The stories of Kumalo and Siddhartha in Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, follow the journey that each protagonist undergoes to try and achieve their ultimate goal. Although both characters go through their respective journeys to initiate change, their expeditions are inherently different. In Cry the Beloved Country, Kumalo starts off going on a microcosmic journey to find his son, but eventually realizes that his journey is in fact a macrocosmic one where he is not only on a journey for himself, but he is in fact on a journey for the entire nation of South Africa. Siddartha on the other hand, is on a personalized, individual journey to try and achieve enlightenment. The other obvious difference between both character’s journeys is the fact that Kumalo originally sets out to try and find out things about his son and others in his family and realizes that his journey must be more about seeking out truth, while Siddhartha started out seeking enlightenment but eventually realizes he must shift his focus and begin to find it. Siddhartha and Kumalo each go through a journey, however Siddhartha’s journey is very much individualized and on a microcosmic level, while Kumalo’s journey ends up becoming about the nation and is therefore on a macrocosmic level. Although it is true that their journey’s are similar in that they both are noble and take lots of effort and cause a lot of suffering, they are still inherently different because of the level that each journey is on. Kumalo originally …show more content…
Kumalo’s journey becomes everyone of South Africa’s journey, while Siddhartha’s is very individualized. They are also so different because Kumalo’s that starts out trying to find things, yet he comes to the understand that he must actually seek things, whereas Siddhartha undergoes the opposite