Point of View

Every story told has a "point of view," a perspective through which the events of the plot take on additional meaning, depending on who is telling the tale. Valley Song presents its audience with three different points of view at different times in the play. Abraam Jonkers, a "Coloured" South African in his seventies; Veronica Jonkers, his seventeen-year-old black granddaughter; and The Author, Fugard himself at sixty, each address the audience directly on occasion, or speak to unseen figures on the stage, and share their individual views of the play's events. Because of the characters' "soliloquies" throughout the play, they reveal more about themselves than they might have in dialogues with other characters. Taken together, they also represent three different voices on a single theme: What is the future of the "new" South Africa?

When Abraam is by himself, he talks to his dead wife, Betty...