Inferno

Dante and Despair

When Dante encounters the lion, wolf, and leopard he is coming out of the dark woods and is on the path to hell. Although the animals symbolize different things, they all scare Dante. They share one goal: to scare Dante and make him lose hope and have despair, the most serious sin.
Unlike many theories, I do not think that the animals are there to simply tempt Dante nor do they each stand for a specific deadly sin. Instead, I think that their goal is to monitor Dante so that when he does wander into sin, and into the woods, they will be able to control him until condemned to hell. They want to push Dante farther down the wrong path until it is too late for him to turn back and attempt to return to the right path.
The leopard is a supervisor outside of the woods. I think the leopard is like God, except he is working against Dante. The leopard continually watches Dante while he is in the dark woods. He pays special attention to Dante’s weaknesses that will cause him to falter off of the right path. The leopard’s job is to learn enough about Dante to make sure that he remains off of the right path and follows the wrong one.
I think that the lion symbolizes a guard. As we know the story opens with Dante coming out of the dark woods. Right outside the exit is a lion that will slay those who have exited. The lion knows that Dante has just wandered off of the right path. The lion then knows that Dante is lacking faith and courage thus making him more susceptible to temptations and complete lack of faith.
The wolf then recognizes that the lion has found someone on the path to hell and the wolf takes advantage of their vulnerability. The wolf presents Dante with temptations and adds to the fear that the lion has already supplied. The wolf insures that Dante will remain on the wrong path and continue sinning and falling into temptations until he reaches hell.
The leopard symbolizes sin and how it is always around us. The leopard also symbolizes the devil and how he plays off of your weaknesses, whether they are physical, spiritual, or lack of faith. The lion symbolizes people who can lead you off of the right path. Sometimes when we wander off of God’s path we look to other people to help us. The lion is the wrong person that voluntarily helps you but in the end only pushes you farther down the wrong path. The wolf represents the power of sin. Once Dante had been watched, lured, and captured, by the leopard and the wolf the power of sin becomes even stronger. The leopard symbolizes how hard it is to get back onto the right path once sinning, despairing, and losing faith and hope become habit or regular.
The animals foreshadow Dante’s journey to come. Most importantly, Dante is on his way to hell. His sight is transforming from earthly sight to corporeal. This is the main reason for his great fear. Dante only sees the animals’ physical features, thus adding emphasis to their dangerous attributes which adds to Dante’s fear of them. This suggests that Dante’s vision will continue to change throughout his journey which will in turn change his emotions. He will be frightened by different things and for different reasons because of his altering vision. Also, the animals indicate that throughout the journey Dante will always have enemies. He will always have someone there to try to lead him permanently off the right path and on the path to life in hell forever. This constant fear that Dante will have throughout the journey encourages a lack of faith and causes him to despair. Therefore, Dante will need to have courage and faith throughout the journey while overcoming the various temptations that are ever present in hell and along the way to heaven.

My Feelings on the paper Cry the Beloved Country

I have mixed feelings about writing this paper. I do not think that the paper that I wrote:
A. Was an adequate display of my knowledge of the book
B. Did justice to the book and the ever present but also hidden themes that persist throughout the book

But in the end I think my paper was pretty good. I really did like posting it on the blog. For some strange reason it gave me a sense of accomplishment. My paper felt like a finished project.

Next time I am definitely going to put more me into it. I am going to be more creative. This time I was just really hung up on writing the paper because it was our first time. I thought it was going to be hard to get the required amount of words but it turned out to be really easy and almost insane to not exceed 750 words.

I really did enjoy the book Cry, the Beloved Country and I think that I displayed that attentive interest through my paper.

The Collective Cry

Mr. Ehret
English II H
February 16, 2007

“The Collective Cry”

