The meaning of Arthur Jarvis in Cry, the Beloved Country

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ, as a symbol leads to salvation, spiritual growth of many people and progress, which is similar to the death of Arthur Jarvis, because he brings alteration and hope. The tragedy brings together Stephen Kumalo, the father of the black murderer and Jarvis, the father of Arthur Jarvis, the white victim. Jarvis’s residence is symbolic of an elevated position of many whites. Before his son's death, Jarvis is on the hilltop, thinking about the problems between whites and blacks, seeing just the white point of view. “Indeed they talked about (the erosion of land) often, for when they visited one another and sat on the long cool verandas drinking their tea, they must needs look out over the barren valleys and the bare hills that were stretched below them. Some of their labor was drawn from Ndotcheni, and they knew how year by year there was less food grown in these reserves,” (162). When Jarvis returns to his hill, after the incident, he doesn't view the problems of the blacks in his home as being below him as earlier, and follows his son in having an active role in reform. Towards the end, Jarvis hires an agricultural instructor, who will teach new methods of farming and help send milk to the sick children. Because of Arthur Jarvis, his dad came to the realism of life, the true meaning of his existence.

Arthur Jarvis’s father, Jarvis is compassionate person but he usually is ignorant about the lives of blacks and the real issues that take place. After the death of his son Jarvis learns to view and respect blacks as real people. While at the scene of the crime, Jarvis pick up and reads one of his son's papers and suddenly becomes concerned with the ideas expressed by his son and by Abraham Lincoln. “Jarvis sat, deeply moved (after reading Arthur's last paper) … opened the book at the Second Inaugural Address of the great president (Abraham Lincoln). He read it through, and felt with a sudden lifting of the spirit that here was a secret unfolding, a track picked up again,” (188). After some days, when Kumalo and Jarvis meet, Kumalo, the father of the murderer, stumbles and almost faints because of the shame and guilt he carries about the crime. However, Jarvis doesn't know Kumalo is the father of the criminal, and doesn't understand Kumalo's anxiety. But, Jarvis doesn’t' t refer to him as a, “dirty old parson,” (174) like when he first found about he death. Before, Jarvis might not have noticed facial expressions of a Zulu, but he has changed and recognizes that Kumalo is just in distraught, “Jarvis knew this was not rudeness, for the old man was humble and well-mannered,” (211). By reading his son’s writing, Jarvis learns about the real problems of South Africa. Many of the whites of South Africa, might not know the true of blacks, they don’t have the tendency to think of blacks as real people and are unaware of the problems blacks have to face.

Even though, Arthur Jarvis had to die for the people around him to realize the morals of the black community and the relationship between the black and whites, Alan Paton was incredible in understanding the different viewpoints of both races. The symbolic reference of Jesus Christ as Arthur Jarvis makes it more sensible to state that Arthur was a saviour for the awareness of the bond between races.

Works Cited

Paton, Alan. Cry, The Beloved Country. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1948.