What Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Parton Says About Motivation for Human Actions
Sometimes it’s funny how two things that appear to be entirely unrelated can be compared so easily. Take Cry, the Beloved Country and human actions and the motivation behind them. They seem like two completely unrelated topics. After all, one is a novel taking place in South Africa and the other is, well, falling into the category of psychology. However, take a look into the novel, and you find a universal theme of the complexity behind the actions of a human being. The novel explores that behind the actions of mankind, there is fear, love, and compassion.
Behind many human actions, there is fear. Sometimes it is fear of rejection, sometimes fear for safety, and sometimes even completely irrational fear just for the sake of being afraid. Absalom claims that his sole reason for shooting Jarvis is fear. “I was afraid, I was afraid. I never meant to shoot him.” (Wilde 195) I believe anyone in Absalom’s position would have done the same. It may have been an irrational decision, after all, the penalty for stealing is less than the penalty for murder, but with adrenaline rushing in the brain and in a split second of panic, one’s instinct is to protect themselves using whatever they have on hand. In Absalom’s case, it was a revolver, loaded with one bullet. We are hardwired to protect ourselves at all costs by instinct, and it is difficult to override this instinct in such a small frame of time. Any slight startle and
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Take, for example, a spider. The first thing someone does when they see a spider is jump as far away as possible and start screaming “Kill it!”. Humans will do what is necessary to keep themselves