How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Now this is Tuesday; the day after tomorrow I must go to Ezenzeleni, which is the place of our blind, to hold a service for them, and to attend to our own people. […] It is a fine place there; there is a chapel there, and the ground falls away from one's feet to the valley below. It will lift your spirits to see what the white people are doing for our blind. Then we can return strengthened for what is still before us. (1.11.3)
Freedom and confinement can be really politically complicated in this book. Here, Msimangu wants Kumalo to come with him to the center for the blind at Ezenzeleni so that Kumalo can see how much "the white people" are doing to restore freedom to "our" (in other words, black) blind people.
While much of the book is about ways in which white people have taken away freedoms from black South Africans, Msimangu is also careful to point out ways in which liberal white people have given back freedoms to some communities of black people. Why might Alan Paton emphasize the gratitude and thankfulness of black characters like Msimangu towards white charity? What might be Paton's motives in emphasizing the importance of white contributions to organizations serving black people?
Quote #5
It was a wonderful place, this Ezenzeleni. For here the blind, that dragged out their days in a world they could not see, here they had eyes given to them. Here they made things that [Kumalo] for all his sight could never make. Baskets stout and strong, in osiers of different colours, and these osiers ran through one another by some magic that he did not understand, coming together in patterns, the red with the red, the blue with the blue, under the seeing and sightless hands. (1.13.29)
Paton's phrasing here implies some possible prejudices of his own about blindness. By saying that the blind "dragged out their days in a world they could not see," the narrator makes it sound like life without sight is so burdensome that it's almost not worth living. Lots of disability activists might disagree with this notion of "dragging out" days in blindness—there are many different ways of experiencing the world around you, and sight is only one of them. However, Paton clearly wants to make a positive point that these blind people have discovered a new freedom through the opportunity to work at Ezenzeleni. Certainly, work can give people a sense of purpose, whether they are blind or not.
Quote #6
I think we are all agreed that it is to be the truth and nothing but the truth, and that the defense will be that the shot was fired in fear and not to kill. Our lawyer will tell us what to do about this other matter, the possibility, my friend, that your nephew and the other young man will deny that they were there. For it appears that it is only your son who states that they were there. For us it is to be the truth, and nothing but the truth, and indeed, the man that I am thinking of would not otherwise take the case. (1.14.25)
Father Vincent wants to stick to the truth in Absalom's testimony. That's the only way that he can see Absalom's defense working at all in court. However, the legal system in South Africa (and in many other places) is such that telling the truth is no guarantee of your freedom. For more on Cry, the Beloved Country's contrast between law and social justice, check out our "Character Analysis" of the judge.