Cry, The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton

Introduction

The most famous novel of Alan Paton amongst his literary work is Cry, the beloved country" (1948). This product has attracted global attention to issues of racial segregation in South Africa. However, one of the vertices of the South African literature has become the second novel by Alan Paton, "Too late, sandpiper" (1953). In the book, interracial conflict remains at the center of attention. But this time, Peyton tried to follow the path of a larger psychology. He introduces the reader to the inner world of a typical Afrikaner and his traces the evolution of consciousness toward greater tolerance and then comes the moment when the hero crosses the threshold beyond which there is no turning back. Story of a young Boer felt a strange attraction to the representative of an "inferior" race, described in the novel is very convincing. Alan Paton is considered one of the best English-language writers in South Africa (Edward, 98-109).

However, it got published three months before the institution of apartheid as official state policy in South Africa. Moreover, Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country highlights an unlikely friendship shaped between two men of diverse races, who got together when the son of one kills the son of the other. The novel got written in response to the declining racial inequities in South Africa, in which white landowners possessed a disproportionate percentage of all arable land nationwide and native Blacks left their traditional homelands in large numbers for cities, only to be relegated to shantytowns on the edge of the metropolises. In Cry, the Beloved Country Paton interweaves themes of race relations, crime and punishment, city and country, and Christian forgiveness in a story that seeks to counter the social and political injustices of his nation with a vision of universally shared human values (Edward, 98-109).

Discussion

The prime focus of Cry, the Beloved Country is on the development of the connection among Stephen Kumalo, a Black man, and James Jarvis, a white man, who got together under tragic circumstances; the murder of Jarvis's son by Kumalo's. However, at initial stages the center is on Kumalo, a pastor (or umfundisi in the Zulu language) from rural Ndotsheni in the Natal Valley. A simple man of pure faith and a strong moral code, Reverend Kumalo travels to Johannesburg to find his missing sister and son. His sister, Gertrude, had gone to Johannesburg looking for her husband and never returned. His son, Absalom, had left home looking for work in the mines. Both were never heard from again and are presumed to have disappeared into the depths of Johannesburg's slums. In the city Kamalo finds widespread corruption and immorality. Gertrude is now a prostitute and illegal liquor distiller, and, as Reverend Kumalo soon learns, Absalom has killed Arthur Jarvis, the son of a prominent white landowner, and is to be put on trial. Even worse, the man he has killed was a vocal and beloved activist for the poor Black community (Baker, 56-61).

Moreover, the late ...