A Comparison of Country and City Life in Alan Patons Cry...

The country and the city life depicted in Alan Patons novel Cry, The Beloved Country portray two different aspects of life in South Africa in the later half of the 1940s. The country life in the book is Ndotsheni and the city life is Johannesburg. Neither country life or city life would be considered perfect. Both living areas enjoyed positive aspects and negative drawbacks. The country was looked at as the backward part of South Africa, and the city was looked at as the advanced part of South Africa. For the most part though people living in the country would rater stay in the country, and those who make their living in the city would rather live there. These two parts of the country were only separated by a days worth of travel on†¦show more content†¦The Africans of Ndotsheni were backward people. They did have a school, but there were only teaching the same principles that had been passed on for generations. They were an uneducated people, as far as it would have been t hought in the European sense of education. Family plays an important role to the tribes of Ndotsheni. The whole tribe looks after each other as if they were one large family. When a person is sick the whole community prays for a quick recovery. The community was anything but modern at this time. They little of modern technology and saw very few motorized vehicles. Quite a bit different from the life in Ndotsheni was the city life of Johannesburg. This was an industrial city thriving off the mining of gold deposits. The white man was making a fortune off of the gold industry. The city was home to mostly all Afrikaners. The surrounding suburbs were where Africans were able to buy land or set up in shantytowns. This type of housing was barely decent enough to be called a home. In a suburb such as Claremont it is shabby and dirty, and the streets are filled with filth. In these areas is where loose women and criminals tended to live or hide out in. These are also the areas where the black children did not attend school either because they do not care or their parents do not care, or the schools are full. (59) The whites of the cityShow MoreRelated Cry the Beloved Country Movie versus Film Essay1055 Words   |  5 Pages Cry, the Beloved Country is a moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom. They live in an Africa torn apart by racial tensions and hate. It is based on a work of love and hope, courage, and endurance, and deals with the dignity of man. The author lived and died (1992) in South Africa and was one of the greatest writers of that country. His other works include Too Late the Phalarope, Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful, and Tales from a Troubled Land. The book was made