Suggestions for Introduction/ conclusion:

-  Undoubtedly much of the power of the novel, “Cry the Beloved Country”, comes from its depiction of the particular social conditions in its contemporary South Africa. Racial discrimination and social breakdown are two major problems that afflicted the country for years.

- Paton’s novel is primarily concerned with the tragedy that has

afflicted South Africa: the exploitation of blacks by whites and

the consequent loss of an entire way of life.

- The purpose of “Cry, the Beloved Country “ is to awaken the

population of South Africa to the racism that is slowly

disintegrating the society and its people. Alan Paton designs his

work to express his views on the injustices and racial hatred

that plague South Africa, in an attempt to bring about change

and understanding. 

- The characters that he incorporates within his story help to

establish a sense of the conditions and hardships that the

country is experiencing, and the presence of fear through the

whole of the populace.

     

- In “Cry, the Beloved Country”, the cries of South Africa are

delivered to the readers, the cries of the black people that are

the foundation of South Africa, the blacks that were the heart of

what South Africa was all about. These cries were due to the

oppression that was not deserved, oppression based on

difference in color, not more!   

General Analysis 

        As Kumalo travels from his native district to Johannesburg, there is also a significant change in the speech patterns. The native Zulu names are replaced with Afrikaner names. New names and new experiences will now confront the simple Kumalo. The reader, therefore, should note each new experience.

         Kumalo’s inability to understand his surroundings shows that his visit to Johannesburg is a changing and learning experience for him. From the train window, everything is immediately and overwhelmingly different: the dominant language is now Afrikaans (a Dutch-based language spoken by the original white immigrants to South Africa), and the black Africans are from different tribes. The shared points of reference that characterize village life are gone—when a man on the train likens the height of the buildings in Johannesburg to a hill behind his father’s home, Kumalo does not know what he is talking about. Even familiar sights and sounds appear to be corrupted.

          Kumalo faces the great fear. For the black priest this is “the fear of a man who lives in a world not made for him, whose own world is slipping away, dying, being destroyed, beyond any recall” . This introduces the theme of the ‘broken tribe’, which is identified as the main problem of the black community. It seems that hunger and poverty could be dealt with, if only the old tribal structures, which kept the community together, would still exist.

          Kumalo is faced with the primary task of trying to bring his personal family back together. There can be no tribal unit until the basic family unit is restored. Consequently, there runs throughout the novel an analogy between the breaking up of the greater society in contrast to Kumalo's attempts to restore his own family as a unit.

         In chapter 5, Msimangu states directly the central problem of the entire novel. Msimangu explains to Kumalo what he believes has gone wrong with their country: the tribal bonds have been broken, giving young men and women no reason to stay in their villages. These youths then go to Johannesburg, where they inevitably lose their way and become morally corrupt. Msimangu is very explicit about the cause-and-effect relationship that he perceives between the deterioration of black culture and crime against whites. As such, he expresses the novel’s central preoccupation with the matter of tribal structure and its important role in holding the country’s black population together. The tragedy is that the black man exists between two worlds: Because the white man has broken the old world of the tribes, which cannot be mended and at the same time, neither the white man nor the black man has found anything to replace the lost, old world. 

Cry, the Beloved Country

Chapter 4

The train to Johannesburg travels a full day and night, climbing through many hills and villages. The regions Kumalo passes through are unfamiliar to him, with foreign landscapes and signs written in Afrikaans, which he does not speak. The great mines of South Africa come into view, and Kumalo’s fellow travelers, many of whom are miners, explain how the mines are excavated. They point out the great pulley that hoists the broken rocks, and Kumalo is awestruck. Overwhelmed by the modern surroundings, he keeps mistaking the passing landscape for Johannesburg, but his fellow passengers laugh and tell him of buildings in Johannesburg so tall they can barely describe them. The train arrives in Johannesburg, where Kumalo moves through the crowds that swarm throughout the station. Outside the station, the rush of traffic so terrifies Kumalo that he stands petrified on the sidewalk, unable to decipher the traffic lights. Speaking in a language Kumalo does not understand, a young man appears and offers to help Kumalo find his way to Sophiatown.

The young man leads Kumalo to the bus station, where he tells Kumalo to wait in line for the buses while the young man buys him a ticket. Eager to show his trust, Kumalo gives the young man a pound from his precious savings. He begins to suspect that something is wrong, however, as soon as the young man turns the corner. An elderly man takes pity on the helpless Kumalo and informs him that his money has been stolen. When it turns out that they are both headed for Sophiatown, the elderly man invites Kumalo to travel with him. He guides Kumalo safely to Msimangu’s Mission House.

This chapter focuses primarily on the descriptions of Johannesburg as an imposing and threatening place. Paton establishes that the city is foreign to Kumalo in many ways, even in language; Kumalo has so little experience with urban areas that he mistakes a mining area for a big city. Kumalo is therefore the outsider when he reaches Johannesburg. This is important in several respects. His outsider status allows Paton to use characters, most importantly Msimangu, to explain the workings and logistics of Johannesburg that would be obvious to an actual citizen of urban South Africa. Lastly, Kumalo's being an outsider, as this chapter certainly demonstrates, makes him a ready victim for opportunists.

