Brandon O.
1A
12/9/2013
The King James version of the Bible, as well as early writers like: Walter Scott, Charles Dickens and Rupert Brooke, helped shape his style of writing, that style being a very poetic way of writing. He uses several types of figurative language including imagery, repetition and allegory. Cry, the Beloved Country’s uses religious bases and Alan’s very poetic style of writing. Alan had this idea of universal equality, that everyone would have their God-given rights, no matter what race or gender, or anything else you could discriminate against. He wrote his books and works around this thought of universal equality.
Alan did not always fight for Native’s rights like he did towards the end of his life. He was very naive, one could almost say, kind of like James Jarvis. He was not rude, but he was unaware. Later on in his life Paton was showed by friends and just through observation, the distress of the Africans he would later write about. Alan later became a kind of physical embodiment of Arthur Jarvis. He worked as a school teacher early on in life and later resigned and went to work at a boys’ reformatory in Johannesburg. Much like Arthur, Alan had a knack for science such as physics, and math but went on to a different cause of writing and fighting for the rights that he believed everyone deserved. This shows that Alan’s writings are also based on his personal struggles, which is what makes every character more or less relatable in that book. Everyone has someone to relate to, and others can sympathize and really feel for the characters.
I really enjoy Alan’s Cry, the Beloved Country, and have not had the fortune of reading anything else by him. I liked the use of allegory and symbolism to drive the point of how wrong apartheid was, while still maintaining a perfectly good plot, and the ability of maintaining relatable characters. The book was long,and written very much like the King James Bible my mother got me, but as with that, I powered through and sought for understanding of it. It also helps, in either case, when you have a teacher helping you understand and read through it. You may take one meaning, but they help you see and also understand another meaning, much more prudent to what the author was thinking.
I would suggest first reading Cry, the Beloved Country, just to get a feel for how Paton writes, his stylistic choices, as well as his use of symbolism. I have not read anything else myself, however, I do suggest Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful, as it is a book written like Cry, The Beloved Country, but with new scenarios and differing lessons to be held. He’s a beautiful author and I recommend you reading some of his other works.
I really liked that the author put an example of Alan’s work that I had already read; it gives a better understanding of Alan’s life in my mind. That’s really a shame that his father would do that to his own, children, I’m glad that we live in a society that stays away from those kinds of things. I like that the author gave a clear understanding of Alan’s’ background and inspirations for his writing. One thing that the author could work on is giving more examples, the only example they gave was a book that I had already read so I don’t know many other books by Alan.
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