The famous English poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense”. Although voice is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and versatile assets humans possess, simply having a good voice does not ensure power. This idea is well illustrated in Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country where Paton creates characters that have powerful voices but lack other essential qualities necessary to become powerful leaders. Set in a time where racial tensions between the blacks and the whites are at their highest, Africa is in desperate need of a gifted leader who can step up and guide the people to glory. Throughout the novel, the reader …show more content…
For it was not only a voice of gold, but it was the voice of a man whose heart is golden, reading from a book of golden words”(Paton123). Through this passage, Paton showcases the full power of Msimangu’s voice and the reader cannot help but wonder if Msimangu with his healing voice can be the one to bridge the rift that divides Africa. Unfortunately, the reader slowly learn that Msimangu is a spiritual man and is more concerned in helping others live a spiritual life then helping them to win their rights. One passage in Cry the Beloved Country reads, “yet he is despised by some, for his golden voice that could raise a nation speaks always thus”. They say he preaches of a world not made by hands, while in the streets about him mean suffer and struggle and die”(Paton 124). Thus the reader is once again let down, and left wondering whether there is anyone in Africa who can fit the mold of the leader required. Midway throughout Stephen Kumalo’s journey, the reader is told about a young man named Arthur Jarvis, a staunch opponent of South Africa’s racial injustices who was shot and killed. Much to the reader’s dismay, the more they learn about Arthur Jarvis, the more they mourn his death as Arthur Jarvis embodies all the qualities needed for a
This chapter addresses the central argument that African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed. For example, the author underlines that approximately 50,000 African captives were taken to the Dutch Caribbean while 1,600,000 were sent to the French Caribbean. In addition, Painter provides excerpts from the memoirs of ex-slaves, Equiano and Ayuba in which they recount their personal experience as slaves. This is important because the author carefully presents the topic of slaves as not just numbers, but as individual people. In contrast, in my high school’s world history class, I can profoundly recall reading an excerpt from a European man in the early colonialism period which described his experience when he first encountered the African people.
This is important for understanding the book because if you don’t know who the story is being told by or which side of the same story the reader is hearing. The protagonist and the antagonist of a story both have very different points of view, so which one the reader hears is crucial to the way the reader understands the
Grace La Greco 21 March 2018 English ll U3EA2 “If you don't like someone's story, write your own.” says award winning author Chinua Achebe. In Nwoye's igbo culture his father was determined for him to become like him, a leader to the igbo society, but Nwoye had other plans for the bettering of himself by following western ways. All around change is what you make of it.
He is not interested in the novel until his instructor mentions the critics of the novel and where it should end. Similar to these critics, the class debates whether Twain’s ending draws away from his critique of Racism and Graff found that even famous authors were capable of mistakes that could be found at his level. Now that the author has controversies to watch out for, he is able to draw a personal engagement form the books he reads as the arguments of critics guided his reading. Due to the controversy over Twain’s novel, the author then has a realization that reading and intellectual discussion could have an effect on his life, and he became less embarrassed about doing such
The use of dreams and flashbacks in the novel helps create suspense and shows different sides of a character. These techniques help the audience in forming an opinion on these characters as the audience then knows why a character behaves in a certain way. The use of dialogues further strengthens the development of characters as the characters expresses themselves through the use of dialogues. Through this book Caswell has given audience various messages about life however his main message to the audience is about moving on in
In the beginning of the novel, the point of view is shown through the narrator in first person and the narrator is unreliable in
To change the world, one must use their words to give the sense that the change is for the better. Speeches by the leaders that influence today’s society and those who came before have been able to cause emotions in the people who listen or read them. To be able to make people feel things with your words is a skill necessary for those who want to change the world. Martin Luther King Jr. is a great example of someone who used their words and ability to make people feel to make a change that impacted the whole world. Words are a very powerful weapon that can be used to provoke, calm, and inspire change.
This chapter did a really good job with trying to bring some light in the African history and change the view of African in the world. We can learn a lot from this chapter, for example, this chapter showed us that African wasn’t only slaves in the past, but they were also king, trader,
This allows the audience to be able to see the connection between the author and character. The comparison and contrast will show
Wangari Maathai’s Call for a Shift in Thinking In decades past, Africa has flourished with culture, livelihood, and personality. This highly populated continent was once a refuge. It was a harbor for travelers. It was a haven of security.
12/10/16 Sociology Final Laura Fischer A time line of Nelson Mandela’s Life Over the course of the semester we have had the opportunity to study Nelson Mandela and the impact he has had on the world. In this paper I dug deeper to look at and study his key life experiences from a sociological perspective. Mandela lived a remarkable life because he was willing to suffer. Mandela was fearless. I think we can all learn a lot from Mandela, he once wrote “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
The author connects the reader thanks to different literary and figurative devices as
How can one make so many mistakes in life and still be forgiven as if they did not do anything wrong? In the novel Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton, religion was an important point throughout the whole novel. The main character, Stephen Kumalo, who simply goes by Kumalo, was a black South African priest who revolved his life around his family and God. There had been many times in Kumalo’s life where his feelings and actions had been the results of devoting his life to God. Paton continually mentioned the importance of faith in this book and what it meant to each of the characters present.
In addition to all these man’s credentials, he has held vast leadership roles. He was a man whose younger days were spent fighting for the African National Congress, who
The film reflects on the struggles of South Africa and reaches out to the audience, knowing that many would have lived through the terrible apartheid period and Eastwood uses this too seek to inform them on the massive change that South Africa went through as a result of the effective and immense leadership of Nelson