36 pages • 1 hour read
Athol FugardThe Road to Mecca
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1985A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Miss Helen
Helen is an Afrikaner (a specific ethnic group in South Africa) in her late sixties who resides in the town of New Bethesda in South Africa’s Karoo region. She is known as a loner who spends much of her time inside her house and speaks largely only to Katrina, a young African girl, as well as to Elsa and Marius. Most people perceive her isolation to be largely by choice—Marius tells Helen the others in town “behave towards you in the way you apparently want them to, which is to leave you completely alone” (53)—but Helen complains about feeling lonely and without friends. It is also suggested that others in town believe her to be mad. She speaks of “Darkness” and feeling depressed (and, at one point in her letter to Elsa, suicidal) throughout the play, though by the end she has a more accepting view of her solitude and realizes that the “road to my Mecca was one I had to travel alone” (74). Helen’s real-life inspiration died by an apparent suicide, and Helen tells Elsa that she “must teach myself now how to blow [the candles] out…and what that means” (75), suggesting she may face the same end.
Helen is defined predominantly through her house, which is filled with “light and color” and is home to a large collection of sculptures of Wise Men, animals, and other figures, which she has created and which sit out in her front yard pointing toward Mecca. As Helen says in the play, her home is her life’s purpose and the best representation of her spirit: “Nothing, not even my name or my face, is me as much as those Wise Men and their camels traveling to the East, or the light and glitter in this room,” she tells Elsa (24). This stands in stark contrast to Marius and the religious population in her town, and Helen says that though she faithfully went to church for many years, she lost her faith long ago. However, Helen does show many traditional values, such as not having as progressive a view of racial equality as Elsa.
Helen is showing signs of mental and physical decline, and Marius advises her to go into the old age home for her safety. However, she is shown to have a vibrant spirit throughout the play, particularly in her interactions with Elsa (in which they remark how “girl-like” they are around each other) and as she grows more animated while telling Marius of her Mecca. Marius tells Helen that “there is more light in you than in all your candles put together,” which Elsa recounts to Helen and agrees with, saying, “You are radiant” (71).
Elsa Barlow
Elsa is a 28-year-old teacher who lives in Cape Town but is friends with Helen and goes to visit her. She can be pushy and combative, and she is forthcoming in forcing Helen to talk about her current troubles and confronting Marius about Helen’s application for the old age home. During the events of the play, she seems to be particularly moody and tormented. Helen says that “there’s a new sound in [Elsa’s] voice” (9) that she hasn’t heard before. The audience learns that she has recently broken up with a married lover and had an abortion. As she tells Helen, she is known for being a “serious young woman” and a “bluestocking” (5)—an intellectual or literary woman—in Cape Town, but she feels much more freewheeling around Helen, as the two bring out each other’s inner little girl.
As a woman living in South Africa during apartheid, Elsa is defined by her progressive views around racial equality. She teaches at a “Coloured” (16) school and has recently gotten in trouble for asking her students to write a letter to the State President about racial equality; she also frequently criticizes New Bethesda’s more traditional racial views. Elsa’s admiration for and friendship with Helen appear to play into her progressive views; she explains to Marius that she admires Helen because of her freedom, telling him: “There’s a hell of a lot of talk about freedom, and all sorts of it, in the world where I come from. But it’s mostly talk […] Not with Helen” (61).
Marius Byleveld
Marius is a church pastor in New Bethesda who attempts to convince Helen that she should move out of her house and into a home for the aged. His interactions with Helen and Elsa are largely passive-aggressive, as he condemns Helen’s life choices under the guise of caring about her. Marius clearly holds very traditional values, arguing with Elsa about the town’s treatment of their African population and racial equality.
Marius has conflicting views toward Helen: He appears to admire her personally, and Elsa believes him to be in love with Helen. However, he also represents the town’s dismissive and critical view of her and her “Mecca,” criticizing her for skipping church to create a statue and saying that she is not free, as Elsa claims, but rather “trapped now finally in the nightmare this house has become” (64).
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By Athol Fugard
