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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Boesman and Lena, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Oppression, Freedom, and Self-Worth
Violence, Cruelty, and Power
Racism and Status
Connection vs. Isolation
Summary
Analysis
Boesman, a Coloured man, enters the empty stage. He is overburdened with old household items (a mattress, an apple box, some cooking utensils) and is dragging a piece of corrugated iron. He is barefoot and has old, faded clothing. Boesman chooses a spot and starts to set down his load. A few seconds later, Lena appears, following him. She is “similarly burdened” and carries a load on her head. She is wearing “one of those sad dresses that reduce the body to an angular, gaunt cipher of poverty.”
Despite the lack of scenery, Fugard immediately situates the audience within the world of the two title characters. By establishing them as Coloured, or mixed-race, he places them within the racist system of apartheid. Additionally, he shows the oppression they face in a very visceral way, by depicting Boesman and Lena carrying all of their possessions as they enter.
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Lena looks at Boesman and asks, “Here?” He spits. She sets down her bundle with “almost painful” relief and sits in exhaustion. Lena notices then that they are sitting in mud, and deduces that they must be in Swartkops. She sees a bird overhead and shakes her fist at it, yelling, “Jou moer! [You cunt!]”
By revealing that Lena doesn’t know where she is, Fugard establishes Boesman’s mental manipulation. By not telling Lena where they are going, she is forced to yield to his direction and walk idly behind him, wondering how much longer and how much farther.
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Lena asks Boesman why he walked so quickly, monologuing about the difficult journey and the “rotten” state of the Swartkops mud. She acknowledges that each time they are forced to walk, it feels heavier and heavier. She recalls the morning, when “whiteman” had told them “Vat jou goed en trek! [Take your things and go!]”
Lena asks to have a dop (bit of wine). When she notes that Boesman has not responded and his hard stare, she tells him not to be angry at her—to blame the whiteman and his bulldozer. She recalls how happy Boesman was in the morning, asking the whiteman to destroy the pondok (shanty) and thanking him when he had done so. At the same time, the Coloured people were running around trying to save their things. Boesman had laughed at them all.
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Boesman finally responds, telling Lena that the next time they are forced to walk, he will keep walking until she’s too tired to talk. She counters that that almost happened on this walk. He notes that as soon as she put down her bundle, she started her “rubbish” and “nonsense.” Lena protests, saying that she hasn’t said anything untrue. All she has said is that she’s tired, and that Boesman was happy this morning.
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Boesman says “aggressively” that he’s “always happy,” which prompts Lena to say that when she wants to cry, he always wants to laugh instead. Boesman asks her why she was crying this morning, because “the whiteman pushed over a rotten old pondok?” He says that the whiteman did them a favor by pushing it over, and so he laughed. He adds that he can still laugh at her, because she’s “a big joke.”
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Lena again protests, wondering whether crying makes her a “big joke.” She argues that it was too early in the morning to have to load up her entire life and walk—and that she wasted an entire day of her life walking. Boesman tells Lena that if her legs worked as hard as her tongue, they would have arrived a long time ago.
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Lena argues that she was tired and wanted to rest, but Boesman reminds her that she was looking for a dog that had grown fond of her, and was constantly looking backwards.
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Lena tells Boesman that he couldn’t have been in much of a hurry because he was lost, going in circles several times and dragging her along with him. She confesses that her life feels old today, like “something that’s been used too long. The old pot that leaks, the blanket that can’t even keep the fleas warm.”
Lena also tells Boesman that she was still sore where he hit her for breaking three empty bottles, for which they could have gotten 10 cents in exchange. Two white children came and watched her count the bruises, and she asked if their mother needed a “girl” to work in the house. Boesman laughs at her. Lena, wounded, tells him that the children also laughed and said that they didn’t want her.
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Boesman laughs again and asks, sarcastically, “You think I want you?” Lena answers earnestly that he had loaded up his bundle, said “Come!” and continued to walk. She recalls that he didn’t even look at her, and so she felt she had to follow him, not even knowing where they were going. But once she felt the mud between her toes, she knew it was Swartkops—they would be digging for “mudprawns and worms.”
