Cry Beloved Country Cry The Beloved Country

1. Cry Beloved Country
Will Weaver
AP Lit
Mrs. Schroder
Cry, the Beloved Country Essay– 2003 Prompt
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.
Kumalo's first observation of the conflict's impact comes from his sister, who has become a quiet
and timid shell of her former self. Her child lives with her, yet both live in very poor conditions,
leading...show more content...
Throughout the novel, Kumalo begins to learn from various people that his son drifted from
workplace to workplace with his cousin, and eventually discovers that Absalom has been arrested
for the murder of an innocent man. Kumalo also discovers that Absalom's girlfriend is pregnant
with his child, and that Absalom will be executed for his actions. Kumalo responds to this by
deciding to take the girl with him as well, in order to raise them both in a safe place. Kumalo
eventually meets the father of the man Absalom killed and weeps with him over the deaths of their
sons. This is significant because it shows how the young generation, the generation that is
responsible for the fate of their people, became corrupted and biased by the conflicts of their
ancestors, and that they will ultimately die unless they find a better way to
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2. Cry The Beloved Country
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...show more content...
In 1948–1949, European and South African societies had a clear difference in opinion based on old
traditional values, religion, and race. Alan Paton's theme in Cry, the Beloved Country is how
European and African societies of this time period should evolve from the stand–still position they
both stand for. In Arthur Jarvis's letters he uses diction to describe the state of the South African
society, pattern and repetition to emphasize the redundancy of the acts that the societies continue to
commit that proves the stalling of evolution. Literary devices like these give Jarvis's passages and
Paton's work as a whole a deeper understanding and comprehension due to different layers of analysis
throughout the
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