Likewise, Kumalo undergoes tremendous suffering through the death of his son, Absalom. He is disillusioned by finding his sister and then his son in desperate and degenerate conditions; still later he has to face the death of his son, a shattering experience which brings him to understand many more of the complexities of life. He realizes that man cannot live simply by the old values; instead, he has to work toward creating new and different values of equal importance. Thus, he returns to his village with a flew understanding of life and of the basic nature of the change taking place in South Africa.
Embedded in these ideas is the contrast between the old and the new generations. In the Harrison family, the old man will never change. But with Kumalo and Jarvis, we see both undergoing a tremendous change as a result of the change that took place in each one's son. Furthermore, Kumalo recognizes that if there is to be a permanent change, it must come through the new generation, and he places all his hopes on Gertrude's boy and the child that is to be born to Absalom's wife.
At the beginning of the novel, most of the problems are attributed to the fact that man is separated from the land and that the land is becoming a waste land. This is partly represented by the fact that the new generation leaves the native land for the city. At the end of the novel, there is hope that humanity can rediscover the land and make it into a new Canaan.
