled him not to make his father a butt of painful jokes no matter what. He says: Sam: No Hally, you musn’t do it. Take back those words and ask for forgiveness! It is a terrible sin for a son to mock his father with jokes like that. You’ll be punished if you carry on. Your father is your father, even if he is a cripple man (p. 1435). Sam’s intervention is actually a prelude to his emasculation and the dilemma he finds himself in the bid to be his own man and assert his manhood. Subordinated masculinity enactment usually provokes bottled emotion as the helpless male personality tries to transfer aggression by activating masculine defense mechanism as a face-saving strategy. Hally in this circumstance responds by spitting in Sam’s face for opening an old wound of his father’s humiliating escapade which Sam has witnessed and helped launder. For spitting in his face, Sam strips Hally naked by taking him down memory lane reminding him how he has helped pick his drunk father from the street and clean him up. He says; Sam: It was the old jubilee days, after dinner one night. I was in my room. You came in and just stood against the wall, looking down at the ground, and only after I’d asked you what you wanted, what was wrong, I don’t know how many times did you speak and even then so softly I almost didn’t hear you. “Sam, please help me to go and fetch my Dad” Remember? He was dead drunk on the floor of the central Hotel Bar… Then I loaded him onto my back like a baby and carried him back to the boarding house with you following behind carrying his crutches…(p. 1437). Hally becomes dejected as the memory comes back to him. He wishes it has never happened, because his ego is bruised beyond measure even as he feels a sense of guilt for biting a finger that fed him. Hally suffers Freudian guilt complex because of the overwhelming unconscious guilt as a result of his father’s shameful behavior. Rather than being proud of a father’s exploits, Hally is ashamed of the ugly past being unveiled to him by Sam, his father figure, to whom he has been ungrateful. Reminiscence of a man in pain of a failed project, Sam shakes his head as he remembers in retrospect: P a g e 97 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES Sam: A crowded main street with all the people watching a little white boy following his drunk father on a nigger’s back! I felt for that little boy… Master Harold. I felt for him. After that we still had to clean him up, remember? He’d messed in his trouser, so we had to clean him up and get him into bed (p. 1437). The shame of his father’s ugly past psychologically castrates Hally and humbles him in a way that makes him despise his father as a weak man. He loses his self-esteem and in dilemma of what to do with his quest to asserting his manhood and the moral guilt of a shameful drunk as a father. Sam reminds him “After we got him to bed you came back with me to my room and sat in a corner and carried on just looking down at the ground… You went around as if you owed the world an apology for being alive. That’s not the way a boy grows to be a man” (p. 1437). Hally enacts subordinated masculinity despite failed attempts to assert his manhood via a masculine status conferred by the apartheid situation and an average economic power as the son of a restaurant owner. His helplessness comes about as a result of his father’s ugly image and irresponsibility as a role model. Sam arrogates Hally’s dilemma and pain to his father’s undesirable behavior and absentee syndrome when he reminds him “That is not the way a boy grows up to be a man!... But the one person who should have been teaching you what that means was the cause of your shame” (p. 1437). In addition to subordinated masculinity is hypo-masculinity which is now redefined as toxic masculinity. It is a form of extreme masculinity enactment where the male character seeks the total suppression of the opposite sex and over gratifies his sexual prowess as a man. It is in itself a form of weakness in the enactment of masculinity by men considered effete in all ramifications. For instance, Harold is discovered to enact this form of masculinity as a man in search of masculine identity. Harold’s hypo-masculinity enactment comes to the fore when Sam and Willie who are the waiters in the family restaurant reject him as their boss. He is weak physically as a cripple dependent on crutches to walk, a regular patrons in hospital, frail, a drunk, shameful and irresponsible father. He fails to be available as a father to his son, Hally, and a pain in the neck for the entire family. Harold loses respect and selfesteem before his wife, his son Hally, the waiters and every individual black and white who knows him as a drunk. Harold has relinquished the masculine gender role as a bread winner and emotional stabilizer to his wife who Hally says is the ‘boss.’ According to him; Hally: He didn’t look at all good last night. How can he get better so quickly?... Then very obviously you must say no. Be firm with him. You are the boss… order him to get back into bed at once! If he’s going to behave like a child, treat him like one!... All it needs is for you to put your foot down. Don’t take no for an answer. (p. 1429). All the four characters experience a sense of inadequacy that makes them feel less than men. As much as they try to assert their manhood, certain social and psychological circumstances come together to emasculate them causing their perplexity as to what to do. When a man suffers rejection and humiliation, there is high tendency for him to feel a sense of inadequacy, frailty, weakness and emotional wreckage which are all indices of hypo-masculinity enactment. P a g e 98 | 185 VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JULY, 2024 : BEYOND BABEL: BU JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND HUMANITIES Such experiences combine to cause dilemma which necessitates the activation of masculine defense mechanism that results to both physical and psychological violence. Harold’s rejection is not just as a result of his shameful image, but because of his violent disposition to his wife especially when he is drunk. That is why Hally warns his mother “I’m not going to be the peacemaker anymore. I’m warning you now; when the two of you start fighting again. I’m leaving home… mom, if you start crying…” (p. 1434). Willie, Sam, Hally and Harold, all enact subordinated masculinity as a result of the apartheid policy for the blacks and psychosocial circumstances for the whites who could not assert their manhood despite apartheid privileges. In both men’s masculine mystique reside Freudian unconscious dynamics of male’s behavior which is a function of ‘‘forces we do not recognize and therefore cannot control.’’ Dobie (2009:52) Prominent among these unconscious dynamics are fear of femininity, fear of emasculation, diminishing selfesteem and anxiety. Men usually perceive loss of power and control to women as a ‘‘threat to their masculine gender-role identity. Loss of power and control may imply loss of masculine gender-role identity, thereby stimulating defensiveness, and deep emotion’(Kahn 1984). Masculine mystique usually results when gender role is distorted and this eventually gives rise to dilemma, a byproduct of social, economic and psychological emasculation. Hally in Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the Boys enacts a masculinity that is at variance with Surdyvant’s or Levee’s in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey Black Bottom, in terms of masculine mystique because of his belief in his mother as the head of the family. He does not see anything manly about his father. As a matter of fact, his sarcastic description of his father as a ‘cripple’ is a passing reference to his father’s physical disability and psychological failure as a father. He imagines the cripples on the dance floor, the sight of their quickstep and the fun it will elicit. The group’s failure in dance competition, he sarcastically says, is as a result of the cripples they leave out of the dance. HALLY (now totally reckless): …That’s why we always end up on our backsides on the dance floor. They’re also out there dancing… like a bunch of broken spiders trying to do the quickstep! (An ugly attempt at laughter.) When you come to think of it, it’s a bloody comical sight. I mean, it’s bad enough on two legs…but one and a pair of crutches! Hell, no, Sam. That’s enough to turn that dance floor into a shambles…p.1435. Here, it is not only the dance floor that is in shambles in Hally’s estimation but his entire life as a boy growing to become a man. The dance floor serves as the setting for his masculinity performance while his wobbly outing as a metaphor for his abandonment by his escapist father who he sees as a complete failure. Therefore, to Hally, masculine mystique is performed in the reverse because a father with a fractured masculinity can never nurture a young boy to become a man. No wonder, he sees the man in his mother not Harold, his father. For instance, he says treat him like a baby. You are the boss etc Hally in Fugard’s “Master Harold”… and the Boys, unlike Levee in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1985)suffers psychological trauma arising from the absence and irresponsibility of his father, Harold. Masculinity enactment to Hally, is strange and confusing. What constitutes manhood is not clearly spelt out for him as a white young boy by both Sam and Willie, the two black Africans who