Since this novel is essentially poetic, the opening chapter is not a narrative but instead sets a certain mood and atmosphere. And as with Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, there will be numerous intercalary chapters interspersed throughout the novel. Thus, we hear first about Ixopo, the town nearest Stephen Kumalo's village of Ndotsheni, on the east coast of South Africa, forty miles from the Indian Ocean and fifty miles from the border of Basutoland. It lies on a ridge of land between the Umkomaas River and the Umzimkulu River, which flow from the mountains of Basutoland into the sea.
Intimated in this first chapter is a strong reverence for the soil, which reminds one of Steinbeck's treatment of the land in certain passages in Grapes of Wrath. The emphasis on the difference between the shod and the unshod infers that the shod condition divorces humanity from the soil. Thus later, we find that many of the natives are leaving the land because they have lost their basic contact with it. Only old men and old women are left to tend the dry valley. The young have left for the city, a place that will be developed as being somewhat evil; therefore, one of the great needs is to restore the native to an appreciation of the land.
One of the outstanding features of this novel is the style, which is based on very simple sentences with short parallel phrases. There are virtually no complex sentences in the entire book. The simplicity of the style blends with the author's purpose of presenting the basic problems of the natives of the region.
Some critics have seen this first chapter as being symbolic of the relative positions of the whites and the natives. That is, geographically, the whites live above the natives on the best land; the natives live below on the barren land. Besides the possible symbolism of the relative positions and qualities of the lands owned by whites and blacks, there is another source of symbolism in this chapter: when the soil of the hills is red and is washed into the rivers through erosion, it colors the rivers blood red, as if the land were one great open wound. Africa bleeds because of this unjust distribution of land and human rights.
