Kumalo

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Throughout Cry, the Beloved Country, Stephen Kumalo must travel from place to place to look for his lost family. Kumalo comes to Johannesburg from his native Ndotsheni to look for his son and his sister, who travelled to the city and virtually disappeared. As Kumalo makes the journey from tribal life into the modernity of Johannesburg, he is faced with a world where the tribe is missing.While Kumalo searches for his son across Johannesburg, he must face the reality of what is happening to his tribe and what is being done to help his tribe come back together. Kumalo’s literal journey from Ndotsheni to Johannesburg represents his spiritual journey to rectify the brokenness of his tribe and understand the world around him and what he must do to …show more content…

Kumalo reflects on what the journey has brought him and what the journey is teaching him about his future. Paton writes, “One could go back knowing better the things that one fought against, knowing better the kind of thing that one must build...Yes-it was true, then. He had admitted it to himself. The tribe was broken, and would be mended no more,” (120). Kumalo “fought against” the damage that Johannesburg inflicts on Gertrude and his son, but he also fought against the parts of Johannesburg that must come to Ndotsheni for his home to survive. By recognizing that the tribe is broken, and that it “would be mended no more,” Kumalo begins to see what must be done to bring the world of the past into the world of the present.Stephen is no longer trying to mend the tribe, but to create a new tribe by bringing his family back and using what he learns in Johannesburg to build “the kind of thing” that his tribe needs. As Kumalo physically moves around Johannesburg, he learns about the good that men like Dubula and Arthur Jarvis are doing, and internally he recognizes that he must bring their ideas back to the broken tribe and his broken family in Ndotsheni. Only at the very end of Kumalo’s journey can he make that a

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