A Broken Nation

Throughout book l of Cry, the Beloved Country, author Alan Paton uses multiple literary devices, such as diction and imagery, to describe his home land in South Africa. Paton’s descriptions show a land once booming with growth now in constant demolition as a result of extreme prejudice and segregation. His depiction of a dry, barren land denotes a dying country struggling to get back on its feet. Also, Paton’s portrayal of urban and rural South Africa characterizes an acute contrast in both morals and culture.

In Chapter 1 of Book l, Paton uses two converse paragraphs to display the opposition of a lively, blooming land with that of an expiring, seemingly helpless one. He construes the hills as “grass-covered and rolling,” saying the ground is “holy” here, while later expressing that “the rich green hills break down,” now “red and bare,” the ground is rather “coarse and sharp”. These conflicting representations of the rural, native South Africa to the more metropolitan country show a constant destruction of the land. This point of view displays the native civilization as a more innate nation than the current, modernized society.

As our main character, Stephen Kumalo, makes his journey to Johannesburg, Paton uses diction and detail to describe the transition of pure excitement and eagerness to fear and anxiety as Kumalo enters the city. Primarily, Stephen’s enthusiasm has him asking constantly, “Is this Johannesburg?” as he marvels at the towering building all around him, only to later be “silent” and “afraid” as the train makes its way into the city, everything labeled “black and white, black and white”. This transition exposes the reality of Kumalo’s expectations of a wonderful city, only to turn out segregated and far beyond unequal. In result of this segregation, the once beautiful and vivacious city is now drowning in disparity and discrimination.

In Chapter 12, Paton discusses the idea of fear and its affect on the land, causing a quick decline in prosperity. He explains that there is undoubtedly “fear in the land”, questioning “the shadow of the jacarandas” whose “beauty is grown to danger”. This severe detail on the destruction of the allure of a tree once so beautiful depicts that the fear of men can cause even the fairest of concepts, once consumed by fear, can be abolished in its wake. Fear is exemplified as a robber of all things good and right that a man may earn; a destroyer of all objects beautiful and pure. Here, Paton represents this conviction exquisitely.

Altogether, Paton uses his declarations of significant deterioration in the lands of South Africa to cast upon his overall themes of fear, a damaged nation, and the transitions from a growing, native civilization to a more contemporary urban one. These descriptions represent an image in the audience’s mind that help to envision the complete moral points that the author has made in Book l of Cry, the Beloved Country.