Themes In Cry The Beloved Country

1. Cry, the Beloved Country is part story because it tells a fictional story about a black man’s country under white man’s country. It’s part prophecy because the story takes place before the apartheid, which Kumalo sees coming. “We really need to do something to change this before it all comes to pass” (Paton 54). This expresses how Kumalo believes that this is the beginning of something terrible. The significance of Absalom’s name is in a biblical story of a son who turned against his own father. In the story Absalom forgets everything that his father taught him and kills an innocent man. “You write nothing, sent no message. You went with bad companions. You stole and broke in and-yes, you did these things. But why?” (Paton 132). In

The apartheid according to Merriam Webster was a racial segregation; specifically: a former policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of South Africa. In the novel Cry, The Beloved Country, we see the apartheid in an early stage. We see prejudice thinking in Johannesburg when Kumalo arrives. We see the miserable lives black people have compared to the comfortable lives white people have. “And some cry for the cutting up of South Africa without delay into separate areas, where white can live without black, and black without white, where black can farm their own land and mine their own minerals and administer their own land” (Paton 109). This expresses the early stage of apartheid because it is said that people cry from the separation of blacks and white. Black people can have their own land, but they cannot afford 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” (Paton 85). This quote expresses the conditions of African living conditions. They live in rooms with strangers that may hurt them. Up to ten people live in two rooms. They also have little food to feed their own