Cry, The Beloved Country Journal 5

In his novel Cry, The Beloved Country Alan Paton uses several characters that go unnamed throughout the book.  This has an effect on both how the reader responds to those characters, and the overarching theme of the novel.  The characters that go unnamed mostly include native women and children, and white people that actively try to assist the native population.  I think Paton does this to both make the reader feel distant from these characters, and to emphasize the growing prejudice against natives in South Africa as a whole.  Not naming these characters isolates them from the rest of the population; therefore, it distances them from the reader.  Lacking names makes these characters feel unimportant and insignificant.  It makes them feel awkward and out of place as well.  This segregation of people that are oriented with the native populace connects directly to the poor treatment of natives in the entirety of South Africa.  Nameless characters is an effective method of punctuating the increasing prejudice against natives.  In addition, it foreshadows that more oppression is to come.