Cry, The Beloved Country

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Cry, the Beloved Country In any journey, a person learns and changes. Change, wether it be good or bad, comes in many different forms, spiritual, mental and physical. Every important, life journey shares a common pattern. The journey begins with a question, a challenge to the meaning of one’s life, a question that can’t be answered by the journeyers current life situation. Therefore the questioner leaves his comfort zone, and journeys into the unknown to seek an answer. There, in the new world, his old beliefs are proven wrong as he wrestles with calamities that confront him. This process transforms the journeyer, and in the end, the journeyer always come out of the journey different than he was before. Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis both undertake many journeys in Cry, the Beloved Country, and they develop and change. Kumalo and Jarvis’s journey start from opposite beginnings, but brings them to a common understanding. Every journey starts off with a question, it so happens that Kumalo and Jarvis have the similar questions. Who is my son and what is the meaning of his death and how do I understand my country, South Africa? Kumalo lived in the small, poor, waterless town of Ndotsheni. Jarvis lives above Ndotsheni, on a large estate with wealth and a water supply. Ndotsheni is a place where the earth is dry and cracked, “a place of old men and women”, “but still home.” Jarvis’s estate, known as the High Place, is a place where “The grass is rich and matted; it holds the rain and mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof.” Nonetheless, Jarvis and Kumolo lead very similar lives. Their sheltered surroundings is their comfort zone, the only place they know. Their current lifestyles could not answer their questions because they know nothing of the outside world. Jarvis never truly agreed with his son, for he was so hidden from places

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