How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
He fetched [Gertrude] with a lorry that afternoon, amidst a crowd of interested neighbours, who discussed the affair loudly and frankly, some with approval, and some with a strange laughter of the towns. He was glad when the lorry was loaded, and they left.
Mrs. Lithebe showed them their room, and gave the mother and child their food while Kumalo went down to the mission. And that night they held prayers in the dining-room, and Mrs. Lithebe and Gertrude punctuated his petitions with Amens. Kumalo himself was light-hearted and gay like a boy, more so than he had been for years. One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and the soul restored. (1.6.86)
Gertrude agrees to move back to Ndotsheni with Kumalo so quickly that Kumalo thinks he has made real progress in rebuilding the tribe on his first day in Johannesburg. What he doesn't realize is that deciding to do something is one thing; actually doing it is something else. Gertrude may think she can make it back to Ndotsheni, but in fact, her life has changed too much for her to be comfortable with her brother's way of life. What other things in the book appear to be damaged beyond mending? What can be rebuilt or started once again?
Quote #5
This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens the pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart. (1.11.19)
This passage contains a mixture of things that have been lost and things that might be rebuilt. Hatred has destroyed "the law and the custom that is gone"—in other words, the traditions of pre-colonial tribal life are gone. And Absalom has accidentally shot "the man who is dead." But there is still the "lovely land"—as long as, someday, people learn to overcome the fear that is keeping them from being truly at one with said land. We would say that this passage presents 5/6 tragedy and 1/6 hope for the future…
Quote #6
There are few people that do not let their rooms, and Mrs. Lithebe is one. Her husband was a builder, a good and honest man, but they were not blessed with children. He built her this fine big house, it has a room to eat and live in, and three rooms to sleep in. And one she has for herself, and one for the priest that she is glad to have, for it is good to have a priest, it is good to have prayers in the house. And one she has for Gertrude and the child, for do they not belong to the priest? But strangers she will not have at all, she has money enough. (1.17.1)
Mrs. Lithebe is pretty much the only morally virtuous and well-off person we meet in all of Johannesburg. What makes her so different from Gertrude or John? Well, her advantage over Gertrude is that her husband loved her and looked after her, while Gertrude's husband left her to go and work for the mines. Mrs. Lithebe also differs from John because she has not had to earn her own dough; her husband has left her with money enough that she does not have to rent out her house or think about business. Mrs. Lithebe is a good person, but she is able to go to church and follow a moral path partly through luck. Without economic security, she might be like all of the other Johannesburg residents we meet in Cry, the Beloved Country.