Simile: Karintha
Karintha is often compared to elements of nature, such as in the line, "Even the preacher, who caught her at mischief, told himself that she was as innocently lovely as a November cotton flower" (5). Through these similes, Karintha is seen less as an individual woman and more as something of nature. She is a flower, an animal, and a whirl of energy. This gives her mystery, allure, and even power, but it is also reductive.
Metaphor: Becky
Toomer writes, "Taking their words, they filled her, like a bubble rising. Then she broke" (9). This is an apt metaphor to describe Becky. She is a bubble, clear and filled with everyone else's words and interpretations. In the story Toomer writes how people watch, judge, and talk about her. We never get Becky's own words or thoughts, just those of others. Thus, Becky is filled and then breaks, never to be seen again.
Metaphor: Cane and Nature
In the poem "Georgia Dusk" Toomer writes, "Their voices rise...the pine trees are guitars, / Strumming, pine needles fall like sheets of rain... / Their voices rise... the chorus of the cane / is caroling a vesper to the stars" (17). He uses the metaphor of music to depict how powerful, seductive, and immersive the landscape of Georgia is to the people who call it home.
Metaphor: Women
Almost all of the women's bodies in the first part of Cane have their bodies subject to the male gaze, control, subjugation, and even violence. This is a metaphor for the larger history of such abuses on the part of white slaveowners towards their African slaves. The history of slavery is writ on the body, and the bodies of these women, though not actually slaves, bear the metaphorical scars of this horrid history.
Metaphor: Electricity
Critic Michael North writes, "In 'Her Lips Are Copper Wire,' Toomer's words play up and down in the same way, flashing on and off with the electrical current that is the gathering metaphor for the whole poem. The reconnection of a circuit, the jump of electricity across a gap, is, in fact, a gathering metaphor for most of this, the second, section of Cane. For much of this section the sexual tension between the characters crackles across a physical or social gap." This is seen in the energy between Dorris and John and that between Paul and Bona. The energy brings both life and also sparks of painful illumination.
