Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Anything that looks like non-fiction, or even appears to be based on actual recent events (and by recent I mean set in the last hundred years), does not make its way very often onto my reading list. I’m trying to change that, and I was helped along by a friend who gave me a copy of Cry, The Beloved Country for Christmas. Granted, it’s a fiction book, but it’s based on the author’s real experiences living in South Africa in the 1940s.
Cry, The Beloved Country is a solemn and critical look at a country on the brink of chaos. It follows the journey of a elderly tribal pastor as he travels to the huge city of Johannesburg to look for his son (and his sister). Ndotsheni is an isolated and dying town; the land is drained and all of the younger generations have left to go to the big cities. But through his experiences in Johannesburg, Kumalo realizes that the problems of South Africa are far greater than he ever imagined. As Kumalo desperately searches for his son among the throngs of Johannesburg, he discovers that his son has not been leading a moral life. When a prominent white man, one of the few dedicated to helping the native africans, is murdered, Kumalo faces the fear that everything he trusts in has proven false. He struggles with the overwhelming brokenness of the world and his faith falters.
From what I’ve read from the introductions and such, Alan Paton put all of his love and fear for South Africa into this story. Originally published in 1948, he made his book a poignant cry for turning away from the internecine conflicts that he saw surrounding him. His work is prophetic in a sad way; just a few years later Apartheid would begin. South Africa was not headed on a path to healing. The book’s dialogue was in a form I was not familiar with; dashes were used and there were no quote marks. Apparently this is similar to the style of The Grapes of Wrath. I found it confusing at first, but by the end of the story I could not imagine it written any other way. It is an introspective book, and the thoughts of the characters blend subtly with the actual dialogue.
The murder of Arthur Jarvis becomes the fulcrum of the story, and about halfway through the book we are introduced to his father, an affluent farmer who lives outside of Ndotsheni. Jarvis (the father) has not paid attention to his son’s work, and now is determined to try and understand the son who cared so much for justice.(And what justice is there? Was not he murdered by the people he wanted to help?) What he reads in his son’s papers shows the heart of both this book and it’s author:
Therefore I will devote myself , my time, my energy, my talents, to the service of South Africa. I shall no longer ask myself if this or that is expedient, but only if it is right. I shall do this, not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away . . . because I cannot find it in me to do anything else. I am lost when I balance this against that, I am lost when I ask if this is safe, I am lost when I ask of men, white men or black men, Englishmen or Afrikaners, Gentiles or Jews, will approve. Therefore I shall try to do what is right, and to speak what is true.
Alan Paton deftly wove into his story a sense of eternity that goes beyond the horrible events of present, and though darkness struggles with the light, it does not completely overcome it. This is a true tear-jerker of a book, filled with a hope of reconciliation that exists side by side with an almost certain despair.