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Metaphors
Definition of Mood
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes... read full definition
Mood
Explanation and Analysis:
The mood of Cry, the Beloved Country is often quite sad, as Stephen Kumalo stumbles into one misfortune after another. Part of the novel’s melancholy is personal: the parson leaves his village only to find his sister trapped in the Claremont slums and his brother newly estranged. He must grapple with his son’s murder and, worst of all, the subsequent death sentence. Kumalo loses those he loves most in quick succession. The grief is raw and piercing.
But the work intertwines Kumalo’s personal hardships with broader, national ones. Kumalo's soul-straining tragedy comes bound within South Africa’s larger social dynamics, which fill the journey’s edges. Cry, the Beloved Country alerts the reader to a sense of suffocating oppression through the “filth in the streets” and the cramped, narrow houses in which Johannesburg’s native population must suffer. The novel briefly channels the voices of the starving and sick as Kumalo and Msimangu navigate the city’s alleys, and elsewhere it directs attention to the countryside’s dying cattle. In the wake of the “broken tribe and the broken house,” Ndotsheni fares no better. The soil “cannot keep [the young people] anymore,” the novel mournfully reminds the reader. Upon news of Arthur Jarvis’s murder, all of these injustices reach a piercing lament:
Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end.
Paton, however, tempers heartbreak with hope. The novel’s deep engagement with religion furnishes just as many moments of strength and solace. Cry, the Beloved Country deals out kernels of wisdom during sermons, prayers, and unexpected moments of insight. “Pain, and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret,” an unnamed friend tells Kumalo. “But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering.” Amid the heaviness of all the country’s injustices and sorrows, Paton suggests that there may still be room for something brighter. Through faith, he charts a path towards a brighter future.