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Lena wonders why Boesman brought her to Swartkops, recalling that the Swartkops has never been a good place for them. She asks if he remembers when the river’s water came up so high that they woke up with all their things floating down to a nearby bridge. She laughs at him, saying that he had been so afraid that he ran the wrong way.
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Lena asks Boesman when the last time they were at the Swartkops was. He deliberately ignores her question. She asks him to answer her, saying that it’s a “lonely place” and if she has no one to talk to, she’ll go mad. Boesman says that she’s been talking to herself since the first time they had to trek from Coega to Veeplaas. She had cried, and then she had talked the rest of the way—so he stopped listening to her “noise.”
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Lena continues to ask Boesman questions: when they came to Swartkops last, why didn’t they go to Veeplaas so they could be around other people, and what’s the matter with him? Boesman continues to ignore her, starting to build a shelter from the various materials he has picked up along their walk.
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Lena tries to reconstruct their path to and from the Swartkops the previous time they had been there, believing they came from Redhouse to the Swartkops, and then went to Korsten. Boesman questions whether this was the correct order but refuses to tell her the real answer. He walks away in search of more materials with which to build the shelter.
Lena starts to build a fire. She chatters to herself, saying that the Swartkops is “a thin slice” with no jam or condensed milk on it. She then wonders if they could buy some condensed milk if they dig for lots of prawns.
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Lena remembers that they came to Swartkops after Redhouse, as she had thought. A farmer found their camp and chased them away with a gun, and Boesman “went down that road like a rabbit.” She laughs, recalling Boesman saying, “Moenie skiet, baas! [Don’t shoot, master!]” And when she found him, he was angry they had lost all of their things again.
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Lena starts to look around her, reconstructing her path from her memory of sun’s positions. It takes concerted effort, but she concludes that her path took her from Redhouse, to Swartkops, to Veeplaas, to Korsten (where she met the dog), and then, finally, back to Swartkops. She is thrilled with herself for figuring it out, and starts to hum happily to herself while stoking the fire.
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When Boesman returns, he is suspicious of Lena’s good humor. She continues to hum, and he asks her to show him the wine to assure him she hasn’t been drinking. He takes out the bottles and sees that they are full. Lena starts to dance and makes up a song about condensed milk. Boesman warns her that she’s going to get “a bloody good klap.”
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Lena doesn’t let these threats phase her. She tells Boesman that she figured out their path and rattles off the towns for him. Boesman shakes his head and laughs at her. Lena grows uncertain, asking if it’s wrong. Boesman refuses to answer her, but as she begs he gives her a different sequence of towns. She grows even more confused when Boesman brings up towns they’ve been that she hasn’t named, like Bethelsdorp, Missionvale, and Kleinskool. Lena “moves around helplessly, trying to orientate herself.”
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Lena asks Boesman to help her. Instead, he performs “a grotesque pantomime of a search,” calling out for Lena as though she is lost somewhere else. Lena looks at him “with hatred” as he laughs, calling him a “pig.” Boesman tells her that one day, she’s going to be so confused she’ll ask him who she is.
Lena tells Boesman that she wants to be someone else. She wants to be called Mary; that way she can leave and live another life. Boesman tells her she’d get a “bloody good hiding.” When Lena protests that she’d go to the police, Boesman reminds her that she tried that once and the police did nothing. Lena tells Boesman that one day he'll beat her too much and get the death penalty as a result. Boesman informs Lena that he would never get the death penalty for killing her.
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Boesman finishes the pondok and looks at it, calling it “useless” and “another vrot ou huisie vir die vrot mens [rotten old house for the rotten people].” He tells Lena that it’s all she’ll ever know. Lena longs for the time when they worked in Veeplaas for a man who had a room in his backyard for them, a “real room, with a door and all that.”
