Fear Can Be a Powerful Thing

In the book Cry the Beloved Country the main character Stephen must face many of his worst fears. For a parent the one thing you hope, is that your child will do what you thought them and be a good person. Sometimes you must let them go and have faith that they will do just that. For Stephen and his wife that was not the case. Stephen finds out in the book that his son, has done something so evil and vile it is often unforgivable.

Arthur Jarvis is also a father that had little idea of his son’s doings at the beginning of the book. When he finds out about what his son has been doing for the people he once believed to be less worthy of himself, he feels the same way as Stephen, confused, fearful, and hurt. The words that James Jarvis wrote about his father were less the flattering.

Both of these fathers must make the choice to forgive their sons, but they must also find it in them to forgive themselves. Stephen must not fault himself in the mistakes of his son. Jarvis must try to understand why his son said the things he had, and remember that his son laved him in the end.

Looking at the history of South Africa it is easy to see that there was a lot of forgiving that had to happen before the peace that now exists in the country. Anne Apple Baum, a writer for the Washington Post website, tells of her experience when she traveled to South Africa before things had changed there. She talks about her confusion when after she asked for directions to a local black school that was only a few miles away, and no one had ever heard of it. She confuses how surprised she was at how different life was from in the states. (Applebaum)

She later accounts on her astonishments when she returned almost 20 years later, and found the two races that were so violently separated before, to be living together in as if the past had never existed.

This country is not the first to have this kind of racial tension in their history, but they are one of the best to handle it. Even looking at the history of this great country, many more lives were lost in the struggle for equality. Despite the success that this country has had it still has far to go.

In the book it talks about the hope that the people will be able to forgive the hate that has been directed to them.  An example of the difficulty of this forgiveness is shown in Stephens’s decision to forgive Absalom and take in his child as his own. Not only does Stephen let go of the past, he changes what is to come for Absalom’s wife and son. This is the forgiveness that this country had to apply in order to heal. They had to not only let go of the past, but also pave the way for those who came after them.