Locked in the Fear of Our Own Injustice is everywhere, even amongst your own family because sometimes the ones closest to you can hurt you the most and they can try to understand the hurt and pain, but it may truly never be known. Though the majority of the time we never even consider family turning their back on us, both books, “Let Me Go” and “Cry, the Beloved Country” show us that lack of confrontation and injustice among family can turn things for the worst. “Let Me Go” is a deeply compelling story about the attempt to reconcile a relationship between mother and daughter. Helga Schneider is a young child in Berlin growing up amongst one of the horrifying times in history. In 1941 in Berlin, west Germany Helga’s mother abandoned her,
…show more content…
Helga had heard many speculations of where her mother had been and what she was doing; after very many years of not seeing her, Helga becomes interested in finding out why her mother chose to become a guard for the Nazis and if she had any regrets. After contemplating long and hard Helga decides to visit her mother in Vienna before she passes at her old age. Helga asks her mother if she regrets how she lived her life as a Nazi guard and her surprise, her mother gets convicted to a certain extent and bursts out, “It’s no fun talking to my daughter!” then trying to dismiss Helga, she sticks her fingers into her ears and shouts “I’m not listening to you anymore!” (Schneider 76) Here we see that her mother knows what she did was morally and ethically wrong, but she does not regret what she was involved in. For Helga this was very difficult to comprehend. All she wanted was to cling onto the vintage memories, but the only thing she could do was make sure she, “buried her (mother) memory in a dark recess of my mind.” (Schneider 4) How hard it must have been to have such an unsightly desire to see the woman that birthed her. Sadly, the only was Helga really …show more content…
In this story, a preacher from Natal strives to reconcile his own family, along with his impoverished community. Unlike Child seeking Mother in our last story, this time Father goes forth and seeks his Sister along with his own Son. Stephen Kumalo is the local priest in his South African village, he has a son named Absalom whom has ventured out to Sophiatown; a very large city in South Africa. He, nor his wife have seen their son in many years, and with all the injustice covering South Africa, they fear for their child’s life. Stephen also has a sister named Gertrude that married a man in Sophiatown, but her husband has left her and she decided to put her self out there in a scandalous way in which she found herself pregnant and now very ill. Stephen gets a letter in the mail from a pastor in Sophiatown who found his sister and is now having the church look after her. The injustice in this story is more on Kumalo’s family than on the people as a whole. Though Theophilus Msumangu said it well when he spoke this to Stephen; “left working for subsistence wages and enduring poor living conditions it is not surprising that crime rates among blacks are riding.” (Paton 73) Msumangu follows this with “but it has not suited him (the city of Johannesburg) to build something in the place of what is broken.” Meaning that the officials and hierarchy of Johnannesburg know that social injustice
Helga had heard many speculations of where her mother had been and what she was doing; after very many years of not seeing her, Helga becomes interested in finding out why her mother chose to become a guard for the Nazis and if she had any regrets. After contemplating long and hard Helga decides to visit her mother in Vienna before she passes at her old age. Helga asks her mother if she regrets how she lived her life as a Nazi guard and her surprise, her mother gets convicted to a certain extent and bursts out, “It’s no fun talking to my daughter!” then trying to dismiss Helga, she sticks her fingers into her ears and shouts “I’m not listening to you anymore!” (Schneider 76) Here we see that her mother knows what she did was morally and ethically wrong, but she does not regret what she was involved in. For Helga this was very difficult to comprehend. All she wanted was to cling onto the vintage memories, but the only thing she could do was make sure she, “buried her (mother) memory in a dark recess of my mind.” (Schneider 4) How hard it must have been to have such an unsightly desire to see the woman that birthed her. Sadly, the only was Helga really …show more content…
In this story, a preacher from Natal strives to reconcile his own family, along with his impoverished community. Unlike Child seeking Mother in our last story, this time Father goes forth and seeks his Sister along with his own Son. Stephen Kumalo is the local priest in his South African village, he has a son named Absalom whom has ventured out to Sophiatown; a very large city in South Africa. He, nor his wife have seen their son in many years, and with all the injustice covering South Africa, they fear for their child’s life. Stephen also has a sister named Gertrude that married a man in Sophiatown, but her husband has left her and she decided to put her self out there in a scandalous way in which she found herself pregnant and now very ill. Stephen gets a letter in the mail from a pastor in Sophiatown who found his sister and is now having the church look after her. The injustice in this story is more on Kumalo’s family than on the people as a whole. Though Theophilus Msumangu said it well when he spoke this to Stephen; “left working for subsistence wages and enduring poor living conditions it is not surprising that crime rates among blacks are riding.” (Paton 73) Msumangu follows this with “but it has not suited him (the city of Johannesburg) to build something in the place of what is broken.” Meaning that the officials and hierarchy of Johnannesburg know that social injustice