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Main themes

Cry, the Beloved Country is a social protest against the structures of the society that would later give rise to apartheid. Paton attempts to create an unbiased and objective view of the dichotomies this entails: he depicts the Whites as affected by 'native crime', while the Blacks suffer from social instability and moral issues due to the breakdown of the tribal system. It shows many of the problems with South Africa such as the degrading of the land reserved for the natives, which is sometimes considered to be the main theme, the disintegration of the tribal community, native crime and the flight to the urban areas.

Another prevalent theme in Cry, The Beloved Country is the detrimental effects of fear on the characters and society of South Africa, as indicated in this quote from the narrator in Chapter 12:

Paton makes frequent use of literary devices such as microcosms, intercalary chapters, dashes instead of quotation marks for dialogue, and a number of other things to show the state of South Africa. A microcosm is a form of symbolism that uses a small thing to depict something on a larger scale. Intercalary chapters are literally chapters that are 'in between': they have almost nothing to do with the story, but often are microcosms. There are no double quotation marks in the whole book; instead Paton uses dashes (–) to indicate the start of speech acts. This may not seem like a literary device at first, but soon it becomes evident that they do a lot more than would be expected. Because there are few phrases such as "he said" or "she said", it is faster to read and, especially in the intercalary chapters, adds a feeling of desperation and rapid progress towards the novel's final catastrophe.