Discuss the Kumalo family explain how iys members symbolize the growing tensions in South Africa
The plot of Cry, the Beloved Country largely concerns the efforts of Stephen Kumalo to reunite his family by bringing back his sister Gertrude and his son Absalom to Ixopo. However, this theme takes on larger dimensions when one considers it in reference to the events that develop throughout the novel. A major theme that Paton develops is that family life in South Africa is broken; he illustrates this primarily through the Kumalo family itself, but then enlarges it to encompass family life in South Africa in general. The novel contains numerous instances in which families are broken apart by migration to Johannesburg, such as the family of Sibeko, and the cumulative effect of this, as Kumalo realizes, is that villages such as Ixopo and the nation of South Africa in general is one of families that need to be reunited.
