One of the dominant motifs throughout the novel is that of the fears each character feels in various situations. Even the people whom Kumalo meets in his search for his son seem governed by some type of inexpressible fear. Kumalo leaves on his journey filled with fear and foreboding.
In Chapter 4, as in Chapter 1, the landscape plays a symbolic role, for the slag heaps are like a sore on the land, the product of mines owned by whites. The picture of poverty and disintegration already shown is broadened here in the conversation of the clergymen, and the consequences of these conditions (crime, delinquency, and immorality of all kinds) are presented by both the clergymen and the newspaper headlines.
Undoubtedly, though, the most important element introduced here is fear. Stephen has shown timidity and fear in the face of this overawing white world he has encountered for the first time. But nothing has been said before of the fear on the other side: the fear the whites feel, fear fed by memories of the great Zulu wars of the past, and the knowledge of how greatly the blacks outnumber the whites.
As Kumalo travels from his native district to Johannesburg, there is also a significant change in the speech patterns. The native Zulu names are replaced with Afrikaner names. New names and new experiences will now confront the simple Kumalo. The reader, therefore, should note each new experience, even such seemingly trivial ones such as his first encounter with an indoor toilet. (There is a similar experience in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath when Rose of Sharon finds and uses a toilet for the first time, then thinks that she has broken it.)
