Cry, the Beloved Country Suffering

The relationship between suffering and crime is one of the main issues in Cry, the Beloved Country. It's clear that poverty and desperation often drive people to crime, or at least, that's what the novel suggests. And here, in Cry, the Beloved Country, the racism of South Africa's laws encourages a lot of crime specifically within the black community, against both white and black victims.

Racist white people like Mr. Harrison may use these rising crime rates to show that there should be stricter laws clamping down on the rights of black people. But of course, it's precisely because of these stricter laws that there is so much violence in Johannesburg. Paton isn't denying that there is a crime problem in Johannesburg. He is asking his readers to be more open-minded and sympathetic about finding out why there has been so much crime there as people's employment opportunities have been dropping.

As this desperate, nameless mother in the Shanty Town worries over her ill child, she sings to the child about the countryside where they came from originally. This vision of the countryside provides a brief relief from the suffering that Paton ties so strongly to Johannesburg and its problems. But why do you think the mother's prayers are to both God and to the "white man"? What mercy might she be looking for from the "white man"?

This "piece of Africa that is my own" is the infant child of a mother living in poverty in the Shanty Town. In what sense does this child represent Africa? What is "the nature of women" in this passage? What is distinctive about the style of this passage compared to the parts of the novel that focus directly on Kumalo's plot line?

While Kumalo is playing with his little nephew, he tells the child all about Ndotsheni and the Umzimkulu River. Telling his nephew about those familiar hills and the great valley makes Kumalo happy, since he is homesick. But while he is playing with his nephew, he suddenly goes off into this much bigger meditation about why we are all here and why life has to be so hard. What effect does it have on your reading of this novel that Paton regularly connects small plot points with much larger ethical and religious questions like, "Who indeed knows why there can be comfort in a world of desolation?" How do these meditations from Kumalo make you feel as a reader?

Paton often uses a writing style called free indirect discourse. This may not sound particularly thrilling, but bear with us for a second: free indirect discourse is when a character is talking but there are no quotation marks or specific phrases like "He said" or "He thought" to show that it's the character who is speaking. Still, we know that this series of questions comes from Msimangu, and not from the third-person narrator, as Msimangu is looking at sad, broken Kumalo.

What effect does it have on your reading of these more emotional passages that Paton blurs the lines between character and narrator? How much influence do the characters' inner thoughts have on the narration of the book? How much do the characters' emotions bleed over into the narrator's description of what's happening in the novel?

There is this weird split in Cry, the Beloved Country where the women are most often the ones who weep visibly. So, Kumalo's wife cries when Kumalo prepares to leave Johannesburg. Here, Margaret Jarvis is visibly emotional. And yes, tears come to Mr. Jarvis's eyes, too, but it's Mrs. Jarvis's emotion that sparks Mr. Jarvis's tears. And Mrs. Lithebe and Gertrude wail when Absalom's verdict comes through. In fact, Msimangu actually warns Gertrude not to cry when they go to see Absalom for the last time in prison. Why might Paton emphasize a connection between women and emotion? In addition to crying, how do the men of the book generally show their feelings?

When Jarvis and Kumalo meet for the first time, Kumalo's tears show that he is sincerely moved by the suffering of the whole Jarvis family. His use of the Zulu terms of address—umnumzana meaning "sir," for Jarvis, inkosikazi meaning "mistress" or "lady," for Margaret and Mary Jarvis—also emphasizes how personal his feelings are, because he is using his own language to express them. At the same time, Kumalo's difficulty meeting Jarvis's eyes and his general expression of upset makes it clear that Kumalo is unsure how appropriate it is for him to share in the Jarvis family's grief, when it is his son who killed Jarvis's son. Luckily, Jarvis seems to accept Kumalo's sorrow in the kindly spirit in which it was meant.

Kumalo deeply resents his brother John after the advice John gave to Matthew Kumalo to betray Absalom, his cousin. Because Kumalo is so resentful, he winds up trying to make his brother feel paranoid about the police, who are watching his speeches closely. What Kumalo wanted to say was that John should avoid the corruption of power. But instead of giving him this moral advice, Kumalo shows how human he is by trying to hurt his brother for turning on Absalom. Kumalo's human side makes him all the more sympathetic as a character—the fact that he does things he regrets makes us feel really bad for him.

When Kumalo tells his friend back at the village about the fate of Sibeko's daughter, his friend hears the news philosophically. His friend reminds Kumalo that suffering is part of life, and that the point is not to avoid it, but to show God how you manage the pain that comes to you. Cry, the Beloved Country never claims that the goal of reform is to eliminate suffering altogether. The point is to minimize suffering where we can. It's impossible to make life entirely free of pain, but we can "bear suffering" in good and bad ways. Kumalo, this friend, and Jarvis all provide examples of morally good ways to learn from suffering.

After Kumalo hears Mr. Letsitsi's view that he is helping Ndotsheni for the future of his people, rather than in thanks to Jarvis, Kumalo feels a bit distressed. Kumalo does feel a lot of personal loyalty to Jarvis, and he doesn't feel that Jarvis owes Ndotsheni the help he has given because he is a white man. Kumalo's lack of resentment towards Jarvis for the racial inequality of South Africa causes others to call "him and his kind" a "white man's dog."

Why do you think Paton throws in this detail about Kumalo's negative perception by some people in his community? Why wait until the second to last chapter of the novel to bring this up? How does this description affect your perception of Kumalo's character and relation to Jarvis?