Cry, the Beloved Country: Stimulating a Change The purpose of Cry, the Beloved Country, is to awaken the population of South Africa to the racism that is slowly disintegrating the society and its people. Alan Paton designs his work to express his views on the injustices and racial hatred that plague South Africa, in an attempt to bring about change and understanding. The characters that he incorporates within his story, help to establish a sense of the conditions and hardships that the country is experiencing, and the presence of fear through the whole of the populace. Presenting the characters as having one-sided personalities or by referring to them by