The Tribe
Both Msimangu and Arthur Jarvis claim that the main cause of rising crime rates in South Africa is the breaking of "the tribe." Msimangu tells Kumalo: "The tragedy is not that things are broken. Th...
The Blind of Ezenzeleni
When Msimangu brings Kumalo to the center for black African blind people at Ezenzeleni, Kumalo is in a really bleak place. He feels a sense of despair and pointlessness because he has seen Gertrude...
Arthur Jarvis's Study
Between his portrait of Abraham Lincoln and his picture of the great South African estate at Vergelegen, Arthur Jarvis's study contains a ton of symbolism. But because his study is the only way we...
Umfundisi, Umnumzana, Inkosikazi, Inkosana—Tixo!
Alan Paton uses these different Zulu forms of address for a couple of reasons: first, he wants to remind us that Kumalo and the other black characters in Cry, the Beloved Country come from a very s...
The Sticks With the Little Flags
Kumalo has a problem: he wants to improve farming in Ndotsheni so that fewer young people leave the village for work in the Big Bad City (Johannesburg). So he goes to the chief, the local Zulu lead...
The Storm
At the start of the novel, the narrator tells us that the land of the Umzimkulu valley is growing "red and bare" (1.1.3). And throughout the Ndotsheni chapters in Book 3, people complain of drought...