Cry The Beloved Country Essay

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Cry, the Beloved Country Essay How Chaotic and Illegal Actions Cause Undesirable Consequences Everyone makes mistakes and does wrong at some points in their life, whether they break minor rules or commit serious felonies. With punishable actions come consequences, which impact the offender as well as whomever else the criminal action involves. Results of offenses can be irreversible and can have the potential to emotionally and physically tear apart families and relationships. Throughout the contemporary novel Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton uses personification to reveal how chaotic and illegal actions can result in consequences that separate offenders from those that love them. When people commit such awful crimes, the family as well as those around them think of the offender as an outsider. As Absalom and his girlfriend “greeted each other like strangers” after they both know of their definite separation due to Absalom’s death, Paton indicates, “hands without life, not to be shaken, but to be held loosely, so that the hands fell …show more content…

Families and those that care for the criminals take the impact the hardest and almost perceive the separation as a physical obstruction: “There is a barrier here, a wall, something that cuts off one from the other” (130). The meeting of Stephen Kumalo and his son brings a feeling of tension, which Paton describes as very influential on them both, with emphasis on the personification of a physical separation barrier. The tragic and painful separation has a profound effect on both Absalom and his father because of their severance by a crime. In addition, both Absalom and the one(s) that he loves know that the criminal himself needs a punishment, and the tension just builds up for everyone involved. Punishments for crimes bring the criminal into even more isolation, especially a permanent consequence such as Absalom’s

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