Jean Toomer’s Cane is a collection of poetry and prose, set in rural Georgia and Washington D.C in the early 1920s. It was published in 1923, and is widely credited with being one of the major works that led to the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance movement. The book is often characterized as a “hybrid” because it consists of both poetry and prose, and the styles of both pieces are quite different.
The book opens with a year in rural Georgia. The first three parts of Cane focus on this rural black life of the South, showing with vividness and beauty the small details of life and the everyday routine of a people whose possibilities were severely limited by the racism and illiteracy of the period.
The fourth part, “Karintha” is the book’s only poem, and it is here where Toomer’s complexly sensitive transitions between the physical and the spiritual work best. It is a lyrically-written meditation on Karintha, a sexually ambitious young woman, who serves as a metaphor of fertility and life in an environment where none had expected to see such beautiful potential.
The fifth part deals with the story of the narrator’s community, as told by its women. They tell of the difficult obstacles that the black families in the area faced in the face of racism and inequality. This is followed by two separate vignettes that focus on two different people’s experiences of loneliness and alienation in urban Washington D.C.: Yola and Reverend Council, respectively.
The eighth part introduces Uncle Ward, a character who returns to the country after having left it for a period of time. His reorientation to the old language and customs of the country shows how easily the character adapts to his new surroundings, something his friends cannot do. Toomer’s description of Uncle Ward is sometimes called a “magical evocation.”
The final section of the book tells the story of a group of people who come together in a ritualistic ritual, meant to “[leave] the ground as planted,” an act that serves as a symbolic way for them to be able to overcome the struggles of the past and move into the future.
Cane is a classic work of American literature. It is highly acclaimed for its complex and deeply moving portraits of the black experience in the South, its vivid portrayal of place, and its skillful blending of poetry and prose. It is an important contribution to both African American literature and modernist literature in general. Through his writing, Toomer succeeded in portraying a reality that was rarely captured in literature at the time; his work speaks to the human condition of people of color in the early twentieth century. Cane is an elegant masterpiece that continues to be read and appreciated today.
