HERE  IS  THE   SYNOPSIS  OF    THE  CAGE  AND  THE   CROSS:

The Cage and the Cross is primarily a Christian novel set during the South African apartheid years of the seventies. It is also intended to be a bildungsroman and a work of literary merit with its implicit use of interior monologue or the stream of consciousness in the first-person narration.

Harry Dempster  visits a prison to convert prisoners and is himself converted by his own preaching. Gradually, through a wider Christian experience of salvation, he is able to break away from the legalistic-doctrinal shackles of his sectarian Christianity. The dramatic impulse of the story is the conflict between law and freedom, guilt and grace, the power of sin and the power of Christ, centred within the protagonist’s consciousness. In the penultimate chapter (Ch. 9: ‘The Cross’) Dempster surrenders himself to the inflowing power of the Holy Spirit.

An equally important character is Petrus Engelen, the converted prisoner who, shortly after being released from prison, commits suicide. The final chapter in which Dempster presides over his funeral raises the importance of the Christian message of salvation through grace rather than through doctrine and obedience. The Epilogue, in the form of a weird dream scenario where the protagonist and deceased prisoner meet again in a timeless zone, offers a more detached if not ironic perspective to the characters and themes.

Throughout the novel, there are biblical and literary allusions. In the first chapter (‘The Prison’), for example, the ‘scene’ which depicts the protagonist with the three prisoners might echo Satan’s speech to the fallen angels in Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as the transfiguration of Christ (witnessed by the three disciples Peter, James and John). The dramatis personae bear the names of the twelve apostles. In chapter seven (‘The Road’) there is an echo of Jesus’s parable of the clean house and the seven devils.

The speech and writing of the prison characters are couched in the local South African idiom: the mother-tongue interference is part and parcel of the ungrammatical and idiomatic English of the working-class Afrikaans-speaking South Africans of the time.

The novel presents a dramatisation of a Christian debate. It’s a book that might be enjoyed by adherents of Christian fundamental sects or churches  who feel a need to explore a wider or fuller Christian experience, where Grace and a Baptism in the Spirit take supremacy over fundamental laws and doctrines. Or it might be of interest to those contemplating a move towards Christian fundamentalism. This is elucidated more fully in the Introduction.

WHAT SOME HAVE SAID ABOUT   THE CAGE AND THE CROSS:

• Extract from a letter by Ernest Pereira,   formerly Professor of English at the University of South Africa:

Within the framework of what I call, for want of a better appellation, the philosophical novel, you've created a giant of a character in Dr Dempster. Like James Joyce's character, Stephen Daedalus, Dempster searches deeply into his soul, attempting to discover the meaning of his existence. Sometimes wandering, always questioning his reason for living, Dempster seeks to communicate and understand the consciousness of his race. A character such as Dr Dempster is the key to an absorbingly intelligent novel.

While I was reading the manuscript, the thought kept recurring that here was the work of a sophisticated stylist. Your blending of narrative and stream of consciousness, interspersed with poetic epiphany, captures the complex climate of Dempster's spiritual journey. You write on a high, dramatic level, never in danger of losing the tension of the situation.  

I held this book in my hand and read the title, "The Cage And The Cross".
I said oh boy, I wonder what this one is about? So I guessed, maybe this or maybe that. This book was written by Charles Humphrey Muller. I defiantly wanted this book because I so enjoyed his others.

I sat down and started to read; well let me tell you that I got the surprise of my life. Nothing that I thought it would be like... I was relieved, glad, sad and upset to where it was happening. I knew then to what the Cage was and anxious to read about the Cross. What we believe here in the US is the same as what they believe across the ocean. To name a few things, life, love and worship... As for worship it has to be what makes you more in the faith. You can't tell them that they are wrong and they can't tell you that you are wrong either, the bible says it all.

I was in this book very deeply and being involved in a strange way of life. I've been there done that--writing so many letters and receiving as many back.

This is a very well written story that will help you decide what path you will have chosen for your life.

Mr. Muller, I have enjoyed every single book of yours that I have read and hope that you write many more!