cry, the beloved country -...

CRY THE BELOVED

COUNTRY

BY ALAN PATON

AGENDA

• Term 4 Lesson Schedule

• Overarching Idea

• Biography of writer Alan Paton

• Summary of Cry, The Beloved Country

• Summary of Book 1

• Important quotes and characters

TERM 4 SCHEDULE

Term 4 is a very packed Term, here’s the following schedule

so you’re ready (some classes might get more or less

classes depending on their individual timetables):

Wk Lesson 1 Lesson 2

1 • Intro to CTB, historical context

• Important quotes chap 1-9

• Characters & Themes

• Chap 10 to end of Book 1

2 • CTB Sample Paper Practice

• Conclusion of CTB

• Revision on Julius Caesar and

Unseen

3 Overall Revision Start of EOY

OVERARCHING IDEA

Throughout Julius Caesar, we have been studying how as

Cassius tells Brutus:

‘Men at some time are masters of their fates

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

but in ourselves that we are underlings’

(Act 1, Scene 2)

It is this notion of free will, agency and choice that is also

echoed in Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country.

We will study how this notion of free will is carried out in

Paton’s novel and how the various characters freely choose

the events and actions that come their way.

ALAN PATON: Biographical Details

• Paton was a South African writer, founder and president of the Liberal Party, which opposed Apartheid.This party was banned in 1968 by the Prohibition of Political Interference Bill, and Paton was harassed by the racist government.

• Born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, in east South Africa

• He was principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory for young offenders, where he introduced controversial progressive reforms.

• Died in 1988, at his home near Natal, South Africa.

Cry, the Beloved Country Overview

Cry, the Beloved Country was written by Alan Paton to depict the discrimination and social problems caused by Apartheid in South Africa. Through the novel, Paton attempts to address these problems and offers a possible solution to the racial discrimination of Apartheid.

The novel itself is set in 1946, and follows the lives of two families, one native and one white, as their lives clash in a changing world of both racial and generational conflicts.

BOOK 1: STEPHEN KUMALO’S DOOMED

ODYSSEY Book 1 of Cry, the Beloved Country opens with a description of the

land (this description will be rephrased and repeated throughout

the 3 books). ‘They are valleys of old men and old women, of

mothers and children. The men are away, the young men and the

girls are away. The soil cannot keep them anymore’ (p.8).

The story shifts to Stephen Kumalo who is a priest in a small

fictional village Ndotsheni, in the countryside of South Africa. He

receives a letter that his missing son, Absalom Kumalo, is in

trouble in Johannesburg and thus begins his journey there.

He packs what meagre belongings and wealth he has and travels

to Johannesburg.


ODYSSEY

Along the way many things happen to him:

• he gets cheated in Johannesburg

• encounters truly kind strangers who help him

• finds his missing sister Gertrude (who has become a prostitute

and liquour seller of alcohol she makes herself)

• finds his missing brother John (who has divorced his wife,

become a carpenter and self-proclaimed saviour of the blacks)

• finds that his son Absalom has made many bad mistakes

including:

• making a girl pregnant and leaving her

• committing several crimes which led to him being sent to the

reformatory and last and perhaps worst

• killing Arthur Jarvis in a robbery gone wrong


ODYSSEY

At the end of Book 1, Stephen Kumalo is a much changed man. He

no longer is able to look at the world so innocently, his previously

unshakeable faith has been shaken to its core and the beliefs he

once had, are no longer the same.

It could be argued however that Kumalo is a man, stronger than he

was previously. Where he had initially chose blind faith, now his faith

and experience with life is something which he has had to choose

for himself. It was not chosen for him.

Paton is using Kumalo’s perspective to see both the beauty and

cruelty of South Africa simultaneously and as we the readers are

confronted with it, we too must make our own choices about the

book and about South Africa.

European Colonisation of South Africa:

• Dutch made first European contact in South Africa, most

of the natives died of smallpox because of the contact

• Germans and French arrived after that and decided to

stay

• Developed homes and their own language (Afrikaan)—these Europeans became known as Afrikaaners

• Afrikanners are non-English Europeans who settled in South Africa

South Africa History


• 1668 Slavery begins in South Africa

• 1795 British Invasion of Cape Town to prevent French from having access to India

• In 1830‟s, Afrikaaners made the “Great Trek” into uninhabited wilderness to the northeast along the Vaal River to escape British rule—they were particularly unhappy with the British ban on slavery.

