Question

what are the overall themes for Cry the Beloved Country by Paton and Sweeney Erect by Elliot ?

Answer 1

Reuniting the family and Nation
The plot of Cry, the beloved country mostly issues the efforts of Stephen Kumalo to reunite his loved ones through bringing back his sister Gertrude and his son Absalom to Ixopo. Nonetheless, this theme takes on higher dimensions when one considers it in reference to the movements that strengthen for the period of the unconventional. A principal theme that Paton develops is that loved ones life in South Africa is damaged; he illustrates this mainly by means of the Kumalo household itself, but then enlarges it to encompass family existence in South Africa commonly. The radical comprises numerous instances in which families are damaged aside by means of migration to Johannesburg, such as the household of Sibeko, and the cumulative outcome of this, as Kumalo realizes, is that villages comparable to Ixopo and the nation of South Africa as a rule is one of households that ought to be reunited. The shift of the plot for the period of the third phase of the novel from reuniting the loved ones in South Africa to reuniting village life in Ndotsheni displays this theme and enlarges it. Additionally, Paton suggests the theme of reuniting family and nation through the writings of Arthur Jarvis regarding a South African country wide identity. A fundamental motive that Arthur Jarvis labored for social justice, in keeping with his works, is to unite the nation as one cohesive whole, instead of a nation of more than a few disparate ethnic corporations.
Christian Values of Kindness
A foremost theme that Paton develops in the course of Cry, the liked country is the importance of continuously acting with a way of kindness. There's a principally Christian connotation to this worth, as tested by means of the dominant Christian affect of the characters, most particularly the pastors Stephen Kumalo and Theophilus Msimangu. Paton promotes the notion that adhering to this straightforward feel of kindness is at least a partial way to the problems in South Africa; it is the reciprocal kindness between Jarvis and Kumalo that motives the bond between them to strengthen, even as it is Kumalo's kindness to the small white boy that's the impetus for Jarvis to work on behalf of South Africa through donating milk to work against the drought and by using arranging for the position of recent farming methods in Ndotsheni.
The tension Between urban and Rural Society
Alan Paton makes use of the conflict between urban and rural society and the more than a few features they symbolize as a most important theme of the novel. For Paton, rural existence is nice exemplified by Stephen Kumalo and his character, whilst city existence is nice exemplified through John Kumalo. Paton certainly locations his sympathy on the characteristics of rural lifestyles: rural society comes to represent loved ones, religion, morality and stability, at the same time the chaotic urban life that Paton describes represents the breaking up of families, hedonism, and atheism. Paton also illustrates this theme by way of the progress of a couple of characters within the novel: the literal transfer of characters such as the pregnant woman to rural lifestyles in Ndotsheni represents a metamorphosis to a better moral sense, while the most corrupt character in the novel, John Kumalo, is thoroughly enmeshed in urban Johannesburg society.
Emancipation
References and allusions to the emancipation movement in the USA abound in Cry, the liked nation along with figurative comparisons to the quest for freedom. Essentially the most apparent use of emancipation imagery regards Arthur Jarvis, who idolized Abraham Lincoln and attracts on Lincoln's work to free the slaves for the duration of his own quest for social justice. Paton makes use of this to elucidate the assessment between the antebellum united states of america and his modern South Africa, both societies in which the search for justice for blacks is paramount. Paton does not use the theme of emancipation simply for its literal context, however; the major query of the radical at its conclusion is when freedom from fear, poverty and bondage will occur.
The general public significance of movements
An assumption that Alan Paton makes during Cry, the cherished country is that countless actions are massive no longer in themselves but in what they represent. That is most certainly established by way of two separate movements, the primary in the trip from Alexandra back to Johannesburg and the 2d at the finish of the trial of Absalom Kumalo. In both instances, a white man suggests his allegiance to the blacks of South Africa: in the first, a white man includes black men in his vehicle in support of a strike, while in the 2d the young man from the penitentiary exits the court docket with the blacks. Paton makes use of this theme with the intention to exhibit that public declarations of aid are an primary step in gaining justice in South Africa by way of demonstrating allegiances and loyalty.

The damaged Psyche of Humanity

Like many modernist writers, Eliot desired his poetry to precise the delicate psychological state of humanity within the twentieth century. The passing of Victorian beliefs and the trauma of World warfare I challenged cultural notions of masculine identification, inflicting artists to question the romantic literary best of a visionary-poet equipped of changing the world via verse. Modernist writers desired to capture their transformed world, which they perceived as fractured, alienated, and denigrated. Europe lost an entire iteration of younger men to the horrors of the so-called first-rate conflict, inflicting a basic main issue of masculinity as survivors struggled to search out their position in a radically altered society. As for England, the aftershocks of World war I straight contributed to the dissolution of the British Empire. Eliot saw society as paralyzed and wounded, and he imagined that tradition was crumbling and dissolving. The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock(1917) demonstrates this sense of indecisive paralysis as the titular Speaker wonders whether or not he must consume a bit of fruit, make an intensive alternate, or if he has the fortitude to maintain dwelling. Humanitys at the same time broken psyche averted humans from communicating with one a further, an thought that Eliot explored in lots of works, together with A game of Chess(the second a part of The Waste Land) and The hole men.

