Fear In Alan Paton's Cry The Beloved Country

He will enter with hope, with an assurance that he will achieve reconciliation with his sister and son. He will enter with the hope, in all its naivete, of bringing his family together again. He will leave with the scattering dust of a family torn forever. Within the forlorn pages of Alan Paton's landmark novel Cry, The Beloved Country, lies a message often hard to swallow. The slow dissipation of Stephen Kumalo's family as consequence of the evils of Johannesburg and contrasting backgrounds within the novel illustrates the ever constant battle between love, which holds a tribe together, and fear, which tears it apart, ultimately revealing how fear creates a divide between peoples that love can rarely repair. The story itself includes two …show more content…
Despite his prayers and despite his pleas, Absalom is sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. Even though Absalom wanted with all his heart to return to his homeland, the actions he committed in fear have dragged him to his death. It did not matter how greatly his father loved him, fear shall destroy him nonetheless. Soon after his sentence, adding fuel to fire, Gertrude disappears without warning. The reader may confidently believe that she went to become a nun; however, she proves through her actions time and time again, that this optimistic ending is highly unlikely. She is almost always seen being reprimanded for speaking, laughing, and acting carelessly with strangers, strangers who are just as corrupt as Johannesburg itself. Truly, as a character, there is no proof through her actions that she has changed since first introduced. With this in mind, it is more likely that she realized this, instantly struck with the remembrance of what she feared at the beginning: that she was no woman to go back. Fear, without question, has broken apart Stephen Kumalo's family in such a fashion that it can never be mended his