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power, self, and other: the absurd in 'Boesman and Lena.'
Athol Fugard Issue
Twentieth Century Literature, Winter 1993, by Craig W. McLuckie.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n4_v39/ai_16087648/pg_5/?tag=content;col1 [Accessed:
2011/02/21.
As the substantive body of criticism about Samuel Beckett's theatre attests, it is difficult
not to impose a variety of contexts onto his work.(1) Athol Fugard's theatre,
alternatively, restricts and focuses one's perceptions so that it is difficult to see more
than a single context. More simply put, an audience reads its world into Waiting for
Godot, while it reads another world out of Boesman and Lena. The authors' respective
uses of absurdity have led to this state of affairs.
Boesman and Lena is as explicit a title as Waiting for Godot. In the latter title, as
numerous others have pointed out, unidentified individuals are waiting for God. Control
of the individual's fate is placed outside his/her hands into those of a deity; human
responsibility is diminished. Others have offered less useful biographical interpretations:
Godot is named after a French cyclist, or is the French slang word for boot (Bair 382).
While offering an additional dimension to the punning that Beckett indulges in, these
latter correlations are not particularly useful for those seeking to explicate the play.
Beckett has insisted that the meaning of the title is unimportant (Bair 382). Flippancy,
mischievousness, or authorial right may be invoked to explain or support Beckett's
position, but the play is an act of communication, a dramatic utterance, which begins
with a statement of import. The gerund "waiting" in Beckett's title alerts the
reader/audience to the fact that if the communicative act is to mean anything, if
grammar means anything, the state of waiting is both subject and action of Beckett's
play. What does it mean to wait; what is it like to wait? The prepositional phrase that
completes the title specifies whom (or what) one is waiting for. It clarifies the subject
and the act.
Boesman and Lena is simply the names of two characters in a play inhabited by three.
Obviously the lack of identification of the third individual gives these two more

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importance than the unnamed African. More specifically, Lena's song illustrates that
"Boesman" is not merely a name, it is also a label and an identification of one's culture:
"Boesman is 'n Boesman / Maar hy dra 'n Hotnot hoed" [Boesman is a Bushman / But
he wears a Hottentot's hat] (184). (2) "Bushman" is a political label, for the Afrikaners
use it as a general term of abuse against the Africans and "coloureds." That Boesman
wears a Hottentot's hat should not go unnoticed because a Bushman is considered less
civilized, and so lower on the social scale, than a Hottentot. Boesman, therefore, can be
said to spurn his identity and falsely attempt to assume another to (re)gain a sense of
dignity, albeit in the discourse and practices prevalent in the white scale of values, not
his own. Lena, on the other hand, seeks a definition of her being: the questions she
poses Boesman in this regard link her to him, and he to her, as inextricably as does the
simple coordinating conjunction of the title. Where Boesman seeks validation of his
assumed identity through Lena, Lena craves a witness to her existence through
Boesman.
An important final point on the titles is the remaining abstraction in Beckett's because
neither spatial nor temporal concerns come into play. Fugard's title is more spatially
specific, as the assessment of the name Boesman indicates. Lena's exclamation of
"Mud! Swartkops!" (143) fixes the location further--they are in the barren Swartkops
region of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Temporally, Boesman and Lena are at one
stage in a long cycle of walks:
Redhouse to Missionvale . . . Missionvale to Bethelsdorp. Back again to Redhouse . . .
Then to Kleinskool. Kleinskool to Veeplaas. Veeplaas to here. First time. After that,
Redhouse . . . Bethelsdorp, Korsten, Veeplaas, back here the second time. Then
Missionvale again, Veeplaas, Korsten, and then here, now. (196)
It is the walking, not the temporary stops in that are most important. The absurdity of
their condition is found in this incessant, pointless, repetitive cycle of walks. The play
could have been called Walking for Godot to emphasize the importance and,
paradoxically, the meaninglessness of the action. Any similarities between the two plays
ends here, though, for Boesman and Lena know their "Godot" and his purpose: "Blame
the whiteman. Bulldozer!" (144). The white, in his "slum clearance," determines their
existence with: "Vat jou goed en trek!" [Take your things and go!] (144 and glossary,

