S    Sample Essay: Stephen Kumalo’s character

     Often known throughout the novel as "umfundisi," which is a Zulu title of respect, Stephen Kumalo is highly respected as the native African pastor of St. Mark's Church in the village of Ndotsheni and also as an upstanding, moral, strong member of the native South African community. Yet despite his good heart and soul, Kumalo has a terrible crisis to bear—the tragedy of his son's truancy and the justice that is meted out upon has family as a result. Beyond that, he is also watching the dissolution of the rural way of life he has always lived and championed.

Some traits that come out are his morality and naivete. Kumalo is naive because he has never ventured out of Ndotsheni and when he sees a little liveliness he thinks that that must be a big city. Once Kumalo steps foot in Johannesburg, the reality hits him that he has led a very sheltered life. Innovations brought by the Europeans to Africa, are things that Kumalo has never seen before in his life, and they scare him. Kumalo’s naivete contributes to the fear and confusions he feels his first days in the city, because he led a primitive life in his village. Seeing the streets of the big city, he thinks to himself,” how does one find one’s way in such a confusion?”. His fears of Johannesburg are a part of his inexperience in coping with the white man’s world which for a simple man is a complicated world full of traps and dangers while his own is simple and natural.  

When Kumalo dares to venture into the big city his ignorance of the greater world beyond his village is manifested. Being an outsider, Kumalo is a ready victim for opportunists. After Kumalo steps off of the train, a young man volunteers to purchase a bus ticket for Stephen he does not have to wait in line. Kumalo gives him the money trusting he would get the ticket for him, but the young man does not return. Due to Kumalo’s naivete he is cheated out of his money. Mr. Mafolo explains, “You have been cheated umfundisi.”

       Kumalo has the trait of faith. Throughout the novel Kumalo has faith in God. Whenever he is afraid or in doubt, he resorts to God and to his holy book because “it was this world alone that was certain.”

Kumalo is a caring, trusting, and essentially a humble person, but he is also a man with an inconsistent temperament. He always returns to God and repents for whatever he has done wrong. Like every human, Kumalo often becomes angry with other people and hurts them. Several times during the novel his feelings of anger get the best of him and he intentionally tries to hurt some other person. After each outburst, he is deeply sorry for his anger and makes reparations in some manner. Even in the first pages of the novel, he knows that he hurts his wife. He admits  ” I am sorry I hurt you, I shall go and pray in the church.”

Kumalo is angry with his sister, Gertrude for the way she chose to support her son and herself, and yells at her saying,” You have shamed us. A liquor seller, a woman of the streets, with a child and you do not know where it is. Your brother is a priest, how could you do this to us.” He yells at her out of love because he would like her to return to the way he knew her before, but his actions hurt Gertrude. By making him fallible rather than flawless, Paton ensures that we will be able to empathize with Kumalo’s experience.

Stephen is a virtuous man at heart, and is worthy of being a priest. Outside forces affected Kumalo greatly. The fact that his son, Absalom, went to Johannesburg and did not keep contact with him worried him greatly. After his sister went to look for him and also did not send word back to him, his worries became even greater. He was affected by their decisions and went to look for them. This changed his personality. While hoping they were doing well in Johannesburg, he realized that they were lost in sin. He sums up his suffering saying,“This is a bitter journey.”

Throughout the novel, Kumalo acts as a moral compass, the glue that holds his family together. Kumalo tries ceaselessly to repair the tribe, and to bring Gertrude, Absalom, and the rest of his family to where he believes they can put their lives in prospective, and live happily. However, his efforts are not successful in the end because he cannot make Gertrude or Absalom change their past trespasses, or way of life. He tries to preserve the traditional values he believes are correct, and he tries to make others moral. Stephen's suffering is seen partially in the fact that he wants to restore the family and the tribal system. He fears for his world which is “slipping away, dying, being destroyed, beyond any recall.” But through the course of the novel, he comes to an awareness that the tribal system can never be restored, and he fails in his attempts to restore his own family. Through these failures and the suffering caused by them, he matures into a man who has a larger appreciation for the trials that others must undergo.

Stephen Kumalo changes drastically during the course of the novel. He gains a great awareness of many facets of life by going on a journey to Johannesburg. Before this journey, he was a country priest who was a good man but who had no understanding of the wider world. He respected the tribal ways but had no understanding of why the tribe was breaking down and why the young people were leaving for the cities. Kumalo is the suffering hero; that is, before he can come to a complete awareness of life, he must undergo intense suffering. Only at the end of the novel does he come to understand the meaning of that suffering — that through suffering a person is made more aware of all aspects of life and can better sympathize with others.