"cry, the beloved country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)
All of Paton's books show his love of his country and his compassion for all South Africans. He still hopes that violence there will end, that the dynamite will never be ignited, and that the views that will prevail will be like those of Arthur Jarvis and Msimangu in Cry, the Beloved Country.
^^^^^^^^^^CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY: THE PLOT
It's 1946, and drought is eroding parts of Natal, a province of the Union of South Africa. Uplands near the village of Ndotsheni are still fertile, but the soil is depleted in lowlands reserved for blacks of the once powerful Zulu nation. The Reverend Stephen Kumalo is worried. With crops too sparse to feed everyone, young people have been going off to Johannesburg. Very few ever return. One of those gone is Sibeko's daughter who accompanied her white mistress, Miss Smith, to a Johannesburg suburb. Others are members of the parson's own family. Kumalo's brother John has been in Johannesburg ten years; his sister Gertrude took her baby and left to find her husband two or three years back; and his son Absalom has been gone for more than a year. Kumalo fears that strict Zulu moral traditions, based on family unity, may be breaking down completely.
One day Kumalo hears from the Reverend Theophilus Msimangu, a Zulu and an Anglican priest like himself. Msimangu writes that Kumalo must come to Johannesburg immediately because Gertrude is ill. Once Kumalo quits worrying about the expense, he enjoys the trip. He gawks without embarrassment at more trains, stations, people, and streets than he had ever imagined. In Johannesburg, however, his delight fades. A young black man tricks him out of some money, and then Msimangu tells him Gertrude isn't physically sick--she's a prostitute.
The next day, though, after many tears, Gertrude agrees to give up prostitution. She and her little boy move to Kumalo's rooming house until he is ready to take them back to Ndotsheni. His good spirits restored, Kumalo expects equally successful reunions with his brother and his son. It sounds easy. Absalom's best friend is John's son, Matthew, and Msimangu says that everyone knows John Kumalo. He owns a prosperous shop and gives rousing speeches on such issues as fair wages for black workers. But Stephen Kumalo is bitterly disappointed with John, who has left the Anglican Church. He lives with a woman who isn't his wife and doesn't even know where his own son is--much less Absalom. Kumalo reluctantly acknowledges that his brother will never return to Ndotsheni, but he still hopes that his own son Absalom will.
With Msimangu as his guide, Kumalo finds a factory John mentioned. But Absalom no longer works there. It also turns out that he has moved from the address a man at the factory provides, and from the next, too. Each new address is in a worse neighborhood. Kumalo tries to ignore a conclusion he is reaching, but he has seen and heard too much. The wealth of white districts and the poverty and lack of work in black ones make crime all too attractive to any idle boy--even his son. It's almost a relief when he and Msimangu (close friends by then) learn at last that Absalom is in reform school for burglary. But their relief fades. Officials have released him to marry a girl he made pregnant, and she hasn't seen him for days.
That evening, headlines further alarm Kumalo. Three young blacks have killed a prominent white man, a spokesman for social reform named Arthur Jarvis. Hundreds of boys might have killed him, but Kumalo is sick with fear that Absalom is one of the three. A thin connection feeds his fear. Arthur was the son of James Jarvis of High Place above Ndotsheni, and Kumalo remembers Arthur as a cheerful little boy who used to come into the village.
Tired and downhearted, Kumalo accepts Msimangu's invitation to a day of rest and prayer outside Johannesburg. He gains some inner peace, and glimpses the possibility of better schooling in his village--education in farming methods that might improve the land enough to keep young people home, or at least provision of kinds of knowledge that would help them adapt to city life.
Meanwhile the police, spurred on by public outrage, have worked quickly. In a few days they've arrested Absalom, Matthew, and another boy--and Absalom has confessed that he pulled the trigger. Still, Kumalo is relieved that Absalom did not fire deliberately, and that he repents and plans to tell the entire truth. When his brother John hires a lawyer to defend Matthew by denying Absalom's story, Kumalo is stunned. John has betrayed the most basic Zulu value--family loyalty.
During the trial, whites and blacks alike fill the segregated courtroom. James Jarvis, Arthur's father, doesn't notice Kumalo, but Kumalo notices him. He wonders how he will ever be able to face Jarvis. Meanwhile Jarvis has been studying his son's speeches and articles. Arthur had worked toward correcting wrongs that whites had committed against blacks, and Jarvis begins to want to carry on his son's ideas. But he wonders what, exactly, he should do.
