Preview

Discrimination In Cry The Beloved Country

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
727 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Discrimination In Cry The Beloved Country
The value of life Discrimination in our world is a common thing. It comes in all types of forms from the way we look, what religion you practice or the color or your skin. Throughout history this shows to be true with the Jews during WWII all the way to the African Americans in South Africa. Discrimination is a horrible event that has caused pain and suffering to even good people just based on the different ways people do things and the way some look. In the novel Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, Paton talks about two fathers and sons whom are African Americans living in South Africa during the time after WWII. Racial discrimination in the city of Johannesburg at the time was at an all time high, “The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again… It suited …show more content…
During the Second World War the Nazis were cleansing the Jewish population of Europe. In the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne he writes about a Jewish boy named Shmuel and a German boy named Bruno. Shmuel is a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp named Auschwitz and Bruno’s father is a high-ranking member of the Nazi forces station at Auschwitz. The two boys somehow become friends despite the stupendous odds set against each other by the German forces, "You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life” (Boyne 213). This quote shows the strength Bruno has to stay with Shmuel to the end even though he is considered less equal as Bruno. When Bruno was at home talking to his father about Shmuel says, “The people I see from the window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same. Ah, those people, Those people... well, they're not people at all, Bruno"(Boyne 53). Brunos innocence is shown is this quote from him having no idea what is going on in the world at the time, and through his eyes he sees everyone as

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    How can two best friends simultaneously be enemies? John Boyne answers this question in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He writes a tale about a Nazi commandant’s son who befriends another boy. They soon become best friends. Everyday Bruno the commandant’s son, visits Shmuel, a concentration camp inmate. Since Bruno’s father works for Hitler and Shmuel and his family are trapped by Hitler, this makes things difficult on the boys. Instead of being able to play with each other, like Bruno wants, they are separated by a fence. Bruno and Shmuel have these secret meetings every day and Bruno’s mother is also having secret meetings. However, her meetings are with the young lieutenant who works for Hitler. Although this is not clearly stated in the book, one can infer that she is having an affair with the man. Eventually, the commandant sends the lieutenant away. After a while of visiting each other Bruno learns that he is moving. As a last adventure, the two devise a plan that involves Bruno crossing the fence. When Bruno finally crosses, a herd of Nazi army officials rush a group of Jews and Bruno into an air tight room. He is only nine-years-old so he is clueless about the…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary: In this document it exaplins the life for Shmuel as he is trapped inside a prison his whole life and his life before they got deported. He lived with his mother, father and brother above his father’s watchmaking shop. Until one day when Bruno got home they were deported to Auschwitz. He was only a young Polish Jew when he got sent to be a prionser in Auschwitz. He didn’t have any friends to talk to or play with but he did have a father. However, he had lost his dad while they were transferring them to the camp. One day unexpectanly a boy named Bruno was wandering around in the woods behind his house and found Shmuel sitting across a fence. They became friends instantly talking about their personal lives. Both of these boys found out…

    • 218 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Shmuel Quotes

    • 437 Words
    • 2 Pages

    What happens in the end of the novel,is that when Bruno moves somewhere else because his mother did not think living in Berlin was an appropriate place for Bruno and Gretel to be raised their mother did not want them to be mislead about what they have seen outside their windows,but of course Bruno had actually seen something totally different for himself when he was at the concentration camp to see his new friend shmuel. The characters Bruno and shmuel seem to change when they did not agree on certain things for instinct Bruno thought his father was a good man because he figured that his father had great power over the area they were in and shmuel thought that people like Bruno's father were cruel,rude and disrespectful.Bruno never understood…

    • 437 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Striped Pajamas Ignorance

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tells the tale of the friendship between a boy in a concentration camp, Shmuel, and the son of a Nazi, Bruno. Neither is quite aware of who each other are; this childhood ignorance is a large part of what makes this movie so tragic and upsetting for many people: the boys understand hardly any of what is happening in their world. In the end, both are killed at the hands of Nazi cruelty, with the story’s moral being that all people are fundamentally similar and all violence and cruelty enacted is tragically senseless and damaging: with child’s eyes, we all see the same thing.…

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everyone in the world will experience discrimination at least once in their life. It is something that has become so accepted in the world today, not many people notice it even happening anymore. The famous quote by Roger Staubach, “Discrimination is a disease,” is one of the truest things I have heard. The families that discriminate the most often pass it on to their children, until everyone around them feels that way too. It just feeds off of itself until everyone tends to think that way. The three most examples that stick out to me is the holocaust, the book To Kill a Mockingbird, and of Mice and Men.…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To begin with, Bruno and his parents had a fence built between them after they moved from their home in Berlin to a house next to a concentration camp named, “Out-With” (Auschwitz- Bruno was too young to understand). Bruno and his parents once lived happily in their home in Berlin until one day the “Fury” (Adolf Hitler) came to eat dinner with the family and Bruno’s father was promoted to “Commandant”. He then had his entire family moved to Auschwitz and initially, Bruno hated the place. Unfortunately, his ties with his father had changed because his father was…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I now know a lot about discrimination after watching many movies and reading many books. One of the movies that I watched was Ruby Bridges. In that movie ruby was discriminated at the “white” school just because of her race. One of the books I read was called “Mahatma Gandhi.” He was discriminated by the color of his skin. He even lead a march to stand up for himself and others but yet he was still judged. There are many different types of discrimination, here are what they are: Age, Disability, Equal Pay, Genetics, Natural Origin,…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows- John Betjeman. This idea is quite evident throughout The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas as it shows that children perceive things through their senses rather than in a more sophisticated adult-like way based on the opinion of society. Bruno, a young and naïve nine-year-old and Shmuel, a less innocent Jewish boy, make an amazing friendship that is purely based on love and they don’t care that they are supposed to hate each other according to society. However, Bruno’s Mother and Father are less naïve and create their relationships based on what Germany and the Fury want rather than deciding as individuals. In the book, Gretel makes a very noticeable change from being an innocent child, like Bruno, to more of a refined level like Mother and Father.…