• 5 karat diamond found in Afrikaan‟s territory

• British invade the territory and send in diamond minders


• 1899-1902: War between British and Afrikanners (Boer‟s or Farmers‟ war)

• British win the war and Afrikaan women and children sent into concentration camps (half of them died there)

• The Afrikaan Day of Celebration: „Broederbund‟ meaning The Brotherhood is established

• Purpose is to unite the Afrikaans against British and Blacks


• 1948: Daniel Malan, President of South Africa officially declares Apartheid as law of the country (his way of retaliating against British rule)

• The purpose of Apartheid was separation of the races; not only of whites from non-whites, but also of non-whites from each other.

Apartheid

• Apartheid laws classified people according to three major racial groups:

1. White

2. Bantu, or black Africans

3. Colored, or people of mixed descent

• Apartheid laws determined:

• Where members of racial groups could live

• What types of jobs they could have

• What type of education they could receive

Apartheid

• Apartheid laws also:

• Prohibited most social contact between races

• Authorized segregated public facilities

• Denied any representation of non-whites in the national government

• Accused people who opposed Apartheid openly of being Communists

Apartheid and the People of South Africa—this data was true of South Africa in 1978

Whites Blacks

1/22 1/60 Teacher/pupil ratio

$696 $45 Annual expenditure on education per student

2.7% 20% (urban) 40% (rural)

Infant mortality rate

1/400 1/44,000 Doctors/population

75 percent <20 percent Share of National Income

87 percent 13 percent Land Allocation

4.5 million 19 million Population

Black Opposition to Racial Segregation and White Discrimination

• In 1912, the African National Congress (ANC) was founded to fight unfair government policies.

• ANC leads anti-apartheid riots in Sharpeville in March 1960—government reacted by banning all black African political organizations, including the ANC

• 1969: Nelson Mandela (a proponent for racial equality is imprisoned)

• 1985: State of Emergency is declared

• 1990: Mandela is freed, Apartheid is declared ended

• 1994: Mandela becomes President of South Africa

Characters & Places in Book 1

Characters

Stephen Kumalo Absalom Gertrude John Kumalo

Msimangu Ms. Lithebe Tomlinson

Dubula

Father Vincent

Arthur Jarvis Matthew Kumalo

Ndotsheni: Stephen Kumalo‟s village Johannesburg: Largest and one of the wealthiest cities in South Africa

Shanty Town: Slum built in Johannesburg by the Blacks offering temporary housing as they‟re too poor to afford anything else

Sophiatown: Town in Johannesburg where Gertrude is in

Places

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Importance of the Land: ‘one of the most important

characters in the book was the land of South Africa itself.

He was quite right. The title of the book confirms his

judgement’ (Paton, Note p.5)

‘It is a song of love for one’s far distant country, it is

informed with longing for that land where they shall not hurt

or destroy in all that holy mountain, for that unattainable

and ineffable land where there shall be more death, neither

sorrow, nor crying, for the land that cannot be again, of hills

and grass and bracken, the land where you were born. It is

a story of the beauty and terror of human life’

(Paton, Note p.5)

CHAPTER 1: THE LAND

The Importance of the Land:

The opening of the novel begins with ‘There is a lovely road

that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-

covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing

of it …’ (p.7)

This opening will be repeated for Books 1, 2 and 3 in one

way or another. This is Paton’s way of showing what is

important to him throughout the novel.

The land of South Africa itself and how all the great things

and the bad things take place within the same land.

CHAPTER 2: THE PROBLEM

The start of the problem:

• At the start of Chapter 2, we are immediately introduced

to the conflict. Mainly that Stephen Kumalo and his wife

have been sent a letter from Johannesburg and they are

informed by Theophilus Msimangu that he has met:

• ‘a young woman here in Johannesburg. Her name is

Gertrude Kumalo, and I understand that she is the sister

of the Rev. Stephen Kumalo, St Mark’s Church,

Ndotsheni. This young woman is very sick and therefore

I ask you to come quickly to Johannesburg’ (p.10)


• The trip to Johannesburg to save Gertrude

presents some problems to Stephen and his wife

as they have been saving up all their money in

order to send Absalom to St Chad’s (p.11)

