Cane

The poems in this section continue to use natural imagery—bees, the moon, flowers, storms, wind—to illustrate the themes throughout the book—North/South dichotomy, dreams of escape, and violence against Black people. Like most of the other chapters in Cane, “Beehive” is set at night. This is signaled, in part, by the ever-present moon, a frequently used symbol in the novel. The bright, silver light of the moon is contrasted with the darkness inside the “black hive” where he must stay. The moon’s light represents somewhere that the drone bee cannot go to, like the “far-off farmyard flower” he dreams of. “Beehive” does not yield a single, obvious interpretation but could be read in various ways. The inside the hive/outside the hive dichotomy perhaps reflects the shift the novel has made by this point (about halfway through) from a meditation on the rural South to the urban South. The drone bee could symbolize someone who has only ever lived in rural areas and dreams of exploring other places. The dreams of the drone bee might also symbolize a North/South dichotomy, which would anticipate later chapters of Cane where characters make more explicit reference to, or even come from, the North. Finally, much like the poem “A Portrait in Georgia” directly relates to the story “Esther,” the lazy bee, “[l]ying on my back” and “[g]etting drunk with silver honey” (63) might be a reference to Avey, whom the narrator regards as lazy. However, while the drone bee dreams of more, Avey is indifferent about others and the world beyond.

“Storm Ending” is a modern interpretation of a pastoral poem that includes descriptions of thunder, flowers, wind, rain, sun, and the earth. The poem’s speaker is only identified through the plural first-person pronoun “our” (Lines 1 and 4). It is unknown how many people this collective involves, which leaves the emphasis on natural elements. The poem sets up a relationship between humans and the natural world, where the former is subjected to the power and majesty of the latter. This is demonstrated by the thunder “blossom[ing] gorgeously above our heads,” spatially placing the observers far beneath the thunderclouds. Humans can only perceive the storm, not control it. This element emphasizes “our” (Line 1) earthly status and, by contrast, elevates the cosmic station of the storm.

This power dynamic is most obvious in the rhetoric of violence that Toomer employs in the poem from Line 4, when the storm’s noise goes from a lower, gentle rumble to a sharp crack. The thunder “strike[s]” (Line 4) the ears of the indistinct first-person audience, flowers are “bitten by the sun” (Line 6), and the sky is “bleeding rain” (Line 7). This turn to forcefulness mixed in with language about the storm being “gorgeous” and the earth being “sweet” exemplify Toomer’s frequent practice of mixing the beautiful and the horrifying. It is not unlike the beautiful full moon in the sky while the violent white mob burns Tom in “Blood-burning Moon.” In making these contrasts, Toomer illustrates the innocence and beauty of nature and the wickedness of humankind.

Part 2 marks several significant turns in the overarching narrative of Cane, which help to place Toomer in his historical and cultural moment. The first shift the novel makes is from the rural to the urban. Part 1 takes place exclusively in the rural American South, meditating on agricultural labor and the natural landscape; Part 2 introduces the urban South, emphasizing Black life in Washington DC. This attention to Black life in cities is often attended by mentions of jazz and nightlife, chorus girls, dancers, and cabarets—all features of that 1920s moment. This moment, especially in Black life in the United States, is concurrent with the Harlem Renaissance. As Bruce Kellner writes in The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary for the Arts, “‘Harlem Renaissance’ is a misnomer because the rich surge of Black arts and letters during the 1920s was not limited to […] New York City.” It is no coincidence, then, that when Cane shifts from the rural to the urban, the characters’ activities also shift from agricultural labor, collective folk singing, and casual outside gathering to nightclubs and theaters. However, even as Toomer focuses on the urban, he never loses sight of the natural world; the moon, for example, is ever-present in Part 2.

The second significant shift in Part 2 is Toomer’s writing style, which becomes more characteristically Modernist. The Modernist style became popular across Europe, the United States, and beyond from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. (This study guide explores literary Modernism in further detail in the “Themes” section.) Modernism is characterized by formal experimentation, among other elements. “Seventh Street” and “Rhobert” depart from a normal narrative structure, lack plot, and feature sentence fragments. In “Rhobert,” the reader comes upon cryptic phrasings such as “pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing?” (51) that are not obviously related to the preceding or following sentences.

Thirdly, “Rhobert” is the first chapter named after a man. Up until this point, Cane has multiple chapters named after women—“Karintha,” “Becky,” “Carma,” “Fern,” and “Esther.” In each of them, Toomer follows a woman’s life, sometimes watching her as she ages. Often, the women are pathologized; they are hypersexual, undesirable, outcasted, or promiscuous. The fact of them being titular characters is misleading, as these chapters hardly explore the women’s interiority. Instead, they focus on how people in town—especially men—perceive the woman. Toomer’s chapters on women seem to respond, for better or for worse, to a historical moment when Black women were being pathologized both from within and from without the Black community. Much Harlem Renaissance literature and the broader New Negro cultural moment had a very masculinist approach. In Alain Locke’s 1925 introduction to The New Negro: An Interpretation, he refers to Black people almost exclusively with masculine pronouns. Black men were the subject of the new narrative being written about Black life, and women were either aestheticized or idealized to support this project of remaking the “Negro.” Likewise, this historical moment comes on the heels of rampant vagrancy laws that excessively criminalized Black women, leading to a rise in false accusations of prostitution and a general disdain for African American women. “Rhobert,” then, marks upcoming chapters whose names are more honest about their attention to the interiority of male characters (except for “Avey,” named after a woman).