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202). It is an irony that those who commemorate the Great Trek away from the
imposition of British rule insist that others undertake a trek away from Afrikaner rule (or,
minimally, habitation). Where can they go? Boesman's catalogue of towns implies the
same end--a return to the walking, for settlers have claimed all the land.
Fugard, like Beckett and Camus, seeks an answer to Camus' question of why these
people do not commit suicide when faced with the absurdity and squalor imposed on
their lives. In Boesman and Lena the answer to the question is forestalled by the lack of
a complete and truthful consciousness of the self. Lena is preoccupied with uncovering
her identity, which she believes is held in her past and in an other's recognition of her.
Boesman, contrarily, fears an encounter with his self because his false sense of identity
might be brought into question.
Lena's arrival on stage immediately sets up their relationship and their identities. She
follows Boesman onto the stage and asks "Here?" (143). Both the action and the
question are a deferral of power to him. Like Lucky in relation to Pozzo in Godot, Lena
exists as a slave to Boesman's position as master. And like Estragon in Godot, Lena
lacks a sense of the chronology of their lives: "Haai! Was it this morning?" (146). In
questioning Boesman she gives him the authority to decide her history and identity,
while Boesman's remark--that she should have been walking backward (147)--reveals
the ties of her sense of self to the past, to history. Boesman is happy to occupy the seat
of power in this relationship because he does not have to reflect (look back) on his
oppressed life. Instead, he has become the oppressor, white man reincarnated.
Boesman's position is a false one, for he, too, is determined. In the most general sense,
the oppressive forces of the white government determine him. His plea that whites set
him free from the burden of a squatter's life is a false front, as Lena attests:
[Holds up a clenched fist in an imitation of Boesman.]
That's how he talks to the world. . . . Ja, so it goes. He walks in front. I walk behind. It
used to be side by side, with jokes. (168)

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Lena is both bitter and ironic here. She is bitter because their equality (side-by-side) in
the face of adversity is gone, as is their earlier happiness. The irony is evidenced by
Boesman's bad faith, for his revolt against his condition is not one of solidarity, an
acceptance and authentication of the condition; his "revolt" is denial. He talks with anger
and beats Lena black and blue, while acquiescing to the real, identified oppressor:
Whiteman's wasting his time trying to help us. Pushed it [their shanty] over this morning
and here it is again. . . . We're whiteman's rubbish. That's why he's so beneukt [fed up]
with us. He can't get rid of his rubbish. (180-81)
Boesman's cowed attitude reveals his inability and unwillingness to make the necessary
connection between present conditions and origins. Their food, clothing, shelter, and
selves may be considered rubbish by whites, but all rubbish is created: white society is
the cause of their status. Boesman fails to take an independent or even a skeptical view
of the white perspective that is privileged by raw power.(3) If Boesman made these
connections, he would realize that whites could as easily label him valuable (even in the
cynical sense of taking the African's labors for white-owned corporations into account).
A more humane attitude, trite as it sounds, is a beginning. Failing to connect the cause
with the effect, Boesman allows his ignorance and the whites to colonize him.
Similarly, Boesman's utterance of "Dankie, baas" [Thank you, boss] (179 and glossary,
199), is a reflection of his subservience, of his inability to escape a particular frame of
mind.(he copies whites)So he becomes an oppressor, bullying Lena into saying
"Please, my bassie" [Please, my little boss] (176 and glossary, 198), in an attempt to
dispel his servility. Intellectual engagement with whites, or at least, given the raw power
he faces, engagement within himself of the whites' false claim to power, would inhibit
this type of intra-race brutality. The stage that Fugard sets is the bleakest: Lena's lack of
belief in Boesman's position and his actions reveals her strength (qualified by her need
for his "answers") but also causes him to wage psychological and physical warfare on
her--just as the white oppressors, because of their false and degenerate humanity, are
waging warfare on Africans.
Lena's response to the oppression is to seek human contact, warmth, a sense of
community to stave off the madness that their absurd position entails. Boesman denies

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her these comforts and reaffirms his oppressive role, for the action his role involves
helps him to stave off thoughts of the absurdity and the servility of his actions, as well as
the related guilt: "Look at you! Listen to you! You're asking for a lot, Lena. Must I go
mad as well?" (150). Thus Boesman continues to act in bad faith; he refuses to face his
absurdity, to see his reflection in Lena. He is left, his consciousness unawakened,
inhabiting despair. So, he will not go to Veeplaas: there are other people there, other
reminders of his shame (150).
Although she is conscious of Boesman's faults, Lena remains inextricably tied to him,
for she believes he holds the key to her past, and so her identity:
LENA: Do you really know, Boesman? Where and how?
BOESMAN: Yes!
LENA: Tell me. [He laughs.] Help me, Boesman!
BOESMAN: What? Find yourself? (156)
Unable to extricate a sense of herself from Boesman, Lena pursues the problem alone,
and produces a small identity--if she can be hit and bruised, then she exists
(158).Moreover, if she is Lena, identified by her servile, oppressed relationship to him,
then he is Boesman, the oppressor. She can affirm, therefore, that they are "Boesman
and Lena" (158), a microcosmic world that reflects the positions of groups (rather than
individuals) in the larger world they inhabit. This consciousness of their roles, their
relationship to one another, is an awareness of a small community, and of the position
of the self within that community. We do not find such an explicit awareness in Beckett's
characters.
Lena, dissatisfied with this minimal sense of self, seeks witnesses to her existence. The
witnesses--"Dog and a dead man" (197)--are as marginal as her Cartesian proof of
existence. Similarly, when Boesman gives Lena an exact account of their past she
realizes that "It doesn't explain anything" (197); it is therefore absurd, meaningless.
Lena consequently seeks the only path open to her, a sense of communal interest in
her existence. She had instructed Boesman to "Try it the other way. Open your fist, put

