Point of View

Cry the Beloved Country is written from the perspective of a third person omniscient narrator, who mainly stays focused on the internal world of Stephen Kumalo. The narrator also dips into the minds of a variety of other characters, particularly James Jarvis beginning in Book Two. These two men are of the same generation, but they come from completely different worlds. The narrator uses his perspective to compare and contrast their thought processes. The author also occasionally uses a second person point of view, inviting the reader more fully into the story by the use of “you.” Though most of the novel is written in the past tense, the passages where the author steps out of the narrative to describe are presented in the present tense. This adds urgency to the circumstances. For example, life in the Orlando Shanty Town is a situation that needs...