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Cry the Beloved Country Filippa Fenton Cry the Beloved Country is a book written by Alan Paton. The book tells a story about two men named James Jarvis and Stephen Kumalo. The story takes place in South Africa. The two men take their journeys which are noth physical and spiritual and in the end they do not only find their son s, but they find themselves. Jarvis was a wealthy estate owner.
He was a very busy man and not very connected with his son, Arthur Jarvis. The first time that James Jarvis discovered things about the social degradation of the natives in South Africa was when his son, Arthur, was murdered. If Arthur Jarvis had not been murdered, James Jarvis would not have ever learned about the social problems in his country. James was not willing to open his eyes to the cruelty of his country, and question the people around him. The way that James Jarvis finally took interest in what was going was when his son was murdered. When we first met James, he hardly knew anything about his son s life.
He didn t know his son Was on a kind of a mission We re scared stiff at the moment in Johannesburg Of crime? (p. 140). This quotation is when Harrison and Stephen Kumalo are talking. Harrison teaches Kumalo about the crime that is going on around them, and then after that, the next day Kumalo finds out about his son. One of the first things that James Jarvis learns about his son is his passion for what he has been fighting for. Because James Jarvis was in his son s house, he looked around. In Arthur s study, his father found pictures on the wall.
Many of the pictures were of Abraham Lincoln and there were a lot of books about him as well. Abraham Lincoln was a man who was devoted and stuck to what he believed in. James read Arthur s writing that he had found on Arthur s desk. James found out that his son had been working really hard in the fight against apartheid.
When James read further into his son s writing, he finds out that Arthur was trying to help the development of the tribal system that the blacks had has in south Africa; their home-land. James Jarvis begins to acknowledge the problems of is country, and starts to help. Because of his son s death, Jarvis gets to know Stephen Kumalo. The reason he gets to know Stephen is because he finds out that Stephen s son has murdered Arthur. Stephen Kumalo had journeyed into Johannesburg essentially to find his sister. Kumalo ended up taking his son s impregnated wife and his sisters son back home with him.
He had come for his sister and his son and returned with neither Jarvis befriends Kumalo in a way. When Jarvis gets to know his son s friend, young Harrison, Harrison tells James about a organization that Arthur had been running, and Jarvis donated 1, 000 pounds to what was called the African Boys Club. Jarvis wants to complete and pursue what his sons could not. Jarvis realized that he had to follow in his son s footsteps and improve the conditions for the blacks. This is ironic because normally it is supposed to be the son that follows in the father s footsteps.
The main place that Jarvis provides help for is the church where Stephen Kumalo works and is the priest. James Jarvis provides milk for little children, who only have little water to drink, if any. The reason behind this is because there is a draught in the lan date Jarvis is the only on that can save the people of Ndotsheni. Jarvis also plans to build a church and starts the building of a dam so that the people of Ndotsheni can have more water. Because of the things that Jarvis learns from his son, he develops a similar view of South Africa to Stephen Kumalo. When Jarvis is introduced in the book, the way we meet him is similar to the way we meet Kumalo.
They both live in farming areas in the same town. Both do not know their sons very well and they both have to go to Johannesburg for one reason or another. When they both lose their sons for very different reasons, they begin to acknowledge and help one another and accept one another. They both get to see what life in Johannesburg is like and all the things that happen when people, like Absalom, get lost in the city and take the wrong path. Cry the Beloved Country is a book that shows racial views in South Africa, and what people could do about them.
In the end, we learn that through all of the problems that James Jarvis and Stephen Kumalo had, they turned them into more educated and wiser men. If one man s son had not been murdered and the other man s son had not killed him, James and Stephen would not have learned all the good things that they did. In conclusion, we learn that the death of these two men s sons was an awakening to them. And the spiritual and physical journey that each man took helped him to work for the future of his country.
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