SOURCE: "Action," in The Lion on the Freeway: A Thematic Introduction to Contemporary South African Literature in English, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1996, pp. 181-99.

In the following excerpt from Sheckels's book, the author examines Brink's A Dry White Season and Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter, considering the development of the protagonists via the actions they engage in.

At the end of Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, we leave the magistrate a guilt-ridden, but broken man. His guilt has led him to a futile act of rebellion and into an equally futile act of redemption. At the end of Fugard's "Master Harold" … and the Boys, we leave Hally a guilt-ridden and confused seventeen year-old boy/man. In the text, there is some hope that his guilt will lead to action; in the theatre, this hope can be strengthened or weakened, depending upon how the director and the actors choose to...