The twelve

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What Goes Around Comes Around

As Paton starts the book, he pulls in the idea that you need to “keep it [the land], guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, and cares for men”.  It shows that if you be good to it, it will be good to you.  As the book goes along he later pulls in a bible allusion, as Umfundisi lies in the grass the world rages around him like Jesus when he laid in the boat.  Paton makes many bible references throughout the book.

Paton seems to be making an allusion to the changing South Africa and the land changing.  As the people change and become racist and begin apartheid, the land becomes bare and uninhabitable.  The grass was “rich and matted” and then “to many fires were burned there”.  This to me seems like he’s trying to say that all the tension finally built up and then destroyed everything.  As the land is destroyed metaphorically so are the South Africans lives.

Later on in his book, Paton mentions “who knows how we shall fashion a land of peace where black out numbers white so greatly?”  This comes to me as he is saying that the black people of South Africa could very possibly over taken the whites but they were shelter into ignorance.  Just like in American slavery, the whites were outnumbered but had a better education than the black people.

The line, “Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of fear” comes in and lets you know that the people leaving now are sorry for what kind of living environment there leaving for the next generation.  Just like the barren land there leaving for them, he says, “let him not love the earth too deeply”.  This pulls back to “keeping the land” because now the land can’t keep them [the next generation].

Later in the book, Paton writes, “Kumalo shakes hands with his friend, and they all set out on the narrow path that leads into the setting sun,…”.  To me this shows that as the sun is going down, everything else is somewhat winding down also.  The child later comes up and blocks him from going down that path which seems like a reference to him going down the wrong roads in life and needs to stop and straighten his act up.  They say that they are glad he’s back and has “returned” to them.

Near the end, he says that the stream that runs by the church is “sometimes dry” which stands out to me like hes saying that not all the time not everybody puts all their faith in the church and let their faith go a little dry.  The people were thought to have built a dam that blocked the stream which symbolizes the evils in the world and the constant temptation to sin.  At the very end of the book, Paton says “The tithoya wakes from sleep, and goes about its work of forlorn crying.” This shows now that everything is good and hope has been restored.