Cry, the Beloved Country

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Cry, the Beloved Country has been my favorite book so far this year. It had a few obstacles while reading it though. For instance when people spoke there were no quotations. There were dash marks, but sometimes the speech was embedded in a paragraph. Also the native African languages made the reading of it more difficult, and more interesting as well. The story was one of redemption. It was beautifully written with language like poetry. Patton used repetition often as a way of reinforcing the importance of what was said. He also used it to be what I call an "echo" effect where the same phrase was repeated over and over. For instance when Stephen Kumalo came to visit his son, Absalom, at the prison he would say something to Absalom, and Absalom would weakly repeat it. It was as if he didn't know what was happening, that he like the echo was far away only distantly hearing what was said.

Cry, the Beloved Country is also similar to The Odyssey. Stephen Kumalo has to go on a long journey and as he is traveling he is constantly taken into a new direction. Before he even got on the train Sibeko, a person from Stephen's community, asks for him to look for his sister when he was in Johannesburg. Once in Johannesburg he was led astray by the boy who seemed to be helping him. Then once he found his sister and started looking for his son every time they got close to where he might be he was gone and they were lead to yet another destination. They meet many obstacles as they traveled such as the bus boycott and issues with white police authority.