The language that Paton uses in his novel is extremely simple, except of course for the words in Zulu and Afrikaans (the Dutch-derived language of parts of South Africa) that he uses to help establish the scene. The simplicity of language is meant to help convey the fact that Stephen Kumalo is a simple man used to plain words and plain living and uncomplicated ideas. It also helps convey his religiousness, for the language, not just the words themselves, is that of the King James version of the Bible. Stephen's religion is simple; he obviously has read the Bible so many times that he thinks and speaks in its style. Partly this has come about because so many of the schools where Africans first learned English were missionary schools, where teaching religion was as important as teaching arithmetic, but Stephen has gone on to reinforce this Bible-like usage of language.
This use of Biblical style also fits in with the number of Biblical names in the novel, such names as Absalom, Peter, and John, and helps give them meaning. Besides being a reflection of Stephen's religiousness and simplicity, this Biblical style gives the novel an air of restraint and universality. It is a terrible and dramatic story that is told, the story of a family, a tribe, and a nation slipping into decline, crime, and murder. But the author does not want it to be just a melodrama that is good for a few hours of exciting reading. He prefers to play down the dramatic events and play up the feelings of its two principal participants, Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis, so that the reader has a feeling not just of sympathy but of empathy with them. Empathy is the capacity to put yourself in someone else's place, to say, "What if this happened to me, or to my family, how would I feel then?" He wants his readers to suffer as Kumalo and Jarvis suffer so that something may be done to stop the situation he writes about. The novel could have been written as a murder mystery, dealing with the killing of Arthur Jarvis and the search for and conviction of his murderer, but this plot would have left the reader uninvolved.