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Boesman tells Lena to forget the past, saying, “Now is the only time in your life.” Lena grows frustrated, replying, “I wasn’t born today. I want my life. Where’s it?” Boesman responds that her life is in the mud. Lena is disgusted by the prospect of sleeping in the pondok, especially with Boesman, because he never speaks to her. She says, “sometimes loneliness is two,” and that she’s sick of Boesman.
Boesman dares her to leave and walk somewhere else. They bicker back and forth, until Lena decides to go. She takes a few steps away from the fire, and Boesman points out the different paths she could take—finally giving her the correct directions for the towns around them, proving that he knows his way.
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Lena stands still, pointing that there’s an old man out there in the darkness. Boesman is suspicious, but Lena waves and tries to call him over. Boesman moves toward her violently to get her to stop, but she moves away quickly and continues to call. She tells Boesman, “Sit in the dark and talk to myself because you don’t hear me anymore? No, Boesman! I want him!”
An old man arrives out of the dark, whom Boesman and Lena immediately realize is a “kaffer.” The old man greets them in Xhosa, and Lena returns a greeting, introducing herself. Boesman makes fun of her for being so formal: “Shake his hand! Fancy Hotnot like you.” The old man starts to murmur in Xhosa, but Lena doesn’t understand him. She asks if he knows any English or Afrikaans. Lena asks Boesman how to say “sit and rest” in his language. “Hamba! [Go!]” Boesman replies.
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Lena scolds Boesman and invites the old man to sit. When he doesn’t understand, she gets angry and says, “You deaf? Sit!” He does so. Lena starts to get water for him, but Boesman prevents her from giving any to the old man. Lena tries to tell the old man about her and Boesman, and how they got kicked out of Korsten that morning. She tries to commiserate with him, saying, “it’s a hard life for us brown people.” Boesman counters that the old man isn’t “brown people, he’s black people.”
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Lena asks if the old man is sick. He starts to murmur in Xhosa, but she berates him, saying “Stop that baboon language!” She turns away from him in frustration. Boesman makes fun of her, asking why she’s given up so quickly. Then he warns her that if she brings another “kaffer” into their camp and she’ll do the rest of her talking with a “thick mouth.”
Lena sits on the ground and asks Boesman desperately for a dop. He continues to taunt her, and she begs him angrily. When he doesn’t react, she says that she’s going to take the wine for herself. When she moves toward where the bottles are hidden, Boesman grabs a stick to beat her. Lena hides behind the old man, telling him, “Watch now, Outa. You be witness for me. Watch! He’s going to kill me.”
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Boesman continues to threaten Lena, saying that if she touches the wine he’ll beat her again. He storms off. As he goes, Lena dares him to beat her, saying that there’s no white baases (masters) there to laugh at him. Lena shows the old man her bruises, where Boesman had beaten her that morning for dropping the empty bottles. But, she explains, when the white baases started laughing at him, he stopped, because “when other people laugh he gets ashamed.”
Lena looks at the old man for a reaction, but he is only looking down. She instructs him to look at her; when he does so, she says, “My name is Lena.” He repeats her name back to her. Lena is thrilled. Lena immediately grabs a bottle of water and offers some to him. The old man continues to murmur in Xhosa as he drinks. Lena repeats some of his language as if she understands it.
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Lena then stops the old man and launches into the story of the dog: one evening when she and Boesman were counting their bottles, the dog had come and watched Boesman and Lena in their camp. She left some bread the dog, and he followed her all the way to Korsten. She continued to throw him food when Boesman wasn’t looking.
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Lena was happy with the dog, whereas Boesman threw stones every time he saw it. However, then the dog would come in every night when Boesman was asleep, watching Lena make the fire, cook, or count bottles. She tells the old man that she called the dog “Hond.” She confesses, “I’ll tell you what it is. Eyes, Outa. Another pair of eyes. Something to see you.” But then, that morning, she lost the dog when they had to pack up their things.
