Violence, Cruelty, and Power Theme Analysis

Although Boesman and Lena, the titular main characters of the play, are a couple, Fugard makes it immediately clear that the characters have become largely devoid of affection for each other. As they feel powerless to fight their arduous circumstances in apartheid-era South Africa, they bicker, taunt, and abuse each other, as well as the old man who wanders into their camp in the middle of the night. Over the course of the play, the dynamics shift between them in terms of who has the upper hand. Thus, Fugard depicts cruelty and violent abuse as tools for the characters to feel powerful and have a degree of control over their lives.

Initially, Boesman has the upper hand, which he adopts by beating and berating Lena. Fugard quickly establishes this the norm for how Boesman treats Lena, even from the characters’ entrance: Boesman walks in front of Lena, ignoring her pleas to stop because she is exhausted, and refuses to tell her where they are walking. He also delivers constant threats of beatings and other aggressive language. That morning, when Boesman and Lena were forced to evacuate their pondok, Boesman dropped three empty bottles (which they would have exchanged for money) and blamed Lena, beating her and leaving countless bruises on her body. It quickly becomes clear that this is a pattern of Boesman’s. When Lena sees the old man wandering in the dark, she invites him over, which angers Boesman and he moves violently towards her as she cowers. Later, when Lena tries to open a bottle of wine without Boesman’s permission, he grabs a stick and moves to beat her with it. Lena hides behind the old man, yelling “Watch! He’s going to kill me.” Lena ultimately understands where this violence comes from, as she remarks towards the end of the play, “When Boesman doesn’t understand something, he hits it.” This is representative of the apartheid system as a whole. When Boesman feels powerless and struggles to understand why his life is so miserable, he gets angry and reacts with violence. The violence is a way of allowing Boesman to feel like he has control—both over Lena, and over his life.

Physical violence is not the only way that Boesman gains power over Lena—he is also manipulative and cruel to her, making her question her reality over and over again. At the beginning of the play, Boesman refuses to even talk to Lena. She prattles on with no response from him. She begs him to talk to her, saying, “Don’t be like that tonight, man. This is a lonely place. Just us two. Talk to me […] I’ll go mad.” He is purposefully driving her to feel like she is losing her mind as another means of manipulation. Boesman again makes Lena feel that she is going insane when she tries to reconstruct the paths they have taken and the order of the various towns they have visited. Boesman purposefully makes her misremember the order that she comes up with to completely unmoor her from her past journey. He laughs at her, performing vulgar pantomimes of her confusion. Laughter is a key part of Boesman’s manipulation, as he laughs not out of joy, but in order to torment Lena. This violence and cruelty culminates when Boesman reveals to Lena that he, in fact broke the empty bottles, not Lena—and he had beaten her for it. Thus, he claims power over her not only through physical violence, but also in completely reshaping her reality and changing her memory of various events.

Although Boesman has the upper hand throughout most of the book, in the end, Lena flips the dynamic on him by manipulating Boesman’s sense of reality. After the old man dies (peacefully) in their camp, Lena convinces Boesman that the white men will come to lock Boesman up for the old man’s death. Fugard writes, “Boesman moves uncertainly towards the body, unable to ignore the possibility with which she is tormenting him.” Her ideas have become just as insidious as his. Lena also then convinces Boesman that the old man is not, in fact, dead, causing him to beat the dead body and make it look even more like Boesman originally killed him. When Boesman frantically packs their things, trying to get away from the body, Lena laughs at him—again, flipping their dynamic and fulfilling the idea that she has taken the power over him.

By the conclusion of the play, Boesman and Lena settle on a plane of equality. They stop laughing at each other, and Boesman seems unable to beat Lena. He confesses the true path that they took to get to Swartkops, giving her some peace of mind. Lena also instructs Boesman to begin their journey away from Swartkops, “but not so fast,” demonstrating that she now has some control over their pace. As the play ends, Boesman and Lena walk together into the darkness, in contrast to the way they walked in. Ultimately, the characters understand that their powerlessness cannot be remedied by violence and cruelty towards each other: it is an arbitrary power that actually gains them nothing but additional hardship at each other’s hands.