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your hand on me. I'm here. I'm Lena" (186). It is a polemical statement directed both to
the individual, who forms the foundation of the community, and to the varying
communities of race present within South Africa. The message seems appropriate to
South Africa, but the scene depicts two people of the same race; thus Fugard could be
criticized on the basis that in the strict sense of South Africa's (thankfully now departed)
Population Registration Act the races are separate, apartheid remains in place. This
would seem an appropriate interpretation, given the lack of communication between
black and "coloured" in the play. Yet, if one gives Fugard the benefit of the doubt, the
use of "coloured" people seems an artistically exacting touch--as people of "mixed"
blood Boesman and Lena are of indeterminate race, neither black nor white--enabling
the characters to represent all races. Whether such generosity in interpretation would
"wash" with the people long identified by color/race is a different question. There is a
clear political allegory in Lena's acceptance of the black man and the beating of him by
Boesman, who takes the white role--"coloureds" must unite with blacks, not aspire to
acceptance by whites, if they are to find their true place.
Without a true place for the duration of the play, Boesman and Lena walk. It is an apt
metaphor, in all the circularity the act of walking takes on in the play, which justifies
Dennis Walder's comment that
"Overwhelmed" by Camus' writings . . . Fugard follows him to the brink of despair,
where, nevertheless, may be found "finally the only certainty, the flesh": living "without
hope, without appeal," without the traditional certainties of religion or history, we may be
able to continue after all, relying on . . . "truths the hand can touch." (AF 53)
Boesman and Lena, in spite of their age, and in spite of the darkness, still have
"daylights left in [them]" (197). So Lena's decision to rejoin Boesman is a conscious
effort on her part to resolve their problems one way (annihilation) or the other
(recognition of self and other and the inherent worth and value of each). The resolution
ultimately rests with Boesman (the oppressor) and his ability to change.
(introduction)--Boesman and Lena is a response to the institutionally created absurdity
inherent in the lives of Africans, "coloureds," and Indians under the policy of apartheid.
Fugard thus seems to view absurdity as something specific to certain social or political

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contexts; at least this is the view that surfaces because the play is set in South Africa,
and race predominates within that society and in Fugard's text. However, Fugard is a
more universal thinker than such an interpretation suggests, as a careful reading of his
notebooks reveals. Fugard, having set the play in the region he knows best,
extrapolates from the situation under apartheid to more universal concerns about the
relationship of human beings to each other. Post-apartheid productions of his play will
confirm its continued worth and vitality. So, in Boesman and Lena, as in Albee's The
Death of Bessie Smith,
The racial situation functions . . . as a potent image of man's self-inflicted absurdity. Here
. . . is that lack of compassion which Albee [with Fugard] sees as a mark of
contemporary society. (Bigsby 24)
Absurdity, for Fugard, is therefore a part of life, an obstacle to be overcome by an
equitable awareness of self and other, and the other's reciprocation of this awareness.
Both Beckett and Fugard follow Camus' path into the absurd. In his deliberate omission
of spatial and temporal data, Beckett creates a stark world that becomes a universal
metaphor for the absurd nature of existence in both the physical and metaphysical
realms. Fugard, less rooted in the metaphysical, provides exact information on his
characters' spatial locale and thus defines absurdity as a condition resulting from the
human power structures that govern life, not as the condition of life itself.

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NOTES
1 See, for example, Martin Esslin's recounting of United States prisoners' responses to
Waiting for Godot (20), or Fugard's description of black Africa responses in his
Notebooks: 1960-1977 (62-63).
2 Translations from Boesman and Lena are from the glossary at the back of Blood Knot
and Other Plays. The translation for this passage is not there, however, but is in the
glossary to Fugard's Boesman and Lena and Other Plays (New York: Oxford UP, 1973)
298.
3 For whatever reason, Fugard's characters are rarely aware of the mass movements of
their time: black consciousness, the African National Congress, the Communist Party of
South Africa, the Pan Africanist Congress, Fanonian psychiatry, etc. Either Fugard
believes that his characters would not come into contact with these movements or
Fugard himself has not, so the question of their inclusion is a moot point for him.
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