Themes: All Themes
Themes: Race and Racism
This book delves into the theme of race across various dimensions. The most prominent focus is the treatment of black individuals in American society, both in the Southern and Northern regions. In the South, danger is a constant threat. For instance, Becky is shunned by both black and white communities for crossing racial boundaries, forming a relationship with a black man, and becoming pregnant by him. Whites harbor suspicion towards blacks, as...
Themes: Sex Roles
Toomer opens the book with vivid depictions of individual women, showcasing society's varied perspectives and the intense emotions men often impose on them. The first character, Karintha, is portrayed as a tragic and mysterious figure, lacking a distinct personality and defined only by her physical beauty. As a child, she is seen as a sexual object, even by men who won't admit it. Her beauty allows her to act out, mistreat animals, and fight with...
(Read more)Themes: Alienation and Loneliness
The theme of alienation becomes evident in the book's later sections, but once it is uncovered, it can be retrospectively identified in earlier parts. The brief prose piece "Seventh Street," which initiates the second section, introduces the idea of urban isolation. It portrays the city street as a manifestation of social inconsistency—teeming with people yet deeply lonely. The characters in this section face less social pressure to remain...
(Read more)Themes: Cultural Assimilation and Erosion
In a letter to his friend and mentor Waldo Frank, Toomer reflected on African-American life, stating, "There is one thing about the Negro in America which most thoughtful persons seem to ignore: the Negro is in solution, in the process of solution." When Toomer used the term solution,he did not suggest that African Americans in the early twentieth century were solving their problems. Rather, he was indicating that they were being slowly absorbed...
(Read more)Themes: Sexuality and Female Characters
In the opening section of the short story collection, Toomer delves into the theme of cultural erosion, focusing particularly on sexuality and female characters. In this part, some women maintain an approach to sexuality that existed before the imposition of white cultural norms on black communities. The protagonist in "Karintha" is a woman who exudes a potent sexuality, drawing the attention of men even in her youth. Older men "play hobby horse"...
(Read more)Themes: Western Civilization as a Force of Death
In "November Cotton Flower," western civilization is compared to the onset of winter. Winter is naturally the season where life diminishes. It reduces the vibrancy of spring and summer, turning "cotton-stalks look rusty" and leading to "dead birds [to be] found / In wells a hundred feet below the ground." Western culture is portrayed as a force of death, stifling true vitality and life. A November cotton flower represents someone inherently bold...
(Read more)Themes: Christianity and Cultural Overshadowing
Christianity represents another aspect of Western culture that African Americans embraced. Toomer perceives this adoption as a means by which the original African culture has been eclipsed by Western, predominantly white influences. This theme is expressed in his poem "Conversion":
(Read more)African Guardian of Souls, intoxicated with rum, partakes in an unfamiliar cassava, succumbing to new words and the feeble palabraof a white-faced, sardonic deity— Cane...
Themes: Urbanization and Industrialization
Western culture's urbanization and industrialization also play a role in diminishing African-American culture. In a letter to Waldo Frank, Toomer expressed:
The inevitable result of a mechanical society is that you either integrate into it...
(This entire section contains 1086 words.)
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(Read more)or get left behind. African Americans lack the cultural foundation to resist it (if they had one, their situation would be similar to that of Native Americans); hence, industrialism more readily changes them....
Themes: Hope for Racial Harmony
Toomer suggests that modern African Americans feel disconnected from their cultural heritage because they are forced to navigate a society with differing values and norms. However, the theme isn't solely one of hopelessness. In the narrative "Bona and Paul," Toomer presents a ray of hope for not only African Americans but for all Americans to address racial challenges. Paul, who has both white and black ancestry, gains a profound insight during a...
(Read more)Themes: Self-Discovery and Racial Identity
Recognized widely as one of the major literary works of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s, Cane emerged from Jean Toomer’s experience as the temporary head of a Georgia industrial and agricultural school for African Americans. Toomer called sadness the dominant emotion in the volume, saying it “derived from a sense of fading.” Caneas a whole is an exercise in self-discovery, with its sensitive, self-effacing narrator, actually the author...
(Read more)Themes: Form and Structure
Cane’s form has been as problematic for critics as its substance. Some see it as merely a gathering of fugitives—stories, poems, and a play previously published separately in different magazines—unified only by their common themes, settings, and binding. Others have called it either an experimental novel or a work that denies the possibility of standard categorization. Critical uncertainty and controversy notwithstanding, the form of Caneis...
(Read more)Themes: Use of Poetry and Music
Toomer’s inclusion of poems within and between his stories is a distinguishing feature. Mainly folk songs or ballads, the poems provide substantive reinforcement to the action and themes of the prose pieces and enhance the pervasive mood of wistful and mournful pastoralism. By recalling a tradition of American black music, particularly spirituals from the antebellum slavery period, they also add historical dimensions to Toomer’s fiction and serve...
(Read more)Themes: Racial Conflict and Miscegenation
The conflict in “Blood-Burning Moon” brings to the fore a central theme of the book: Toomer’s belief that there was a southern conspiracy to ignore the reality of miscegenation. In other words, the bigotry in rural Georgia created barriers to normal interpersonal relationships, exaggerated the tensions present, and ultimately led to debilitating sexual repression. Toomer portrays African Americans, however, as having a firmer cultural foundation...
(Read more)Themes: Communication and Isolation
Canehas meaning and significance beyond Toomer’s concerns with racial identity and conflict. Most of the book’s men and women, even those who love and are loved, are strangers to those with whom they live. The narrator of “Fern” says: “Men saw Fern’s eyes and fooled themselves. Her eyes said one thing but people read another. They began to leave her, baffled and ashamed . . . for men are apt to idolize or fear that which they do not understand.”...
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