Previous
Stream of Consciousness
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Cry, the Beloved Country’s style is as varied and shifting as the South Africa it portrays. On a purely formal level, the novel brings together multiple kinds of voices and authorities. Bible verses, newspaper headlines, Msimangu’s letters, and Arthur Jarvis’s writings all grace the pages at some point in the work. The result of this is intimacy and immediacy—Paton creates for his readers an impression that they are receiving the messages at the same time as the characters.
The novel’s stylistic stances change dramatically even within the text itself: Paton knits together different voices and narrative approaches. At points, the work’s chant-like prose recreates an experience of oral storytelling. “Have no doubt it is fear in her eyes,” the narrator explains, a phrase that becomes a running refrain. “Have no doubt too that this man is afraid,” he repeats when Stephen Kumalo hears about his son’s troubles. But in other moments, the novel showcases the oppressive eeriness of this same rhythm and repetition. Clipped dialogue generates a sense of formality or restraint. Often anonymized or cut short, the characters must speak through the heaviness of silence.
This range of perspectives and tones disorients. Cry, the Beloved Country moves fluidly between characters, blurring the edges separating one person and the next. In Chapter 9, for instance, the narrative focus drifts from the unnamed landlords of Johannesburg’s Shanty Towns to Mrs. Seme and other grudging homeowners who must share their homes with people they “do not like.” The narrator at once eavesdrops on and speaks for his characters, constructing a dissonant, dream-like experience. The voices coalesce into a mass of confusion until the narrator penetrates the consciousness of all Shanty Town residents: “The white men come to Shanty Town. They take photographs of us, and moving photographs for the pictures. They come and wonder what they can do, there are so many of us.” The novel reflects South Africa’s changing, turbulent society in its very prose.
