SECTION B: PROSE ALAN PATON: Cry, the Beloved Country Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: Have you a room to let? No, I have no room to let. Have you a room to let? It is let already. Have you a room to let? Yes, I have a room to let, but I do not want to let it. For I have seen husbands taken away by women, and wives taken away by men. I have seen daughters corrupted by boys, and sons corrupted by girls. But my husband gets only thirty-four shillings a week * What shall we do, those who have no houses? You can wait five years for a house, and be no nearer getting it than at the beginning. - They say there are ten thousand of us in Orlando alone, living in other people's houses. Do you hear what Dubula says? That we must put up our own houses here in Orlando? - And where do we put up the houses? On the open ground by the railway line, Dubula says. - And of what do we build the houses? - Anything you can find. Sacks and planks and grass from the veld and poles from the plantations. And when it rains? Siyafa. Then we die. No, when it rains, they will have to build us houses. It is foolishness. What shall we do in the winter? Six years waiting for a house. And full as the houses are, they grow yet fuller, for the people still come to Johannesburg. There has been a great war raging in Europe and North Africa, and no houses are being built. Have you a house for me yet? There is no house yet. Are you sure my name is on the list? Yes, your name is on the list. What number am I on the list? I cannot say, but you must be about number six thousand on the list. Number six thousand on the list. That means I shall never get a house, and I cannot stay where I am much longer. We have quarrelled about the stove, we have quarrelled about the children, and I do not like the way the man looks at me. There is the open ground by the railway line, but what of the rain and the winter? They say we must go there, all go together, fourteen days from today. They say we must get together the planks and the sacks and the tins and the poles, and all move together. They say we must all pay a shilling a week to the committee, and they will move all our rubbish and put up lavatories for us, so that there is no sickness. But what of the rain and the winter? [from Book 1 Chapter 9] How does Paton powerfully convey the desperate search for a home in this extract?