Compare and Contrast Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country and Chinua Essay

Compare and Contrast Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country and Chinua Achebe's Thing's Fall Apart - Essay Example Achebe’s narrative signals the first indicator of tribal decline in Africa, exploited by the white colonisers to exert power in their expanding empire. The death toll of tribal life in Africa in Things Fall Apart symbolises the human predisposition towards conflict as the ethnic tensions are replaced with the tensions between the whites and blacks. In contrast, Cry, the Beloved Country takes the reader forward, highlighting the predicament of native blacks under white rule, where the funeral for tribal life prophesised in Things Fall Apart is now a reality, symbolised by the theme of human loss. The industrialisation of Africa and separation of families brought about by white rule is highlighted through the Kumalo’s journey as central protagonist in Cry. Pastor Kumalo loses a brother to the city and his brother in law to the mines. Furthermore, Kumalo’s sister disappears when she goes to the city. Through contrasting perspectives both novels utilise the conflicts between the white rulers and black natives to portray a deeper themes of the complex cycle of human conflict; its resultant impact on the family nucleus and the human need for connection and family relationships particularly driven by loss and fear. Analysed in conjunction, the contrasting spectrums at which both Paton and Achebe begin their narrative effectively takes the reader through the beginning of colonial policies in Things Fall Apart, to the practical impact of white rule in Cry, the Beloved Country. The focus of this analysis is to evaluate through a comparative analysis the authors’ depictions of the conflicts between the white colonisers and the native blacks and consider which, if any depicts the predicament most sympathetically. It is submitted at the outset that both whilst both works are undoubtedly important in highlighting the