Question

CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY QUESTIONS

Answer 1

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1 This suggests that the problems in Johannesburg are not local and specific only to this large urban area, but exist elsewhere. More importantly, Paton suggests that these problems will continue to increase as urbanization continues in South Africa unless the changes he suggests are implemented.



2  The miners are unsatisfied with the working conditions, including the separation from their families and the unfair distribution of wealth from the mines. After the narrative voice says that all is quiet another voice retorts that only fools are quiet. This makes an interesting contrast with John Kumalo with his powerful voice, but lack of action and Arthur Jarvis and his eloquent letters. Both of these men use words but do not follow the words with action. Kumalo out of fear and Jarvis due to his untimely death. Paton could be making the point that words, regardless of how eloquently spoken or written, may begin change, but only action will ultimately bring about that change.


3  Jarvis provides milk to the children of the village. Jarvis begins to realize the predicament of the natives and how that predicament really involves all of South Africa, white and black. He realizes,like his son, that everyone must work together and that the native population must be educated, one of his son's goals.





4   The novel thus ends on a note of hope: Kumalo awakes from a both a literal and a metaphorical darkness into dawn. Therefore, while Paton ends the novel with the question of when Africa itself will emerge from its metaphorical darkness, there is nevertheless the assumption that the emergence into a dawn is inevitable. The question of when this emergence from darkness will occur is the only question that Paton can now pose.