Alan Paton

6 Pages 1455 Words

Alan Paton -- teacher, author, and politician -- was one of South Africa's most
remarkable people. Repelled by the racism he saw all around him in his homeland, he wrote Cry, the Beloved Country, the book that had the most profound effect in the worldwide struggle against apartheid. It is in this book, that he portrayed his life through so many characters and scenes to give the best explanation possible for his fight for justice and equality. This book remains one of South Africa’s greatest novels. It is a true-life portrait of its author, Alan Paton.
Alan Paton was born in 1903 in Pietermaritzburg, Natal. He was the oldest of four children and the son of Eunice and James Paton. He was taught to read and write before he started school and as a result he was rapidly advanced all throughout his school years. At the age of fifteen he was starting his college education for a science degree in teaching. After receiving his degree, he was sent to a small farming town of Ixopo, as a housemaster at the high school there. Ixopo would later become increasing familiar in his book, Cry, the Beloved Country. While in Ixopo, Paton took long walks in the hills, which he described in his book.

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond and singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa. About you there is grass and bracken and you may hear the forlorn crying of the titihoya, one of the birds of the veld. Below you is the valley of the umzimkulu, on its journey form the Drakensberg to the sea; and beyond and behind the river, great hill after great hill; and beyond and behind them, the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand (Paton 33).

This would become the famous start to the first two parts of the novel, Cry, the Beloved Country...