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Night By Shmuel Analysis

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Shmuel: A nine year old Jewish boy of the story. He is the boy Bruno meets through the fence at Out-With. They become friends. Shmuel is very confuse on where he is and what he is doing in the concentration camp on the other side of the fence. He is a prisoner and he must wear the striped pajamas like other prisoners.…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Boy In The Striped Pajamas,written by John Boyne is a historical fiction novel set in the 1940’s ,during the time of Hitler’s regime. The book is about a young boy named Bruno who moves from his luxurious life in Berlin,Germany to horror-filled Poland because of his father’s job. Even though Bruno is not allowed to go near the people in the striped pajamas,he goes to the fence and sees a boy on the other side of it. He befriends the boy,named Shmuel and brings him food every day and talks to him. The main traits that Bruno displays are naivety,trust and curiosity and these traits decide the course of the whole book.…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Out great land is facing many problems and one and one monumental one is discrimination. They are all different kinds of discrimination before example, there is discrimination in race, and there always has been but we can change that. Racism isn't just prevalent around the United States but…

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story, Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton, depicts about Ablsom Kumalo's search for his son in Johannseburg, and he later knew that his son killed white man. His son, Ablsom, is convicted for guilty charges, and that shows that white society is filled with discrimination and injustice. Yet, this murder had brought Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis, a black and white man together. James was the father of the man who Ablsom had killed. This story is about serching for truth, hope, friendship and caring, self-preservation, racial discrimination, and racial concerns about the for black people. Most of the people who live in slum area came from village (Ndoshouki, Ixopo), lost their morale, and became corrupted person. Also, their racial concerns in the South Africa is being depicted by racial harmony and human decency denied by South African Government and idea of "True" Christianity in Author Jarvis's essay. Thus, Cry, the Beloved Country demonstrates South Africa's difficulty lying in self-preservation rather than in progress toward racial equality.…

    • 1456 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Workplace Discrimination

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Most everyone has suffered discrimination in his or her daily lives. It's something a lot of people have to deal with on a daily basis. Discrimination is a major problem mainly in the employment industry. Even though there are many laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, this problem still exist every day and many people don't know how to handle it. Discrimination is defined in civil rights law as "an unfavorable or unfair treatment of a person or class or persons in comparison to others who are not a member of the protected class because of race, sex, color, religion, national origin, age, physical/mental handicap, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, and other factors that may occur".…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fgwrre

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The movie “The Boy With the Striped Pyjamas” is a Holocaust drama, and it explores the horror of a World War II Nazi camp through the eyes of two 8-year-old boys; one the son of the camp's Nazi commandant, the other a Jewish inmate. After watching this movie, I felt motivated to find out more about the Holocaust. Although I already knew the main facts about it, seeing it from the point of view of two young boys really touch my heart. The friendship that these to boy share in the movie was just amazing. Even after Bruno found out why Shmuel was in the strip Pyjamas, Bruno was still willing to go out his way to go see Shmuel. In the movie I can really tell that Bruno really cared about his friend, after getting him in trouble. Bruno never gave up on their friendship and was willing to do anything for Shmuel to forgive him. Although Bruno is very young and does not really understand what is going to with the Jews, he is aware that he and Shmuel were not met to be friends. Just like Bruno’s father said “they are not really people at all” Bruno did not view anything wrong with his friend. During the movie I felt really bad for Bruno’s mother, even though she was aware of the world that her country was in. She thought the Jews were only being kept in the camps and they were being treated like everyone else. But that was not the case, after she found out that the Jews were being killed that’s when her whole thought changed. She did not want her children around this and she wanted her husband to put an end to what was taken place. She had a heart and realizes what was being down to the Jews was wrong and needed to stop. Her husband does not feel it’s so wrong and does not want to let his nation down. Bruno’s father does not realize the evil that is being done until his own child is affected by this. After Bruno promises Shmuel to help him find his father, they find them-self trapped in a room with other men. This room was used to kill the Jews. Although in the movie they…

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all." - Nelson Mandela. This quote tells us that everyone should be equal and no man should have more power over another. There are many places in Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton in which they represent the brokenness and restoration. Racial segregation and the broken tribe were the two biggest issues in South Africa.…

    • 641 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays