Reverend Kumalo

His sister had become a prostitute. He got her new clothes and talked her into coming back to the country with him, but of course she ran off before they went back home and left Kumalo with her son who he decided to raise as one of his own. While in the city, Kumalo heard of tragic news of three boys breaking into the home of political activist for equal rights, Arthur Jarvis, and murdering him in his own home. Kumalo prayed it wasn’t his son who he still had not found, but after following his sons footsteps realized the cops had gotten to him first and that it was his son who killed a man. Kumalo goes to visit his son in prison and ask him why he has done the things he has and why he had gone down such a terrible path. He can barely answer and has no clue why he did what he did. His actions were merely a result of peer pressure, another social issue, which ultimately resulted in his

    Many debates have been sparked by Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country.  Even the essence of the book's title examines South Africa and declares the presence of the inner conflict of its citizens. The importance and meaning of the title of Cry, the Beloved Country is visible in Paton's efforts to link the reader to forthcoming ideas in the novel, Paton's description of South Africa's problems, and Paton's prayer for the solution of South Africa's difficulties with race and racial oppression.

Stephen Kumalo is a sensitive, humble, and godly man.Sometimes, his anger can get the best of him but he always apologizes immediately after. He goes through a lot of suffering throughout the novel. He is the

After shooting Ogbuefi’s son, which is a crime against the earth goddess, Okwonko is sent to Mbanta for seven years. When Okwonko returns to Umuofia after seven years, he notices many changes within the Igbo community. Just like Okwonko, Kumalo goes to Johannesburg and experiences a whole new society. When Okwonko comes back, he discovers that many men renounced their titles and has converted to Christianity. Kumalo keeps seeing evidence that Johannesburg destroys traditional values and social relations. After the influence of the white men’s church, Okwonko’s tribe has also fallen under their oppressive government. Kumalo isn’t fond of Johannesburg because he sees how people have to work so that they could get a title for their own selfish reasons, and speak in English, which destroys his traditional values. The missionaries go to Umuofia to start a school, and Nwoye leaves Okwonko’s hut to attend the school. Kumalo finds out his daughter Gertrude is in a horrible situation, and that his son Absalom has murdered someone. Okwonko is unhappy about the changes in Umuofia, and things start to fall apart for him. On the other hand, Kumalo stays strong is eager to find his son and help him. After Mr. Brown, the missionary, becomes ill, a new missionary named Reverand Smith comes and things start to really fall apart for Okwonko. The major experience of Johannesburg and all that is happening to

When you are young, your parents teach you how to act and what do to do including: what is appropriate to say, such as “please” and “thank you”, as well as how to act in a variety of situations. Your parents teach you many of the socials skills you will need for the rest of your life, from when you get a job to when you start your own family; however, in Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country he suggests that it isn’t the way one is raised that determines the way someone acts, but the environment and the situations they are put in that determines how they act. Through Paton’s use of paradoxes he shows that the environment around someone has a larger impact on the way that person acts rather than how that person is raised.

Authors have an amazing ability, the ability to make words fly off the page of the book to stimulate the imagination of the reader. They add depth, emotion, perception, and voice to their works. Within the Modern novel, Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton, he uses the literary devices: imagery, tone, detail, and parallel structure to convey one of the central themes of the scene, fear of death. Paton uses not only these four devices, but over twenty different types in his book. Each one of these devices shapes the way the reader looks at the text, it can emphasize, overlook, and make the text rhythmical or broken up. It is with these devices, that a book is made truly great.

