The Setting Sun and the Rolling World by Charles Mungoshi

The story is about the relationship between father and son. Old Musoni and His son Name and their family are poor. Old Musoni works on farm. His son Nhamo is ready to leave, but father won’t. He wants to know where his son will go and be safe. He can’t let him go without knowing where he will go. He has to release him. Parents always feel difficult to let their children go. If children become old then they feel that it’s time to go out home. I have been going out home since Augustus 2012. My parents have to accept that I go to study in America. My brother also went out house since he was eighteen year old and lives in city 4 hours’ drive from my parents ‘home. Now there are no children at home. My parents feel strange but they know that it’s time to letting their children go. Lucky they know where my brother and I go. They know that we are safe too. It does feel them better. I can realize that Nhamo’s father feels frustrate that he doesn’t know where his son goes. He wants to know his son will be safe or not.

Something you don’t know will drive you on along deserted plains, past ruins and more ruins, on and on until there is only one ruin left: yourself. You will break down, without tears, son. You are human too. Learn to the haya --- the rains bird, and heed its warning of coming storm: plough no more, it says. And what happens if the storm catches you far, far out on the treeless plain? What, then, my son?

Leaving home, the setting sun and the rolling world, pg. 163

Old Musoni is really worried about his son. He won’t his son disappeared in everywhere. He is afraid to lose his son. He thinks very negative about future of his son. He won’t his son to go anywhere without let him know. He wants that his son did listen to him what he taught him.

The psychological ties were now broken; only the biological tied him to his father. He was free. He too remembered the aeroplane which his father had seen just before their talk. Space had no bounds and no ties. Floating laws ruled the darkness and he would float with the fiery balls. He was the sun, burning, itself out every second and shedding tons of energy which it held in its power, giving it the thrust to drag its brood wherever it wanted to.

Leaving home, the setting sun and the rolling world, pg. 163

He said: ‘’the psychological ties were now broken; only the biological tied him to his father. He was free’’.  The sentence of freedom. He was free from suffocating of his father because it seemed that his father kept his son too firm that his son could not move anywhere he wanted. He was suffocated by his father. Now he has energy for things that he wishes he had do it before. 


I see there is connecting between this blog and previous blog ''On the rainy River'' . In two story have some similarities: Nhamo wants to go away from his father. He wanted to be freedom and have space from his father. Tim wants to go away from his hometown. he wants to have space between him and his family and friends. And Tim feels he needs time to rest and thinking about things. Nhamo also needs to have rest from his father.