How the land connects with Paton's theme

           Throughout out the book Paton mentions the land in South Africa. When he is describing the land he always describes one part of the land to be beautiful, and well fertilized, then he goes on to describe another part of land to be rough and not well taken care of. I think there is a deeper meaning behind the descriptions of the land. I think the different descriptions represent the social classes of the blacks in South Africa and the whites in south Africa.

          The beautiful and well fertilized land symbolizes the whites in South Africa, and their living conditions. Paton says "the land is rich and matted you cannot see the soil " meaning that the grass is thick and well preserved. I feel like this is being claimed as the land of the whites in South Africa because they were treated better than the blacks. So of course they had the best land.So I feel that this the first sign of symbolism that Paton has used by saying that the whites of South Africa had better quality land.

           In the second paragraph in chapter one of Cry,The Beloved Country Paton uses symbolism to describe the different environments between the blacks and whites in South Africa.The text says "the rich green hills break down", "they fall into the valley below", right here is where the first scene is ending and a new scene is being introduced. This is transitioning into a change in environment. The second paragraph in chapter one said “[the land] holds the rain and the mist, they seep into the ground, in the third paragraph in chapter one it says"[the land] cannot hold the rain and mist. in my opinion this is just say that the whites had the better quality in their land  with that being said  i am going to assume since they were segregated  and since the whites were treated better they also had better clothing, nicer  living conditions, and they actually had rights. The blacks didn't have any of that.With that being said the blacks lands were over crowded with cattle and their streams are dry and they had too many fires burned upon it.

        In chapter 10 Paton introduces the readers to shatny town. This town is to be described in my opinion as a town that was thrown together over night with no good craftsmanship and no cares. What stood out to me was when Paton said "even here the children laugh in the narrow lanes that run between these tragic habitations", this stood out to me because i interpreted it as that even though this town is run down the children aren't depressed or sad they are happy they have adapted to this environment this is all they know this is home. They haven t been introduced to the life of the whites in south Africa so they aren't wishing to have their life they are happy here. This ties into the over all theme of the book because this is just one of many examples of how the whites were treated better that the blacks they lived in better environments they had better farm land and they had rights.