The Wafers Dumped: Lamenting a Bleeding Nation in Cry, the Beloved Country

Abstract

Alan Paton’s wistful novel Cry, the Beloved Country which was released at the threshold of Apartheid in South Africa relates the South African socio-political instability at the time when racism and poverty are profoundly shaking the nation’s foundations [1]. The work explores the aftermaths brought by racial bondage that the subjugated black endures and the repercussions it casts on the whole South African society. This chapter examines how the writer grapples with the dangers brought by racial discrimination and urban life on the South African community as a whole. Paton’s view of Race and city projects a negative perception about the white racism and black crime that create tensions between the national forces [1]. This social polarity puts at risk the nation’s prospects that would build and maintain the “beloved country” which is gradually collapsing. It is this decaying state of the nation that Paton mourns in the novel. The study establishes that race and skin color do not have any relation that would define an individual’s nature and inner feelings to justify one’s deportment. The wrong or the right is a result of an individual’s moral predisposition coupled with the socio-cultural forces that feature his environment. It has also been noted that urban life corrupts; in some situations, it converts an individual into a rogue becoming a threat against society and an enemy against oneself to impair the common good.