Cry Journal #6

The African land and Kumalo suffer an internal torture together. The lands suffer, for their is too much industry and too much need of food to support the empire the Europeans built. "The great hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away. The lightning flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the red blood of the earth" (34). This storm breaks down the earth, and the earth is leeched of it's life and turns hard and barren. This same storm hovers over Kumalo, for Kumalo has lost some his family. As he searches Johannesburg, he indeed finds them. The very same thing happened to Kumalo's family. But, when he finds each of them, he learns that they were corrupted by Johannesburg. He learns of their wrongdoing and it breaks down his character like how lightning tears the earth. He takes these blows until he is a broken man, on a broken earth. He learns that "there is nothing in the world but fear and pain" (121).

Ashoka Fellows

Albina Ruiz:

Is building a public waste management system in Peru to increase sanitations and health conditions in the area. There is now a public education program and a trash removal service from public agencies.

Arbind Singh:

Gives urban poor in India access to markets through large, employee-owned and managed institutions—large enough to influence policy and be legitimation competitors in market. He has given unorganized poor access to financial services and technology and solicit business.

Siriam Ayer:

Creating a base for new "role models" or mentors for underprivileged children. He introduced the component of empathy in the existing system and bridged the gap between a child's perceived intelligence quotient and hidden emotional quotient. Thus he is changing the way education is perceived and delivered to low-income groups.

Cry Journal #5

There are many characters that Alan Paton did not give a name to, and one of the characters is Absalom's wife. Throughout the book, she appears in various places of suffering, and it makes her seem older than she is. One time is when Kumalo tells her that her fiancée is in trouble with the police. Kumalo then asks her, out of anger, if she would be "willing" to him. She responds yes, and Kumalo is grieved because he did not mean it. She is also pregnant, and when she talks to Gertrude, they "laugh carelessly". But, throughout the book, Alan Paton refers to her as "the girl" as if to remind us that she is only a child. Eventually, Gertrude realizes this and stops laughing carelessly. "The girl"'s situation represents that in Johannesburg, you become older than you really are. This decision of Paton's represents very well that there is no room for children in Johannesburg.

Cry Journal #4

The author separates Cry into books because he uses a repetition of things from the beginning of Book 1 and puts them in the beginning of Book 2. This creates a sense of familiarity in the beginning of Book 2 and maybe foreshadow that something bad will taint the admiring tone in the second book, since the first book started with a admiring tone, but changed to disgust. He also uses different parts in the book to convey a change in the point of view. He goes from Kumalo's point of view, who is looking for his son, to Jarvis' point of view, who just lost his son. There is some contrast in this where Kumalo is just a priest with little money finding his son, and Jarvis is a wealthy farmer losing his son.

Oppression Links

This is a link to a chronological history of black slavery and oppression.
Chronology on the History of Slavery

A video of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Speech.

Youtube

Cry Journal #3

Chapter 9
Phrase:

• Have you a room that you could let?
• Quietly my child, your mother is by you.
• What shall we do in the rain? The winter?
  

Image:

• Crowded rooms.
• The child coughs badly, her brow is hotter than fire.
  

Concept:

• People have been waiting five years for a house.
• Men only make 35 shillings a week.
• Such is the nature of woman.

A phrase repeated throughout Chapter 9 is "Quietly my child, your mother is by you". This phrase shows how much a mother cares for her child through times of distress. This could foreshadow maybe Stephen's sister and her child.

The image of "the child coughs badly, her brow is hotter than fire" is an example of the consequences of chance and poverty, since the sickness of the child is probably caused by not being able to obtain a home for so long, in which the victim has little control over the situation of overcrowded housing.

The concept "such is the nature of woman" explains how woman have to suffer birth, than take care of the child and love it, watch it grow, only to lose it.