QUESTIONS

Questions for both books:

1. Who is the narrator?
   

2. Each novel has one or more ministers as characters. How are they portrayed?
   

3. Does faith provide comfort and strength to the characters?
   

4. What does the author suggest is the role of religion in South African society?
   

5. Find a passage that illustrates the author’s style.
   

6. These are novels by white writers. How are the black characters portrayed? How are white South Africans portrayed?
   

7. What is/are the turning point(s) for the main character (Kumalo or Ben), the point when he sees his society differently from before?
   

8. How are people in the novel brought into a struggle or forced to take a position that they either avoided or were not aware of? What event or events convinced them to take this position?
   

9. How does the novel portray the problems of disaffected youth?
   

10. What examples of parent-child relationships are there in the book? How is the theme handled? How are the parent-child relationships affected by societal problems?
    

11. Is the ending of the book hopeless or hopeful?
    

12. How would you judge this novel’s effectiveness as a protest against an authoritarian regime? What makes fiction a compelling medium for social protest?
    

13. Is protest literature art?
    

Questions for Cry, The Beloved Country

1. How does the author use the beauty of the South African land to bring into relief the city and its social problems?
   

2. From the beginning of the novel, is there a sense of fatalism in Kumalo’s quest? What passages express this?
   

3. What is John Kumalo’s role? What does he represent?
   

4. How are women portrayed in the novel?
   

5. What different arguments are made about the “law and order” question by Johannesburg’s citizens (see, for instance, pages 106-7)?
   

6. Which characters keep secrets?
   

7. Are the judge’s verdicts just (see pages 233-4)?
   

8. Reverend Kumalo has as least one crisis of faith in the course of his search for his son. When does this happen? By the end of the book, has he maintained his faith in God? What about his faith in human beings?
   

Questions for A Dry White Season

1. On page 9 the unnamed narrator says “I’m stuck with the litter of another man’s life spread over my desk.” Why does he take on the responsibility of unraveling the meaning behind Ben’s life and death?
   

2. Why does the narrator write about his visit to Ben and Susan’s home? What is the purpose of this seemingly unrelated confession? What does the narrator not know about the couple and about himself?
   

3. Notice how the author develops the theme of finding out the truth, in fact, the many truths (truth about Ben’s death, truth about Jonathan’s death, larger truth about life in South Africa).
   

4. How are the themes of silence and complicity developed?
   

5. Why does Ben give the narrator his papers but pledge him to “keep it to himself”? Why would a person pass on information if he didn’t want the facts exposed? There is a contradictory message here, since he also writess: “I want you to keep my notes and journals. And to use them if necessary.”
   

6. Why does Brink use an anonymous narrator, who is himself distant from the events of the main story? What effect does this create? Is this an example of an unreliable narrator?
   

7. Why do you think Brink uses two narrators (the narrator and Ben)? What is the effect of having a story within a story?
   

8. Who is Stanley? What does his character stand for?
   

Questions compiled by Suzanne Fisher (fishers@uhls.lib.ny.us)
February 7, 2007