While my fourteen year old brother, Andrew, pinned me down to the floor and held me in a headlock, my ten year old brother, Johnny, rolled on the floor laughing as I struggled to release myself from my brother’s clutch. Earlier that day, I had stolen some of Andrew’s cosmic brownies and now this was my grave punishment. As my older brothers, Andrew and Johnny had power over me; however, they did not always use this power compassionately. This sense of control and empowerment commonly becomes besmirched and authority figures often unethically treat their people. In Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, the government takes on this abusive role. Both of these stories depict the theme of political corruption

Kumalo has loyalty in his heart, because although his daughter is “a liquor seller [and] a prostitute” he still loves her, and “his eyes fill with tears, his deep gentleness returns to him. He goes to her and lifts her from the floor to the chair. Inarticulately, he strokes her face, his heart filled with pity” (Paton 61). The loyalty between family members holds priority over any problems that may occur. Paton demonstrates Kumalo’s loyalty with a description of the struggle that goes on inside him, where he must decide if he has the ability to overlook his daughter’s sins and accept her as his daughter again.

History has proven that cultures rarely cooperate with one another, especially when there is a common desire or goal they wish to achieve for themselves. While conflict is natural and common to humanity, the greatest loss either side of a conflict between cultures can suffer is the impact that the conflict has on younger generations. In Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo witnesses the fallout of the cultural conflict between the white and black South African people through his son, brother, and sister in Johannesburg. As he travels across a torn and dying country to find his son, Kumalo begins to learn about what the conflict has done to his family and why they never came home.

My reading started to change when Kumalo started to doubt himself after learning about the lives that his family members have been living in the city and if he is the really the man and priest that he thought was. This created a whole new perspective for me about the character of Kumalo because now he seemed like the kind of man who was mainly a calm and moral character but has his urges. Father Vincent tells him “Go and pray, go and rest. And do not judge your son too quickly” on page 141 because as Kumalo began to doubt himself from the man that his son had become he judged his son and wanted to hurt him.

Theories and proof have been brought to surface about the evolution of the human being from related primates, but this type of physical evolution took thousands of years. What about the evolution of a society from day to day? Evolution is learning and changing from a certain period of time and one cannot simply move on with their lives and make the world a better place if they don’t evolve from what they used to believe. The world is changing in many ways every single day and individuals can’t be stuck with a certain belief or one moment in time forever. Keeping an open mind, learning to let go, realizing that things are constantly changing are some ways to evolve. In Alan Paton’s, Cry the Beloved Country, character, Arthur Jarvis, writes letters to express how he believes both European and South African societies should learn to evolve and move past their own beliefs to understand each other’s. Jarvis brings forth the idea that European societies have hypocritical and redundant thoughts about the way a stereotypical African society should live and feel. Paton does this by

Imagery is used by authors who wish to give the readers a physical feeling of literature while reading any sort of piece. It allows for the audience to connect to the characters on a deeper level by having them experience the same feelings, smells, noises, etc, as did the roles in the novel. Alan Paton uses a strong voice packed with imagery in his passage, “For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry in the kloofs. Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it. Stand shod upon it, for it is coarse and sharp, and the stones cut under the feet. It is not kept or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men”

                Alan Paton’s work is significant in that it highlights and analyzes, from both white and black perspective, the racial boundary and its effect on society as a whole. This boundary, as Paton emphasizes, has a diverse affect on different groups of people, as well as individuals. The way that those individuals react, in Paton’s book, defines whether or not those individuals are viewed as the enemy or the victim. While their initial reactions may be different, their final reactions are the same; that is, they find spiritual reassessment and moral reconciliation.

Set in South Africa right before apartheid, part one of the novel opens with Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo, planning to travel to Johannesburg in search of his sister and brother, as well as his missing son Absalom. In Johannesburg, Stephen is robbed and finds that his sister has become a prostitute. With the help of his new friend, Msimangu, he locates his brother John, a politician who fights against racial inequality in South Africa,

Alan Paton, South African writer, and liberal leader, wrote the historical fiction novel Cry, The Beloved Country. Throughout this inspirational book, Paton introduced lots of problems that were inside his society. Cry, The Beloved Country is such a disputable novel, to the point that individuals have a tendency to overlook the genuine importance and message being introduced. Paton's point in composing the novel was to introduce and make attention to the progressing struggle inside South Africa through his fair-minded and target see. In his novel, Alan Paton portrays the setting through the values and views of society and racial issues.