White in Existential Guilt: Athol Fugard and The Train Driver

Abstract

Athol Fugard is the most important playwrights in South Africa, who has a near – 50 – year writing on black,white and colored individuals in his country. Out of a liberal conscience and guilt, his works used to function as statements against Apartheid. After liberation in 1994, rather than as a kind of testimony, “The Train Driver”, the combination of special South African theme and Western techiques and a culmination of blindness and white guilt.The study will try to figure out the definition of “existential guilt” mainly from this play by means of “content and form dialectics”. The theatrical techniques will be analysed to present styles and features of Athol Fugard. In The Train Driver, the one – act form, monologue, dialogue and are worthy of great attention. In conclusion, the form of the play represents a further development of Brechtian theatrical device, a confession of his guilt, a record of personal psychology and also an ideal domain of Utopia for dealing with the past.