Cry the Beloved Country Analysis

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John Mercer IB English 12 4 September 2013 Concepts of Forgiveness, Faith, and the Redemptive Value of Suffering with regard to Cry, the Beloved Country By: Alan Paton Through Paton’s use of faith and forgiveness in Cry, the Beloved Country, he demonstrates the concept of redemptive value through Kumalo’s suffering and Absalom’s repentance. Kumalo’s suffering makes the reader feel sympathetic because of the sudden, yet constant, uprising conflicts in the storyline. Absalom’s repentance makes the reader feel reflective because they start to consider the moral lessons being taught in the story. Faith and forgiveness are combined to create the redemptive value of suffering, or repentance. The concept of forgiveness in Cry the Beloved Country is very crucial to the plot because Kumalo has many family members that he needs to forgive before he can leave Ndotsheni and go help them in Johannesburg. When Kumalo’s wife questions him about his well-being he replies angrily, “Hurting myself? Hurting myself? I do not hurt myself, it is they who are hurting me. My own son, my own sister, my own brother. They go away and do not write anymore. Perhaps it does not seem to them that we suffer. Perhaps they do not care for it.”(39) Here Kumalo comes to the realization of the importance of this trip to Johannesburg, he must go there to find them and forgive them for the suffering they have caused. He states at the end of the quote, “perhaps it does not seem to them that we suffer”, which seems to help him forgive his relatives because they don’t know the troubles Kumalo and his wife have suffered. When he first goes to find his sister Gertrude, he is angry at her for shaming his family, “You have shamed us, he says in a low voice, not wishing to make it known to the world. A liquor seller, a prostitute, with a child and you do not know where it is? Your brother a priest? How

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