As the play opens, he feels confident that he has done so; he is sure of their relationship, and cannot imagine that Hally would ever betray him. To some degree this shows Sam's naiveté. But it also forces him to embark upon another journey as the play ends, this time toward achieving self-actualization without the help of any whites.
Willie, Sam's friend and co-worker, is the least clearly-realized character in the story; he seems to function as a little brother whom Sam tries to guide and advise as he does Hally. (Paul Brians observes that "boet-, an epithet often applied by Willie to Sam, means "brother) (Brians, fugard.html)).
Brian Sutton points out in The Explicator that Willie provides a view of the real world that Sam would rather romanticize: "Willie counters Sam's idealistic vision by describing his own reality: Hilda, his girlfriend and dance partner, has no teeth; she has told authorities that he is behind in child support payments to her; he suspects that she has been sleeping with other men and her child is not really his son; she cannot keep the beat when they dance, thus leaving him not only estranged from his lover, but also without a partner for the upcoming ballroom dance competition- (Sutton, 120). .
Willie's world is thus full of sordid, earthbound problems, which define his entire life and seem overwhelming to him. Sam's advice to him, couched in the metaphor of dance, is "Don't look down- (Fugard, 4). Translated into real life, this shows that Sam subsists on optimism and hope. While the unrealistic nature of Sam's vision is jarringly shown at the end of the play when Hally betrays his black friends, it is nonetheless true that Willie needs to learn to look past the dismal bleakness of his surroundings and circumstances -- maybe not as much as Sam has, but a little more than he is able to do at the play's beginning. Willie's journey will consist of finding joy and beauty in life, and at the end of the play as Sam gives him dance lessons, he is learning to do just that.