The relationship between Reverend Msimangu and Stephen Kumalo will be an important one throughout the novel. Msimangu, like Kumalo, is a deeply religious man, yet his experience in Johannesburg has given him a much different perspective. He will serve essentially as the guide to Stephen Kumalo as he journeys throughout the South African city on his various quests.

Cry, the Beloved Country

Chapter 3

The train takes Stephen Kumalo from the valley into the hills of Carisbrooke, as he worries about the fate of his sister, the cost of the trip, and the possible adversities he might face. He remembers the story of the woman, whose son was killed in the street of Johannesburg when he stepped into traffic. His most pressing fear, however, concerns his son.

Perhaps the most important trait of Stephen Kumalo that Paton establishes is that Kumalo is a man who is reaching obsolescence. He is a rural priest who does not live in the modern world and is growing to find that his world is collapsing around him.

Once the train leaves the station, however, Kumalo’s old fears return. He worries about the city, about the fate of his family members, particularly his son, and about his feeling that he “lives in a world not made for him.” As the train rattles along toward Johannesburg, Kumalo takes refuge in his Bible, the only thing that brings him comfort in these troubled times.

Cry, the Beloved Country

Chapter 2

This chapter serves as the introduction to the protagonist of Cry, the Beloved Country, the priest Stephen Kumalo, establishing his main conflicts and character traits. From his first encounter with the small child, Paton establishes Kumalo as a kind man yet powerful and respected within his community despite his poverty, as shown by the small savings that he and his wife had scraped together for their son's education. Kumalo is decidedly a man of the country; he and his wife approach Johannesburg as a nearly mysterious place where people go and are never seen again.

This chapter also introduces one of the major themes of Cry, the Beloved Country: the reassembling of the family. Paton establishes that three members of the Kumalo family are now in Johannesburg, and a major part of the novel will involve bringing these disparate family members together. The most important of these characters is the  son Absalom Kumalo, whose fate will be the major preoccupation of Stephen Kumalo as the story progresses.

Paton creates a definite sense that Absalom has been lost to his family, especially with the mention that he will never come back to Ixopo and the use of his savings for other purposes. However, Stephen has not given up hope for Absalom, and it is this hope that will provide a major motivation for Stephen Kumalo's actions.

 In Natal, Kumalo’s life is orderly. His village holds him in high esteem, and the child who brings him his letter is awed by the comforts of his home. With the arrival of Msimangu’s letter from the city, however, comes discord. Until that moment, Kumalo and his wife have lived in relative harmony, and their careful budgeting and saving shows their organization and cooperation. The arrival of the letter, however, stands this simple order on its head, as Kumalo and his wife argue and are forced to squander their savings. In the station every time Kumalo thinks of the city and its dangers, he becomes small and weak.

Check the Literature projects by clicking on the links. 

I have updated the links, so try again. You might not be able to click on the link, so copy it and paste it in a new window. 

Activity 4

http://rapidshare.com/share/CC379B835D2EE88DFE5DB548B4EDA019 

Activity 5

http://rapidshare.com/share/C82D0FDC9E1BF4984FFEA7A4AE844BB6 

Activity 6 

  

http://rapidshare.com/share/B799B5E7F14A2E90A8A8DFF0EDDBFCBB 

Poetry

Check this interesting rap song about Figurative Language. It introduces the definitions of several important figures of speech and sound devices. Listen to the song as many times as you can and see if you can sing it (or part of it) in class and entertain your colleagues. 

Take part in the Rap Song Battle on Thursday 6 February and win a nice surprise!! 

It can be an individual as well as a group performance - Moves that go with the beat are highly recommended!

http://youtu.be/gkewrHe9Sgc

Cry, the Beloved Country

Chapter 1

In the hilly South African province of Natal, a lovely road winds its way up from the village of Ixopo to Carisbrooke, a journey of seven miles. This misty vantage point looks out over one of the fairest valleys of Africa, where the native birds sing and the grass is dense and green. The lush grass of the hills clings to the rain and mist, soaking up the moisture, which in turn feeds every stream. Although cattle graze here, their feeding has not destroyed the land, and the few fires that burn have not harmed the soil. As the hills roll down to the valley below, however, they become red and bare. The grass there has been destroyed by cattle and fire, and the streams have all run dry. When storms come, the red dirt runs like blood, and the crops are withered and puny. These valleys are the homes of the elderly, who scrape at the dirt for sustenance. Some mothers live here with their children, but all the able-bodied young people have long since moved away.

Alan Paton begins Cry, the Beloved Country with a description of the land surrounding Ixopo, the village where the protagonist Stephen Kumalo lives. Paton establishes this as a rural and isolated area, which is significant to develop the character of Kumalo and his relationship to the larger urban area of Johannesburg where he will soon find himself. In chapter 1, the author considers the survival of the soil not less important than the survival of the human race, relating the life and health of the country to the health of its inhabitants.

The sharp contrasts in the landscape also underscore the unfairness and self-destructiveness of a segregated society. Although the first chapters of the novel do not make it explicit, the ugliness of the land is a result of the segregation policy pursued by the white rulers. 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 the valley..In some parts, the land is not so beautiful. It has been damaged by over-grazing and poor farming techniques. Lacking education and restricted to limited plots of land, the villagers of Ndotsheni injure the land because they have not been taught to protect it. Overcrowding leads to overgrazing and over-farming, a vicious cycle that lessens the land’s productivity each year.