Master Harold vs No Exit Essay -- Literary Analysis, Sartre, Fugard

The setting of a play is extremely vital. It could a form of symbolism, foreshadowing, or it can affect the characters in the play. The is exactly the case in both No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre and â€Å"Master Harold†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦and the boys by Athol Fugard. The setting in both plays contain of one room that mainly consists of three major characters. The setting has an enormous impact on the behavior of the characters. The time period in which both plays are form also effect the style of writing and the characters. No Exit has an existentialist style of writing were as â€Å"Master Harold†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦and the boys was written in the apartheid era of South Africa. Both books have similar settings, but also involve some dissimilarity. The stage directions and the dialogue of the characters tell the audience that the play is set in one room. The number of characters that are going to be represented in the play are seen in the first scene. In the beginning of No Exit the stage directions show the audience the room. â€Å"A drawing-room in Second Empire style† (Sartre 3). This tells the reader that the play is in a one room set. â€Å"Then we’re to stay by ourselves, the three of us† (Sartre 10). One of the characters, Inez, is stating the fact that only three people are to reside in the room. This will create some tension, because No Exit is based on hell. The whole idea of hell to everyone is that it comes with a demon figure that is suppose to torture everyone. â€Å"The racks and red-hot pincers and all the other paraphernalia?† (Sartre 4). This is the regular hell, but in Sartre’s point of view hell is something different. He believes that hell is other people. This is where t he setting comes into play. Sartre puts the three different personalities in the same room to turn th... ...e to the question is obvious. This reveals the idea of bias between characters. Sam and Willie now both want to injury Hally, while Hally has injured Sam. In this play, Sam and Willie are against Hally, and in No Exit by the end Garcin is trying to impress Inez and Estelle is left alone. The setting also has a major impact on the audience. The one room forces the audience to be more attentive to the entrance and exits of the characters. Since the audience is familiar with the set by the end of the first scene, they can focus more on the dialogues and the stage directions. The audience is more involved in a play when the set is not changed. The audience can then interpret the literary elements of the play. Also in the case of â€Å"Master Harold†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦and the boys, Fugard had to move the play around South African ghettoes. This made the transportation easy and efficient.