![]() ![]() Kumalo makes plans to head into Johannesburg to find her and, he hopes, his son the next day. And Kumalo has stopped hearing from all three of them.Įxcept now, Kumalo has gotten a letter from an unknown priest, Theophilus Msimangu, letting him know that his sister Gertrude is very sick. ![]() ![]() Kumalo's brother John, his sister Gertrude, and his only son Absalom have all gone off to live in Johannesburg, the biggest city in South Africa. ![]() Kumalo is an elderly Christian priest who lives in the Zulu town of Ndotsheni with his (weirdly unnamed) wife. Our main (human, not geological) character, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo, knows all about this pattern of young people leaving their traditional villages for the big city. And once they leave their hometowns, these people usually don't come back. More and more people are leaving their farms to find whatever work they can in the cities. Thanks to too many cattle and too much farming for grain, the ground is growing barren and unproductive. The land is gorgeous and fruitful, but it is starting to sicken. Alan Paton introduces us first to literally the biggest character of the book: the land of South Africa itself (which we talk about more in our section on " Setting"). ![]()
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