The Blood Knot: A Play in Three Acts

by Athol Fugard

A play about two brothers who lose themselves in illusory hopes and dreams. Naive optimism and self-delusion finally give way to self-reflection and consciousness, and the brothers abandon their role-playing and embrace their brotherhood.

Genres: Plays, Drama, African Literature, Africa, 20th Century

81 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1989

About the author

Athol Fugard was a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director widely regarded as South Africa's greatest playwright. Acclaimed in 1985 as "the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world" by Time, he published more than thirty plays. He was best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing the system of apartheid, some of which have been adapted to film. His novel Tsotsi was adapted as a film of the same name, which won an Academy Award in 2005. It was directed by Gavin Hood.
Fugard also served as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego.
Fugard received many awards, honours, and honorary degrees, including the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver from the government of South Africa in 2005 "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre". He was also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Fugard was honoured in Cape Town with the opening in 2010 of the Fugard Theatre in District Six. He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011.

Reviews

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first thing I want to say about this play is that I desperately hope it will be considered a period piece in the near future. The question of whiteness vs. blackness and "passing" is so depressing, because even though it's an artificial social construct, it's a real thing that people have to deal with in life. I find that thought unbearably sad. I don't know what to think about Fugard, a white man, writing about the experience of two black brothers. On one hand, I understand that he had something he wanted to say, and he has a right to say it. On the other hand, his putting words in the mouths of people whose experience under apartheid has been completely different from his smacks somewhat of cultural appropriation. I did not like the play.

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blood Knot turns out to be aptly titled: the moral conundrums contained within it are not easily untangled or unraveled. This early play by the great South African dramatist Athol Fugard raises numerous compelling questions without trying to answer them: Where does racism come from? How can systematized oppression endure? What, finally, do human beings owe one another: are we really our brothers' keepers?

Blood Knot is set in South Africa in 1962, in the "non-white location" of Korsten. Apartheid is the law; under it, two colored brothers, Morris and Zachariah, live in squalid poverty in a one-room apartment. Zachariah works all day at some unspecified job, one that leaves his feet painfully blistered and calloused. Morris keeps house and manages the finances. As the play begins, he has squirreled away 45 rand--enough, he hopes, to make a down payment on a farm far from the city, where he and his brother can find freedom and self-respect, living not as boys looked down upon by the white bosses, but as men.

Two complications arise to spoil Morris's dream. The first is Ethel, a young lady with whom Zachariah has begun a correspondence after seeing her advertisement for a pen pal in the newspaper. (More accurately, it is Morris who is doing the corresponding; Zachariah can neither read nor write.) The problem comes when Ethel sends Zachariah a small photo of herself. She is white, and it is illegal for Zachariah to associate with her.

The second complication is more insidious. Zachariah is dark-complected, but Morris is very light, so light, in fact, that he can pass for white. Zachariah decides that if he can't have Ethel for himself then his brother should have her; in a moment of impassioned impetuousness, he "gives" her to Morris. Later he spends the 45 rand on a new suit of clothes for Morris, to enable him to meet his new lady friend in the proper style. Morris tries on the suit...and the brothers' world explodes.

Blood Knot is not a subtle work; it is, objectively, rather clumsy and contrived. But its language succeeds where its plotting and characterization sometimes fail: at once poetic and direct, his words force us to face head-on the unconscionable rancidity of Apartheid.

[Sam Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

How best to depict the level of Apartheid in a nation than to use a family? A masterpice by Athold Fugard

[Fay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the one play by Athol Fugard that I have not seen performed, so I decided to read it. Just not the same experience.

[Joe Makori]

nice

[Laurence Li · Rating 2 out of 5]

wtf is this

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Fugard plays, and this one is one of his best. Beautiful.