One day court is not in session. The Jarvises visit their niece, Barbara Smith, and Kumalo decides to keep his promise to look for Sibeko's daughter. He knocks on the Smiths' door in a Johannesburg suburb, and Jarvis answers. Kumalo is shocked speechless and needs time to recover enough to conduct his errand. Jarvis gradually realizes that Kumalo is shaking with fear, and recognizes him as the parson from Ndotsheni. Genuinely concerned, he asks why Kumalo is so afraid. Kumalo finally manages to say the painful words, "It was my son that killed your son." Jarvis in turn is shocked, but he is understanding. Instead of blaming Kumalo for his son's actions, he sees him as a father like himself--a man full of grief over a son.
Later in the week Kumalo goes to the tribal chief and the schoolmaster, but they don't understand his dreams for the future. Nothing changes until the day Arthur's young son, James Jarvis' grandson, rides up to Kumalo's house. When Kumalo says that he can't give the boy the cold milk he asks for, the boy comes to understand how desperately the village children need milk. Then he simply goes and has his grandfather send some. The action seems to inspire Jarvis. He provides not just milk, but also the more lasting help of a new dam and advice from an agricultural expert. Kumalo encourages the willing villagers to try the new ways, and spurs on the reluctant ones.
Jarvis and Kumalo seldom actually talk, but when they do--as they do one night on the mountain where Kumalo has gone to keep watch before and during Absalom's execution--their understanding is complete. Neither the Kumalo nor the Jarvis family can be restored, and neither can the old Zulu ways. But in Ndotsheni, at least, a white man and a black man are working together to restore the land they love.
Some characters in Cry, the Beloved Country,--even some major characters--are more types than individuals. That is, they stand for kinds of people, and you see only one side of their personalities. Some minor characters are also presented as types. They are not given names. Instead, they are always introduced by the same phrase--for example, "the young white man from the reformatory."
^^^^^^^^^^CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY: REVEREND STEPHEN KUMALO
Kumalo is the Zulu pastor of St. Mark's Church of Ndotsheni, a village near the town of Ixopo in the province of Natal. An American skimming this novel might at first see Kumalo as an "Uncle Tom." He seems almost too respectful of whites and not very assertive about the needs and rights of his own people. But Kumalo is far more complex than that. Some readers see Kumalo as a basically good man who achieves a kind of saintliness because of his experiences in the novel. Whatever your personal interpretation is, Kumalo is the most fully developed character--perhaps the only fully developed character--in the novel.
He does begin as a fairly innocent "country boy," despite being 60 years old and educated enough to serve as a village parson. As you first meet him, he is somewhat timid, yet a little vain about his status as pastor. He and his wife are poor, but their strong love of family is clearly shown by their willingness to spend their savings on the journey to Johannesburg.
In Johannesburg, city ways bewilder Kumalo at first. He is even cheated out of some money as soon as he arrives. But he is able to learn, and can eventually get around the city by himself. You see that he is a kind man when he buys his sister and her child new clothes. He is tenacious, too. He does not easily accept defeat in his search for his son, and even opposes his friend Msimangu who advises him against accepting his son's pregnant girl. He's not totally angelic, however. When Kumalo sees people close to him violating the strict moral code they've been taught, anger consumes him and he speaks out cruelly. He quickly repents, however, and begs forgiveness.
Almost without noticing it, he begins to see the drought and the breakup of families in his own village in a new light. He begins to understand that whites have caused many of the social and economic problems of blacks. In his own life, however, he finds it difficult to change lifetime habits and speak up to white men he respects, like his bishop or James Jarvis.
Kumalo suffers deeply. By the end of the novel he has lost a brother, a sister, and a son. But he has gained a daughter-in-law, a nephew, and a grandchild as yet unborn. Once, when much younger, he had considered taking a job that would pay better than the priesthood. But suffering ennobles him. He grows into every bit as much a man of God as his friends Msimangu and Father Vincent. Instead of becoming a bitter old man, he acquires the vision to propose improvements for the good of his village.
^^^^^^^^^^CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY: REVEREND THEOPHILUS MSIMANGU
Msimangu is an Anglican priest assigned to the Mission House in Sophiatown, a district of Johannesburg. His first name means "one who loves God." Msimangu seems better educated than Kumalo, and speaks Afrikaans as well as Zulu and English. He is a powerful preacher and a sophisticated, knowledgeable man. He is also sensitive and is deeply affected by the injustices suffered by blacks. He considers love the only force strong enough to bring whites and blacks together. Msimangu calls Kumalo to Johannesburg because of Gertrude, takes him to Gertrude and to John Kumalo, and then helps him search for Absalom. Sometimes disillusionment sets off his temper. For example, when Kumalo wants to take in Absalom's girl, Msimangu angrily dismisses her as a slut who is unlikely to change. Like Kumalo, however, Msimangu quickly regrets his words and asks forgiveness. He ultimately gives Kumalo all his savings and enters a monastery. You are not told why. What is your thinking on the matter? Perhaps he believes a priest doesn't belong in politics, or perhaps he is simply following his own deep attraction to the spiritual life.
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