The vigor of Literary historical past

Eliot maintained excellent reverence for delusion and the Western literary Canon, and he packed his work filled with Allusions, quotations, footnotes, and scholarly Exegeses. In The way of life and the character skill, an essay first released in 1919, Eliot praises the literary subculture and states that the high-quality writers are folks who write with a way of continuity with these writers who got here before, as if all of literature constituted a movement where every new writer need to enter and swim. Best the very excellent new work will subtly shift the flows current and consequently beef up the literary way of life. Eliot additionally argued that the literary prior must be built-in into brand new poetry. But the poet ought to shield in opposition to excessive tutorial potential and distill most effective essentially the most fundamental bits of the prior right into a poem, thereby enlightening readers. The Waste Land juxtaposes fragments of various elements of literary and mythic traditions with scenes and sounds from contemporary lifestyles. The effect of this poetic collage is each a reinterpretation of canonical texts and a historical context for his examination of society and humanity.

The changing Nature of Gender Roles

Over the path of Eliot's existence, gender roles and sexuality grew to become increasingly bendy, and Eliot reflected these alterations in his work. In the repressive Victorian generation of the nineteenth century, females have been confined to the home sphere, sexuality was no longer discussed or publicly explored, and a puritanical atmosphere dictated most social interactions. Queen Victoria's death in 1901 helped bring in a brand new generation of extra and forthrightness, now referred to as the Edwardian Age, which lasted unless 1910. World conflict I, from 1914 to 1918, additional converted society, as persons felt each more and more alienated from one one more and empowered to interrupt social mores. English women began agitating in earnest for the proper to vote in 1918, and the flappers of the Jazz Age started smoking and drinking alcohol in public. Ladies have been allowed to attend institution, and ladies who would afford it persisted their education at those universities that started out accepting ladies in the early twentieth century. Modernist writers created homosexual and lesbian characters and re-imagined masculinity and femininity as characteristics individuals could anticipate or shrug off as a substitute than as absolute identities dictated via society.

Eliot concurrently lauded the tip of the Victorian technology and expressed obstacle about the freedoms inherent in the contemporary age. âThe Love music of J. Alfred Prufrock displays the sentiments of emasculation skilled by using many men as they back house from World war I to find females empowered via their new position as wage earners. Prufrock, unable to make a resolution, watches females wander inside and outside of a room, speaking of Michelangelo (14), and somewhere else admires their downy, naked arms. A disdain for unchecked sexuality seems in both Sweeney among the Nightingales (1918) and The Waste Land. The latter portrays rape, prostitution, a conversation about abortion, and different incidences of nonreproductive sexuality. Nonetheless, the poem's central personality, Tiresias, is a hermaphrodite and his powers of prophesy and transformation are, in some experience, because of his male and female genitalia. With Tiresias, Eliot creates a character that embodies wholeness, represented by means of the two genders coming collectively in one body.

Motifs

Fragmentation

Eliot used fragmentation in his poetry each to illustrate the chaotic state of today's existence and to juxtapose literary texts in opposition to one a different. In Eliot's view, humanity's psyche had been shattered with the aid of World struggle I and by means of the cave in of the British Empire. Collaging bits and pieces of debate, photos, scholarly suggestions, foreign words, formal styles, and Tones within one poetic work used to be a technique for Eliot to symbolize humanity's damaged psyche and the modern day world, with its barrage of sensory perceptions. Critics learn the next line from The Waste Land as a declaration of Eliot's poetic task:These fragments i have shored towards my ruins (431). Nearly each line within the Waste Land echoes an instructional work or canonical literary textual content, and many traces also have long footnotes written through Eliot as an attempt to provide an explanation for his references and to motivate his readers to teach themselves by using delving deeper into his sources. These echoes and references are fragments themselves, due to the fact Eliot includes most effective elements, alternatively than whole texts from the Canon. Making use of these fragments, Eliot tries to spotlight recurrent subject matters and pix within the literary culture, as well as to position his recommendations concerning the contemporary state of humanity along the spectrum of historical past.

Mythic and religious Ritual

Eliot's gigantic skills of delusion, religious ritual, educational works, and key books within the literary way of life informs every part of his poetry. He filled his poems with references to both the vague and the good known, thereby educating his readers as he writes. In his notes to The Waste Land, Eliot explains the valuable position played by means of devout symbols and myths. He drew closely from old fertility rituals, where the fertility of the land was once linked to the well being of the Fisher King, a wounded figure who could be healed by way of the sacrifice of an effigy. The Fisher King is, in flip, linked to the Holy Grail legends, wherein a knight quests to seek out the grail, the one object in a position of therapy the land. Finally, ritual fails because the tool for therapy the barren region, at the same time as Eliot presents replacement religious possibilities, including Hindu chants, Buddhist speeches, and pagan ceremonies. Later poems take their graphics just about completely from Christianity, such because the echoes of the Lord's Prayer in The hollow men and the retelling of the story of the shrewd guys in ride of the Magi (1927).

Infertility

Eliot envisioned the brand new world as a wasteland, in which neither the land nor the folks might conceive. Within the Waste Land, more than a few characters are sexually pissed off or dysfunctional, unable to cope with either reproductive or nonreproductive sexuality: the Fisher King represents damaged sexuality (in step with fable, his impotence explanations the land to wither and dry up), Tiresias represents stressed or ambiguous sexuality, and the females chattering in A game of Chess symbolize an out-of-control sexuality. World struggle I no longer most effective eradicated an whole iteration of young men in Europe but additionally ruined the land. Trench conflict and chemical weapons, the 2 predominant methods during which the warfare was once fought, decimated plant lifestyles, leaving behind detritus and carnage. In The hollow men, the speaker discusses the lifeless land, now filled with stone and cacti. Corpses salute the celebs with their upraised fingers, stiffened from rigor mortis. Trying to process the destruction has induced the speakers intellect to become infertile: his head has been stuffed with straw, and he's now unable to think correctly, to understand adequately, or to conceive of pictures or thoughts.