Lena continues to chatter on, offering the old man more water. She explains about the empty bottles, and how they could sell them at the bottle exchange. But this morning, they had no time to pack, and she dropped the bag and broke three bottles. Lena tells the old man how nice he is, and says that he is “one of the good ones” for listening to her. She stops herself from calling him a “kaffer” out of habit.
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The old man starts to murmur in Xhosa again. He makes a move to stand up, but Lena forces him to stay seated. Lena continues talking while preparing supper (which consists of bread and tea), telling the old man that her eyes have gotten worse over time—she can no longer see the mountains in the distance as she walks. But now, she says, Boesman’s back gets in the way of looking at them. She describes how they used to walk side by side together, and he would let her sing.
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Lena continues, explaining that she and Boesman haven’t joked or sung in a long time. She tells the old man that it feels like she is “crooked” from carrying so much weight when she walks, even though it’s only a few things. She says, “Once you’ve put your life on your head and walked you never get light again.” She also confesses that she’s constantly having a hard time remembering where she’s been and when.
The old man murmurs, and Lena pretends that he’s asked her a question. She tells him that she and Boesman had one child who lived for six months, while the others were born dead. She explains that during one of her pregnancies, she felt a lot of pain and crawled under a cart to give birth. Boesman was too far away to call, and she didn’t have any rags. She only had a donkey there, watching her. That, she explains, is pain.
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Lena moves on, telling the old man, “My life is here tonight.” The old man rises once more. Lena throws herself at him and forces him back onto his box, commanding him to “sit and look!” She promises him that she’ll ask Boesman to give him a dop. She says to him, as she sees Boesman returning from the distance, that they shouldn’t look happy, and should pretend they still don’t like each other. She suggests that he should tell Boesman that he’s going to buy wine for them the next day.
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Boesman returns with a few more pieces of firewood and another piece for the pondok. Lena makes herself busy at the fire. Boesman sees the old man is still there and tells Lena to tell him to go. She says that he’s a “good kaffer,” and that he told her he’s going to buy wine for them the next day—he has a garden job in Swartkops. Boesman says he doesn’t have enough energy to “dig his own grave.” Lena laughs too hard at his joke.
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Boesman starts to become suspicious. When Lena asks to break the bread into three pieces, he says only two pieces. Lena starts to hum as she works at the fire, but then abruptly stops herself. Boesman demands that the old man leave. Lena begs Boesman to let the old man stay as a favor to her, and tells him that he can have her bottle of wine. Boesman is shocked that she wants “to sit sober in this world.” Lena is adamant that she wants the old man to stay.
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Boesman tells Lena that she’s gone crazy. He opens a bottle of wine and passes it under her nose, then starts to drink. The old man once again tries to leave, but Lena restrains him, telling him that they can all lie together in the pondok for warmth. Boesman, overhearing this, is furious, and says that he won’t allow the old man’s fleas into the pondok.
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Boesman gives Lena a choice: sleep inside the pondok with him, or sit by the fire with the old man. Lena doesn’t answer, but takes one of the blankets and spreads it over the old man, saying “we’ll need it.” Boesman immediately changes his mind and says that the old man must go. Lena turns to Boesman with “unexpected ferocity” and yells at him, “Be careful!” Boesman backs down, saying she can sleep outside and “die of cold with a kaffer.” Lena responds, “I’d sit out there with a dog tonight!”
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Lena leaves briefly to find more firewood. While she is gone, Boesman walks over to the old man, calls him “Hond” and grabs the blanket from him. He shoves the old man onto the ground. When he hears Lena returning, however, he says, “If you tell her, I’ll kill you” and returns the blanket to the old man as the old man crawls back to his seat.
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Lena returns, having found nothing. She takes the bread and splits it in two, giving half to Boesman. She gives Boesman one mug of tea and returns to the fire with her own mug and bread. She tells the old man to sit close to the fire and passes him the tea and bread. Boesman watches and drinks wine in the pondok, his bread and tea “untouched.”
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