Question

SAM: . . . They’d phoned for your Mom, but you were the only one at home. And do you remember how we did it? You went in first by yourself to ask permission for me to go into the bar. Then I loaded him on to my back like a baby and carried him back to the boarding house with you following behind carrying his crutches. (Shaking his head as he remembers.) A crowded Main Street with all the people watching a little white boy following his drunk father on his back! P. 36 According to this passage, what does this interaction say about Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Answer 1

I do not know if this is a multiple choice question or not, but I would contend that the interaction speaks of how segregated Port Elizabeth was in the 1950s, during the apartheid era. This passage (from "Master Harold"... and the boys) is part of a heated conversation between a young Afrikaner, Hally, and the two African servants that work at his house, Sam and Willie. The relationship between them has always been good, but Hally, who has just found out that his alcoholic father is about to return home from the hospital, suddenly treats Sam and Willie very rudely. Sam wants to smack Hally at first, but he then calms down and starts recalling the day when he helped him fetching his drunk father from a bar. Even though Hally was just a little boy back then, he was the one that entered the bar first and asked permission for Sam to go in. Sam remembers the faces (surely reproving and astonished) of the people who saw them passing by, "a little white boy following his drunk father on his servant's (Sam uses a much more offensive term) back."