Paton has
many themes in his book Cry, The Beloved
Country. He has themes such as
religion, family, segregation, brokenness, and many more. Paton’s most prominent theme in the book up
until Book I would be that family life in South Africa is broken. South Africa itself might be broken, but
family life is much worse. In total
there are already three examples of families being broken in Book I.
The first example of a broken family
is Stephen Kumalo and his sister and his son.
Stephen was long ago left by his sister and son who went to Johannesburg. His sister left to find her long lost
husband, but never returned. So Kumalo’s
son, Absalom, goes to Johannesburg to find her and he never returns. Kumalo decides to go look for them in
Johannesburg, but once he finds them he has more problems to face. His sister is now a prostitute and his son
has gotten in trouble with the law. “A
liquor seller, a prostitute, with a child and you do not know where it is?”
said by Kumalo to his sister. Kumalo
asked his son, “You stole and broke in and-yes, you did these things. But why?”
Kumalo just wants his family back together, and will do anything to mend
it.
Another example of a broken family
is the relationship between John Kumalo, Stephen Kumalo’s brother, and his own
son. When Stephen Kumalo went to
Johannesburg he visited his brother to talk about Absalom and catch up on
things. Stephen found out that John was
no longer with his wife, and he did not know where his son was. John told Stephen, “My wife Esther has left
me these ten years, my brother.” Stephen
was shocked, but then asked about John’s son.
“So he said he would leave. He
had good work so I did not stop him. And
your son went with him” John told Kumalo and then he added that he did not know
where they had went. John is not as
worried as to get his family back together as Kumalo at all. It seems as though John could care less if
his family was together or not.
My last example of a broken family
is James Jarvis’ family. James Jarvis is
a rich man in this book who lives on top of the hill instead of in the
valley. He had a son named Arthur
Jarvis. He and his son had not talked in
a very long time though, due to different perspectives. Arthur was fighting to save the native race
by writing books to help people realize that there should be no
segregation. James would not hear of it
in his house. So they both had not spoken
to one another in a long time. Ironically,
Arthur gets murdered by a native, Absalom, while working on his work. When James got into Johannesburg he stated, “My
son and I didn’t see eye to eye on the native question, John. In fact, he and I got quite heated about it
on more than one occasion. But I’d like
to see what he wrote.”
Three families and one country that
were all broken. It seemed as if the
only person who was trying to fix all the brokenness was Stephen Kumalo and
Arthur Jarvis. Kumalo went to
Johannesburg, a very frightful place for him, to fix his family. Arthur had a goal to make South Africa a
better place by writing and letting people know about things. Arthur never got to truly finish his goals to
fix South Africa’s brokenness. Will
Kumalo’s fate end up as Arthur’s did?
Will Kumalo mend his family, or will a tragedy happen?
