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Cry The Beloved Country Essay

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The book Cry, The Beloved Country tells the story of Stephen Kumalo, a priest from Ndtoshemi, in search for his son. It describes the despair of characters and shows how our choices can affect others other than ourselves. In his novel Cry, The Beloved Country, Alan Paton uses the metaphor of a phoenix to emphasize the destruction of the tribe but also Stephen Kumalo 's intention to mend the tribe and the metaphor of the storm to show Stephen Kumalo 's struggle throughout the story.
Stephen Kumalo comes from a small tribe in South Africa. When he gets a letter, he is forced to go to the big city of Johannesburg to find his sister. Once he finds his sister, he sees that she is morally sick. She is a prostitute and cannot take care of her own …show more content…

There is no doubt that the journey that Stephen Kumalo takes part in is a tough one. It brings him news that figuratively destroy him. The news that hurts and disappoints him the most is the news about his son, Absalom. When he finally finds Absalom, he finds him in jail, charged for murder of a white man named Arthur Jarvis. Stephen Kumalo seems to have lost all hope. Seeing this, Father Vincent, a white priest, tells Kumalo that "When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house … But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house." (140). Father Vincent uses the storm as a metaphor to describe Stephen Kumalo 's situation and what he should do. The threats of the storm create an image of anxiety. The anxiety that Kumalo feels when he so many people are telling him information about his son and leading him to all these places but he still can 't seem to find Absalom. The storm itself represents the moment Kumalo finds his son in jail for murder. It represents the pain and disappointment he feels. The destruction of the storm represents the sorrow that Kumalo feels. Finally, the rebuilding of a house represents how Kumalo will find a solution or try to make the situation better. It represents how they are going to not get Absalom sentenced to death but get him life in jail instead. Father Vincent tells Kumalo that he can 't do anything about the mistakes that his son made and that all he can do

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