The Unifying Power of Love

Love is a very powerful emotion.  It seems that most novels include love because it can be so powerful and it provides something that people everywhere can connect with.  Love could easily be taken as the main theme in this book.  Stephen Kumalo goes to Johannesburg because he loves his sister and wanted to go help her. He had no clue that her sickness was prostitution but when he found out, he loved her enough to still bring her back to Ndotsheni with him.  Because he was already going to Johannesburg, Kumalo decided to look for his brother and his son.  He obviously loved his son very much and he was devastated when he learned that his son would be hung for killing Arthur Jarvis.  Also, Msimangu and Kumalo developed a love for each other after all the time that they spent together.  When Stephen is going back to Ndotsheni, Msimangu gives him all his money because he is forsaking the world and didn't need the money anymore.  This kind deed performed by Msimangu is a good indicator of the love he had for Kumalo.  Kumalo was also loved a lot.  At the end of the book, when he came home from Johannesburg, all the people who saw him were shouting and talking about how much they missed him.  But the thing that was loved the most was the land.  The land in Ndotsheni was doing really bad and all of the people were sad because they loved and depended on the land.  Kumalo was especially sad about it.  When the land started to recover at the end of the book, people were rejoicing, Kumalo being the happiest out of all of them.  Those are just some of the many examples of love present in the novel.

Being able to talk about love is one thing, but talking about the unifying power of love is a little different.  It is the same because Stephen and Msimangu developed a love for each other and were unified by it.  But on the other hand, Kumalo  didn't become too unified (during the novel) with his sister even though he loved her a lot.  A great example of the unifying power of love is with Kumalo and James Jarvis (pictured below).

Jarvis and Kumalo talking about the church in the film "Cry, The Beloved Country."

Their relationship didn't exactly start on a good note, it basically started with Kumalo telling James that Absalom killed Jarvis' son, Arthur.  But James had seen all of his son's work for equality and his hear had changed.  James decided to help out the natives, especially Kumalo, and he provided means for a new church and hired an agricultural expert for them.  This shows that Jarvis truly became unified with Kumalo and the native people.  In fact, they were so unified, when Jarvis said he was leaving, this was Kumalo's response:  "Kumalo stood shocked at the the frightening and desolating words. And although it was dark, Jarvis understood him, for he said swiftly, I shall be here often." (Cry, the Beloved Country pg 306).  I really think that shows how connected they became because Kumalo didn't want Jarvis to leave after all that he had done for the natives.  Kumalo had a special connection with Jarvis that nobody else in the novel has.


When I thought of the unifying power of love, I thought of an episode of "Psych" called "The Tao of Gus." It is about a community of people in the mountains that is based all on loving each other.  They are all unified and they do about everything together.  This connects to the novel because people had become very unified (they do each other's laundry by hand) and in the book Kumalo is Unified with many people because of his love for them.
(Here is a link for the "Psych" episode:  http://www.hulu.com/watch/308129/psych-the-tao-of-gus#s-p1-so-i0)