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Stylistic Prose Techniques In Cry, The Beloved Country By Alan Paton

Decent Essays

Stylistic prose technique 1: IMAGERY Authors who use imagery wish to give the readers a physical feeling of literature while reading any sort of piece. It allows for the audience to connect to the characters on a deeper level by having them experience the same feelings, smells, noises, etc, as did the roles in the novel. Alan Paton uses a strong voice packed with imagery in his passage, “For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry in the kloofs. Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it. Stand shod upon it, for it is coarse and sharp, and the stones cut under the feet. It is not kept or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men” (Paton, 34). The overwhelming senses of touch and vision are more than prevalent in this brief passage, with Paton perfectly conveying the atmosphere of rural South Africa in the 1940’s. The reader gets a catholic impression of the arid climate as well as the deteriorated lands on which it rests. By including this in his novel, Alan Paton establishes a thorough setting, one of which the reader can fully understand for the remaining duration of Cry, The Beloved Country.

Stylistic prose technique 2: DRAMATIC IRONY In short, dramatic irony is in any given literary scenario when future actions can be accurately anticipated by the readers but not the characters. It often includes cliches and is used by authors wishing to give their audience insight that their characters do not yet have. Powerful dramatic irony is demonstrated in the scene: “- Shall I get your ticket for you, umfundisi? Then you need not lose your place in the line while I go to the ticket office… As though he has suddenly though of something he left the line, and walked to the corner, but there was no sign of the young man… - Where is the ticket office my friend? - You get your ticket on the bus. There is no ticket office” (Paton, 49). Alan Paton is able to show how vulnerable and naïve Stephen Kumalo is to the big city; using something so predictable as a sly, nevertheless, predictable con artist, he shows how foreign lies and deceit are to the pastor.

Stylistic prose technique 3: LOGOS Logos is a stylistic prose

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