• Stephen’s wife says that the money doesn’t

matter because Absalom ‘is in Johannesburg…

when people go to Johannesburg, they do not

come back’ (p.11)


• Stephen is angered by this and replies ‘He

went to Johannesburg, and as you said –

when people go to Johannesburg, they do

not come back. They do not even write

any more. They do not go to St Chad’s, to

learn that knowledge without which no

black man can live. They go to

Johannesburg, and there they are lost,

and no one hears of them at all. And this

money …’


• They eventually decide that Stephen must

go with all the money as a family

member’s life is at stake. But as Stephen

leaves there is a rather strange abrupt

ending to the chapter about Kumalo’s wife.


• ‘He went out of the door, and she watched

him through the little window, walking

slowly to the door of the church. Then she

sat down at his table, and put her head on

it, and was silent, with the patient suffering

of black women, with the suffering of oxen,

with the suffering of any that are mute.’

(p.12)

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW

• We are introduced to how Johannesburg seems

to swallow up people and how they are lost to

their families

• We are also shown how not only are the Blacks

silenced but how the Black women, in this case,

Stephen Kumalo’s wife, is almost doubly

silenced as well

• The lot of women seems to be even worse than

Black men

CHAPTER 3:

TRAIN RIDE TO JOHANNESBURG

• Introduction of racial problems:

• ‘As all country trains in South Africa are, it

was full of black travellers. On this train

indeed there were not many others, for the

Europeans of this district all have their cars,

and hardly travel by train any more. Kumalo

climbed into the carriage for non-Europeans,

already full of the humbler people of his race’

(p.14)

CHAPTER 4:

ARRIVAL IN JOHANNESBURG

• When Stephen Kumalo arrives in Johannesburg,

he is afraid of being cheated and when a man

comes up to him and offers to help him buy a

ticket, he is grateful and immediately gives him

the money for it (p.18-19)

• Unfortunately there is no need to buy a ticket at

the office, the tickets are sold on the bus itself.

• Kumalo’s first experience with a person in

Johannesburg immediately leads to him being

cheated (this is the start of a very long and

arduous trip for him)

CHAPTER 5:

ARRIVAL AT PRIEST MISSION HOUSE

• Fortunately, a kind stranger actually helps him

out and he is able to eventually go to the mission

(where fellow priests go) and meets Msimangu

• As he talks to his fellow priests he tells them the

following details about Ixopo about its great hills

and valleys and his love of them. But also of the

sickness of the land and how the tribe was

broken and the house broken, and the man

broken; how when they went away, many never

came back, many never wrote any more.

CHAPTER 5: GERTRUDE KUMALO

• ‘of young men and young that girls that went

away and forgot their customs, and lived loose

and idle lives. They talked of young criminal

children, and older and more dangerous

criminals, of how white Johannesburg was

afraid of black crime’ (p.22)

• Kumalo is finally told about his sister Gertrude

and how she is physically sick but also has an

even worse kind of sickness.

CHAPTER 5: GERTRUDE KUMALO

• Kumalo is told how Gertrude came to find her

husband but now, ‘it would be truer to say … that

she has many husbands’ and that she also

makes and sells bad liquor using inferior

products.

• ‘These women sleep with any man for their

price. A man has been killed at her place. They

gamble and drink and stab. She has been in

prison more than once’ (p.23)

CHAPTER 5: JOHN KUMALO

• Msimangu next tells Kumalo of how his brother,

John Kumalo ‘is one of our great politicians’

(p.24).

• But unfortunately, John has ‘no use for the

Church anymore. He says that what God has not

done for South Africa, man must do’ (p.25).

• As a priest, this is bitter news to Kumalo.

CHAPTER 5: JOHN KUMALO

• Msimangu also says ‘the tragedy is not that things are

broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again.

The white man has broken the tribe… it cannot be

mended again… The house that is broken, and the man

that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the

tragic things. That is why children break the law and old

white people are robbed and beaten.’ (p.25)

• ‘They are not all so. There are some white men who give

their lives to build up what is broken. But they are not

enough. They are afraid, that is the truth. It is fear that

rules this land.

