Wednesday, October 27, 2010

10-27-10

In Cry the Beloved Country, there are several unnamed characters. I mentioned this in class, but I believe why he decided to leave some people unnamed can be attributed to two possible reasons:
1. To emphasize the difference and void in between white and black people
2. To help accentuate other characters in some situations.

After reading the book for a while, you begin to literally think in black and white. You start to see the differences that keep the two separate. After a while you start to associate certain traits of a race to multiple people. For example, there are many white men that are unnamed; some do good things, and other do bad things. You come to link all of these things to a particular race, and therefore Paton may have seen no requirement for naming.

Sometimes, characters with no names can be reflections and results of other characters. Characters like Gertrudes child. Gertrudes child reflects innocence, and is a sharp foil to his mothers level of innocence. Gertrudes child was a source of comfort for Stephen, and I think that the child helped give Stephen hope. I think not naming the child was a good idea. The child probably did not even know his name at the time. Unlike other unnamed characters like: "the young white man", the name of "Gertrudes Child" is rather hard to mistake with other characters.

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