Alan Paton wrote Cry, the Beloved Country to show a view of South Africa's problems in which one can relate to rather than writing a novel specifically naming the problems. This novel is about an old preist, Stephen Kumalo, who goes in search of his son and other relatives in Johannesburg. Stephen sees many of the problems in South Africa's society while in Johannesburg and also sees how city life has corrupted members of his family. Both James Jarvis and Stephen Kumalo are dynamic characters in this novel because of the way their attitudes change throughout the course of the novel. Both men have their similarities and their differences and undergo parallel journeys to each other. Through the changes seen in Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis, Paton reveals how the future of South Africa can be improved.
             James Jarvis and Stephen Kumalo have many similarities and differences throughout the novel. Both men are forced to journey to Johannesburg in order to find their sons, yet Jarvis is never able to physically reunite with his son. James Jarvis and Stephen both live in Ndotsheni except that James lives above, and Stephen lives below the hill into the valley and Paton describes the scenery very similarly to one another. He describes Jarvis' home as to being "Up here on the tops is a small and lovely valley, between two hills that shelter it" (Paton 161). But he describes Stephen's setting identically to that of James' setting but soon starts with,"Where you stand the grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. But the rich green hills break down. They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature" (Paton 33). It is because of the fact that the young people of Ndotsheni leave to the towns and never return that the land is unfertile. Unlike the whites at the top of the hill, the blacks do not know any of the new methods of farming because all those who go to learn those method...