CHAPTER 6:

THE DISGRACE OF GERTRUDE KUMALO

• Stephen finally comes face to face with his sister

Gertrude and learns how she is a fallen woman, that she

is a ‘liquor seller, a prostitute, with a child and you do not

know where it is’ (p.29)

• Gertrude initially gives many excuses for not writing back

to Stephen and his wife to tell them of what has

happened to her but eventually her excuses are revealed

as just that, excuses with no good reasons for it.

• But in spite of all that, Stephen still says that he is here

to take her back to Ndotsheni and takes her back to Mrs

Lithebe’s boarding house.

CHAPTER 7: THE FALL OF JOHN KUMALO

• After the disappointment of Gertrude, Stephen Kumalo

meets his brother John Kumalo.

• He finds that John’s wife Esther has already left him for

ten years and that he is currently with a woman though

‘not what the Church calls married’ (p.33).

• He too makes a lot of excuses for not writing to Stephen,

explaining that ‘Here in Johannesburg I am a man of some

importance’ (p.33) and can speak for the black people

here. But there is a hint that John Kumalo is not being

very sincere.


• John Kumalo in fact is so insincere and so used to

putting up a front that as he speaks to Stephen and

Msimangu:

‘He began to sway to and fro, he was not speaking to

them, he was speaking to people who were not there’

(p.34)

‘I do not say we are free here. I do not say we are free as

men should be. But at least I am free of the chief. At least I

am free of an old and ignorant man, who is nothing but a

white man’s dog. He is a trick, a trick to hold together

something that the white man desires to hold together.’


‘The Church too is like the chief. You must do so and so and

so. You are not free to have an experience. A man must be

faithful and meek and obedient and he must obey the laws,

whatever the laws may be.’ (p.34)

‘His voice grew louder and he was again addressing people

who were not here. Here in Johannesburg, it is the mines, he

said, everything is in the mines’ (p.34)

Everything built for the Europeans is from the gold found in

the mines. But the gold is found by the labour of the black

men, it is the blacks who work hard but it is the white man’s

shares that will rise not the salary or pay of the blacks.


• While Stephen and Msimangu listen to John’s

rhetoric, when he is asked a simple question

about why his wife left, John explains that ‘She

did not understand my experience’ (p.35).

• ‘You mean, said Msimangu coldly, that she

believed in fidelity?” (p.35) Fidelity is of course

faithfulness and responsibility but it appears here

that John Kumalo, while living in Johannesburg

has appeared to forget everything about it.


• ‘He is a big man, in this place, your brother. His shop is

always full of men, talking as you have heard. But they

say you must hear him at a meeting he and Dubula and a

brown man named Tomlinson. They say he speaks like a

bull and growls in his throat like a lion, and could make

men mad if he would. But for that they say he has not

enough courage, for he would surely be sent to prison.’

(p.37)

• This is evidence then that John Kumalo may talk a good

talk, but that is all that he is. His actions do not match up

to his words. It seems as though Stephen Kumalo’s family

members are continually disappointing in this manner.

CHAPTER 7: MSIMANGU’S WISDOM

• Msimangu tells this to Stephen ‘Because the

white man has power, we too want power, he

said. But when a black man gets power, when he

gets money, he is a great man if he is not

corrupted. I have seen it often. He seeks power

and money to put right what is wrong, and when

he gets them, why, he enjoys the power and the

money… some of us think when we have power,

we shall revenge ourselves on the white man who

has had power, and because our desire is corrupt,

we are corrupted and the power has no heart in it’

(p.37)

CHAPTER 7: MSIMANGU’S WISDOM

• ‘But there is only one thing that has power

completely, and that is love. Because when a man

loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has

power. I see only one hope for our country, and

that is when white men and black men, desiring

neither power nor money, but desiring only the

good of their country, come together to work for it.’

(p.37)

• This is perhaps Paton using Msimangu to express

his own hope and belief in what is best for the

nation of South Africa.

CONCLUSION: LESSON REFLECTIONS

Some questions to consider:

1. What are the issues that have been raised about the race

relations between Whites, Blacks and Coloured in South

African Society?

2. Are there any characters in the text worthy of sympathising or

empathising with? Why? Why not?

3. Were the characters corrupted by Johannesburg (eg.

Gertrude, John, Absalom) or were they corrupt to begin with?

4. What is Paton’s aim as an author for writing the novel?

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