Cry the Beloved Country

The world is changing every day whether due to the change of advancing technology, social reform, or foreign influence and that is primarily because people do change. One may change psychologically, emotionally, as well as spirituality. In undertaking a journey, a person learns and changes. So do the characters in the novel Cry, the Beloved Country written by Alan Paton. This is both an entertaining and informative novel as it conveys some significant messages to the readers. The novel includes the topics of sacrifice and love of a man towards his family, corruption and strong desire of social position and wealth in a community, political and social differences between South Africa's English inhabitants and its Afrikaners, and life-changing experiences in individuals' lifes.

The main character Stephen Kumalo and his wife have lived in relative harmony, and their careful budgeting and saving shows their organization and cooperation. He has been called a hero, a suffering hero. Love, like other social diseases, is often incurable. This can be explained through his love and sacrifice towards his sister, Gertrude and his son, Absalom Kumalo. It happened when Gertrude is severely ill and needs some treatment costs in Johannesburg. After a busy tiring frustrating train trip, he found out that she "sells cheap liquor, prostitutes herself in the worst area of Johannesburg" and has been in prison, which represents a corruption of old village values. Nevertheless, he does not abandon her and persuade her to go back to their village, Ndotsheni. Concurrently, a more difficult quest follows when Kumalo and his friend, Msimangu begin searching the "labyrinthine metropolis of Johannesburg" for Absalom who had left the village for a few years and never went back. "Where there is a will, there is a way." After several arduous hardships looking for his son, his hard works finally paid off. Disastrously, it was from a bad news as the policemen were also looking for him. He is being suspected to be involved in Arthur Jarvis's murder case. At last, he is "sentenced to hang." Before his death, Stephen Kumalo arranged a marriage for him with his pregnant girlfriend and promised Absalom that he will bring them back to their village. From this point of view, Stephen Kumalo is willingly accepted his son's sins and helps him to carry the responsibility.

There is a meditation on the complicated relationship between words and social change. John Kumalo speaks beautifully, but he does not demand radical change in the circumstances facing the black population. As Msimangu explains, John is too attached to his possessions and social position to put himself in a real danger. It raises some interesting questions about Paton's views on the merit of words versus action. We see the power of words in the eloquent writings of Arthur Jarvis, and it never occurs to us to question their honesty and ability to change things. With John about social Kumalo, however, we begin to see that simple eloquence is not enough to bring about social change. The same can be said for unfocused action as well, as can be seen in the easy put-down of the strike. With these examples, the novel discourses that the social protest does not have meaning without the good intentions and methodical planning necessary to see it through. On top of that, the value of greedy in one's personality is being portrayed in this novel. The news of the new gold mines completely eclipses news of the Arthur Jarvis murder trial, demonstrating that white South Africa, in general cares much more about wealth than about its dire race problems. The discovery of gold makes grown men weep or sing about the performance of gold stocks, and these greedy whites prefer to ignore inequalities created by the racist system that benefits them so much. Instead, they focus on the power of money.

Paton denoted that white farms are symbolically located at the tops of the hills, where the land is green and fruitful. Black South Africans, however, are forced to tend their settlements at the bottom of the hills, in the unforgiving land of valley. Obviously, this shows a social difference between South Africa's English inhabitants and its Afrikaners. There is also another example of showing the inequality between the white and black. The government seems unable or unwilling to operate in accordance with racial harmony and human decency. This unfair incident has led Stephen Kumalo's brother, John Kumalo who is a businessman also a politician operates from corrupt motivations, his friend and colleague Dubulla, who seems to work tirelessly and selflessly for his people, leads the bus boycott to protest economic prejudice against the black. Solidarity between the blacks and whites triumphs over racism as white South Africans risk trouble with the police in order to give rides to the striking blacks. Besides that, the grumblings over the name of the mine seem to imply that the Afrikaners are a major presence in the mines and that the English would rather they not be. The voice also brings up the issue of the bilingual state and remarks wistfully how much easier it would be if the Afrikaners would simply accept English as the nation's language. Clearly, black Africans are not the only South Africans whose culture is being targeted. But though the English dislikes Afrikaans, they