As a baby you are born perfect. You have not been damaged, hurt, or neglected yet. No one has had the chance to blemish you “perfectness.” Unfortunately as you grow older you make yourself more susceptible to pain, hurt, and damage. As you grow up your pieces that used to fit perfectly together shift and drift to the point where repairing the pieces means starting over and putting them all back together. In Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country,” the people of South Africa recognize how broken their pieces are. Although they are not yet racially segregated, superiority, racial, political, and religious injustices stretch the blacks and the white farther apart. The book opens describing exactly how broken the pieces are. The people are dying and in turn the land is dying, culture and beliefs are dying all because of the racial tension. In “Cry, the Beloved Country” the people of South Africa, after much hardship, attempt to repair the pieces themselves by starting all over.
“Cry, the Beloved Country” takes place in the calm before the storm. South Africa was originally occupied by native African tribal groups. The first European settlers to South Africa were the Dutch arriving in the mid 1600s. The main goal of the Dutch was to make South Africa a huge center for trade. The Dutch eventually developed their own language Afrikaans. As the Dutch, later known as the Boers, settled more and more into the land the native African tribal groups were forced off of their land. When the English settlers arrived in 1795 their main goal was to make South Africa a successful colony. The English’s ideas on colonization were at constant conflict with the Boers which resulted in many wars and much argument. When gold was found in Boer territory the British moved in and established the Union of South Africa around 1910.
The story takes place in the mid 1940s just after World War II. The story is set in expectation of the 1948-1994 apartheid. Apartheid, meaning separateness in Afrikaans, is the separation of racial groups and their development. The apartheid, set by the white South African government, became an official policy in 1948. In the story the blacks are only allowed to hold low paying unskilled jobs and are continually run off of the traditional land similar to the African tribes during the British colonization. The story tells of the troubles that both people experience during this time of anticipation before the instillation of the apartheid.
Many factors contribute to the dying land and people in “Cry, the Beloved Country.” The people of South Africa agree that you keep, guard, protect and love the land because it keeps, guards, protects and loves you. As we can see, “Destroy it and man is destroyed” (Paton 33), the land cannot live without the people and the people cannot live without the land. Land is all the black people have and people are all the land has. When Paton opens his book he talks about the beautiful land of South Africa but you have to connect that the land is only as beautiful as the people, after all the people are the ones making the land beautiful. Throughout the book the land represents the dying people and the dying African culture being brought about by the tense atmosphere created not only by the existing racial segregation but also by the anticipation of the lurking apartheid.
Rev. Stephen Kumalo, an Anglican priest, lives in the village Ndotsheni, Natal. The town contains nothing but wasted, overrun, and nonproductive land. The land is useless and dying because “It is not kept, or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, or cares for men” (Paton 34). Ndotsheni is home to the black people. They were given the useless land and the whites owned the fruitful successful land. The white people, such as James Jarvis, live up in the hills. The placement of the people in the story is very significant. The white people live above the black people on good land and the black people live below on bad land. This represents the superiority of white people to black people.
The country is crying for the people and the land. In order for such a cry to be heard an influential leader who is exceedingly qualified needs to relay the message. The leader has to be qualified because he is speaking for all of his people. The leader needs to be able to relay an accurate and consistent message that speaks for the collective. Not only that but he has to get the message heard by people and not just people but influential people who can do something about it. We know of John Kumalo who was the voice of the people. He was known to be able to move a crowd and then bring them back down only to move them to excitement again with ease. His word selection beautifully depicted the trials, tribulations, and suffering that the black people were going through. John was so much of an influence on the protestors that the officials began to fear him the most thinking that he could easily organize and lead a successful revolt.
Although we do not know much of Dabula we know that he is the heart behind the operation. We see his sincerity and concern for his people during the bus strike. We also know that Arthur Jarvis was the brains. When Arthur died his father discovered that his son was a huge fan of Abraham Lincoln. Why? Why did Arthur read so many of Lincoln’s speeches and writings? Arthur read the books because Lincoln was everything. He was a leader who was perfectly qualified. He was the heart, the brains, and the voice behind the emancipation of slaves. The only other leader who showed as much promise as Lincoln was Jarvis. Arthur admired Abraham Lincoln “Here were hundreds of books, all about Abraham Lincoln” (Paton 176). Jarvis realized that the only way they would get heard was if they had such a leader. At the time of his death Arthur Jarvis was learning to become like Abraham Lincoln. He was learning to become the heart, brains, and voice so that he could gain rights for the blacks in South Africa.
I think the cry itself is pessimistic. The black people are crying for justice before their land, culture, and families are dying. Everything they have, everything they know, everything they love is being endangered by people who are just like them except for their skin color. The white people are crying for justice due to the outbreak of native crime. The white people fear that they natives are going to kill all of the influential and important white people. How awful. They are both crying for their lives. They are crying for someone to fix what they themselves have broken. The cry is pessimistic but the result of the heard cry is optimistic.
When the cry is heard people act. James Jarvis uses his wealth to teach the black people how to repair their brokenness. “If you give a man a fish he will live for a day. If you teach a man how to fish he will live forever.” Jarvis does not cross the line and he does not use his white wealth and superiority to boss around the black people. He does not say do this and do that rather he hires a black person, someone who the black people can relate to and not feel inferior to, to help them rebuild their land and in turn themselves. Jarvis not only has a new respect for black people but a new desire to complete what his son started and ensure their lives not just fix the problem for now and walk away. When the cry is heard Stephen Kumalo takes even further actions to help his people. He teaches his people how to reunite through their own culture, language, and beliefs.
When the cry is heard pride does not play a part. Two fathers mourn the loss of their sons together. Two fathers reach out to the other for their loss. Two fathers work together to make up for the loss of their sons and to prevent any more damage. When the cry is heard James Jarvis’ grandson goes down the hill to the land of the black people and learns Zulu from the father of the man who killed his father. The boy learns the language of people who were previously beneath him. When the cry is heard, there is more learning, acceptance, and tolerance of other cultures.
The African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, was headed up by Nelson Mandela began to take action. The former South African Native National Congress, now ANC organized strikes, protests, and marches against their fully segregated lives. This did not work instantaneously. Many years, lives, voices, and prayers later, in 1994 South Africa experienced its first free election. When Nelson Mandela was elected president the apartheid was removed. One of his most distinguishing accomplishments is the direction in the composition of one of the most liberal constitutions in the world today.
If you knew that the apartheid was about to be instituted when the book ended, then you could say the end was pessimistic. But if you did not know you could say that some whites and blacks were getting along and others were soon to follow. But also if you knew that the apartheid would be removed the ending could again be considered hopeful and optimistic. I think that overall rating of the ending depends on how much outside historical information you know.
“Cry, the Beloved Country” starts with despair and ends with hope. Hope for a better life for blacks. Hope for equality, acceptance, and tolerance. Hope for an equal chance. It tells of people who actively try to put their broken pieces back together. They do not leave their fate in someone else’s hands. They try to fix what they broke. After all in the end all we can do is hope.