Cane Essay Questions

In what ways is Cane a modernist work?

There is much about the text that is modernist or avant-garde. First, its structure is decidedly nontraditional in that it claims to be a novel but is a collage of poems, prose, and a drama. Its language is poetic, dreamy, surreal, and constantly in flux. There is a lack of unity structurally and within the characters themselves. There is also an attempt to capture modernity in the setting and sounds of modern life: Toomer takes us to city streets, theaters, clubs, and parks. He depicts the ennui, fragmentation, and chaos of urban life. He demonstrates, as many modernist writers and artists do, the individual's quest for authenticity and the concomitant failure to achieve it. He also demonstrates the limitations of language to cross barriers between people and groups.

What is the significance of the work's title?

The title most immediately refers to cane as in sugarcane, the crop that was so lucrative for planters in Georgia. Cane means money, but for slaves and poor blacks in the Jim Crow era, cane also meant violence, subjugation, labor, impotence, and despair. Cane is sweet, of course, which makes it even more ironic of a crop to govern the lives of Southern blacks. It ultimately stands for the experiences of black people on American soil, but there is another meaning as well. The word "cane" plays on the word "Cain," the Old Testament figure who is often evoked in terms of the "curse of Cain" or "mark of Cain": Puritan ministers in America claimed that dark skin implied this curse/mark. Thus, as critic Maria Isabel Caldeira writes, "'Cain' stands for the images imposed upon [black people] by the Western world." Toomer's text, then, accomplishes both of these goals—to depict black life and to depict the views of black people that gave them that life.

What should readers make of Toomer's assertion that he is Kabnis?

Kabnis has a very complicated relationship with himself and with the South, just as Toomer did. An intellectual and a poet, Kabnis has difficulty fitting into the environment of the South. He is afraid and apprehensive all the time, and cannot seem to reconcile his racial identity. Toomer will wrestle with this same thing and come out more or less in the same place: he is neither black nor white, but is of a universal race. Kabnis is an orator and finds value in the shaping of words; Toomer does as well. As critic Maria Isabel Caldeira writes, "Toomer wanted to separate the Man from Art, Art from Life. He refused the label 'Negro Writer,' because he felt it was a restriction to his freedom..." and "[he] transmits part of this anguish and ambivalence to Kabnis."

Are the characters in the work depicted paternalistically—i.e. in a primitive, animalistic fashion?

There is always a risk when discussing a folk community (the first part of the work) that it will come across as paternalistic in tone and will depict such people as primitive or animalistic. They may also appear more as symbols than as actual individuals. Their living situation may be heroized or idealized rather than depicted as a realistic, underprivileged environment. The women in particular are described in terms that are not very human—Karintha is barely a person and seems more closely associated with animals and nature. Critic Charles Harmon acknowledges that Toomer wrestles with this fact: "The idealization of rural African Americans as intuitive, natural, and unrepressed is always haunted by the tendency to denigrate the same people as underdeveloped, ignorant, and even animalistic." Toomer sees the South with a high degree of nostalgia and depicts it as a more authentic place, but ultimately he is more nuanced than that. His narrator is often skeptical or cynical, and clearly affected by the racial violence and legacy of slavery.

Who are the narrators in these individual pieces? Is there a coherent narrative voice in Cane?

The narrator is a perplexing part of Cane. It seems to be Toomer throughout the first two parts ("Kabnis" is a drama and has no first-person narrator) but his voice, style, and closeness to the events of the stories and poems shifts markedly. He takes on an "I" role throughout these pieces and addresses many of them to a "you." He takes on a measure of authority and tries to close that gap as he narrates and judges. He appears as self-reflective, concerned with implying intimacy between the reader and his described subjects, and tries to link/mediate between the different racial groups in the stories. However, as critic William Dow notes,"the narrator's knowledge about his characters is incomplete and limited, and consequently the stories end in suspension, speculative refrain, or a comment about the narrator's insufficient understanding."

When Toomer shifts his story to the North, the narrator tries even harder to "anchor the self, confirm control, and...assert his often tenuous, provisional beliefs over others." He addresses the reader and speaks in the "I," but he seems more urgent and ironic. Overall there is some coherence in that the narrator both desires power and acknowledges his limitations.