Discrimination In Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country

Decent Essays
Discrimination is an issue that is present all around the world. However, discrimination used to have a much more dominant presence in the city of Johannesburg during 1948 the time of which Alan Patton was writing Cry, the Beloved Country. Throughout the book, the characters Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis both encounter experiences of discrimination. These experiences assist Paton in showing the racial discrimination issues within Johannesburg. Alan Paton’s use of telling the book through the eyes of two characters of which one is black and the other is white shows that racial discrimination can be overcome and result in working together.
Johannesburg during the time period of when Alan Paton wrote Cry, the Beloved Country, the city was
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In book I of Cry, the Beloved Country, Kumalo is visiting his brother and he wants to use a phone to call the factory of which his son, Absalom, is supposed to be working. Kumalo’s brother John says “They do not do such things for a black man, my brother”(Paton pg.70). This passage helps Paton inform the reader how being a black man is especially burdensome because of the lack of privileges at that time. Kumalo only sees this loss of a phone as an inconvenience and will persevere to search for his son even without the use of a phone. Due to this inconvenience, Kumalo, must work alongside Msimangu to find his son. In other words, because Kumalo worked around discrimination, he ended up working together with …show more content…
During Jarvis’ stay in the city he went to visit his niece to take a break from the death of his son. Whilst there, Stephen Kumalo knocks on the door while trying to find the daughter of Sibeko, Kumalo consequently falls from fear of Jarvis, not because he is white but because he is Arthur’s father. Despite this, Jarvis even with his dislike of blacks, still assists Kumalo. “Jarvis stood, picked up the hat and stick...and he restored them to the parson”(Paton pg.212). By participating in this act, Jarvis is overcoming some of his prejudices towards black people that had already been loosened by reviewing his son’s papers and articles. All of these experiences allow Jarvis to have a more clear and open mindset about discrimination which ultimately leads him to working together with Kumalo to restore the farmlands of

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