Karintha, harvesters and November cotton flowers, all have similar scenes in rural Georgia which is located in the south where we see a batch of racism traveling on. The South for black Americans functioned as a site for injury every bit good as a symbolic mention for their fatherland. It is besides a symbolic connexion between bondage and sexualized black adult females. It ‘s is all embedded in Toomer ‘s quest for racial individuality as a mulatto. Toomer tries to stand for the black adult female ‘s gender as an act of sexual brotherhood scarred by traumatic history by picturing Karintha as an guiltless cocotte. The book cane is regarded as a passing epoch associated with the injury of bondage. Toomer was seeking to make a connexion between racial and cultural continuity generated by modernness to the ordinance of black female desire. The major subject in this narrative which is decease and sex relate to the Black American historical content of bondage and lynching. We see that in Cane, Toomer uses nature to depict the organic structures of the black females but about all the females are either anguished or violated in the rural scenes which undertakings supplanting of nature. The stalking beat of common people vocals in the rural landscape draws attending to the adult females who are objects of male desire and transforms this adult females into ‘lost objects ‘ . Toomer portrays the gender issues and societal barriers that hindered black adult females. ”Her tegument is similar dust on the eastern skyline ” … ” when the Sun goes down ” ( page 5 ) .
This description Toomer gives of karintha as twilight shows that what she represents is melting off. Karintha introduces the subjects of motion in life and decease that reoccur in the book Cane. “ The involvement of work forces, who wishes to mature a turning thing excessively soonaˆ¦ ( page5 ) “ shows that work forces hastened her sexual development. Karintha represents the common people ‘s spirit that is melting off due to modernness in the South, she is over sexualized and that means that black work forces still have impulses to be reconnected with the yesteryear.
In Reapers, we see major racial subjects here ; the thought of bondage takes major precedency in one ‘s head when we start reading the verse form. Toomer lays accent on the word “ black ” ( Page 7 ) used to depict the black Americans that were slaves at that clip in the South. The harvesters were tied to a life of humdrum work. The debut of the mower disrupts the peace in the cultivation of the weeds and brings war ; this brings out the subject of racism, where there is changeless societal war between the colored and the white. The verse form Reapers is implicative of Black field labourers in the early twentieth Century. Toomer besides tries to picture the job of racial economic inequalities that were besides present in the South at that clip. The word ‘continue ‘ ( page7 ) connotes the changeless labour the black male did in the Fieldss. We besides have a position on how in the early twentieth century, black males who had their lands would hold to work and pay a certain sum back to the Whites thereby go forthing them with small net income. All their convulsion and difficult work was ever in vain. We besides see an debut to violence that emerges with the blood-stained scythe that has cut a rat in the verse form, an issue that Toomer readdresses subsequently in cane.
November cotton flower is another verse form that ensues after Reapers, the verse form negotiations about environment in the south were we all know was hard for the coloured tegument at that point in clip. The verse form describes how the cotton flowers survived the harsh South conditions and still strived through the difficult times it went through.
We see Toomer use the thought of racial individuality, he uses the images of scarceness, drouth and decease to show the black race during the clip the verse form was written. ‘aˆ¦Brown eyes that loved without a hint of fright,
Beauty so sudden for that clip of twelvemonth. ‘ ( Page 8 )
Toomer depicts the sudden impulse that the African American race have to contend against racism. The description of a hope for the cotton flower shows that Toomer believes there is hope for the African American ; he tries to make a nexus between the subjugation of race to the turning of a cotton flower.
In Cane, Toomer tries to make a intercrossed construction, where we see a combination of short narratives and verse forms. Karintha, Reapers, and November cotton flowers portray decease, labour, racial individuality and racism which portray major subjects in the book cane as a whole. The book cane is designed in a circle, Toomer starts from the South up into the North and back into the southern parts once more. Since, Karintha, Reapers, and November cotton flowers are the first three back-to-back pieces in the book Cane, Toomer gives us a shadow or a intimation of what is to continue in other verse forms and narratives in the book. The three pieces are set in the rural South where a batch of racial individuality is taking topographic point, the description of Karintha as a November cotton flower, besides gives us an imagination of how the South and its environment looked at that point in clip.
In karintha, Toomer describes her as an guiltless cocotte who work forces invariably came to for satisfaction of their sexual desires merely to fend a life for herself. Toomer reechoes the subjects labour and economic inequalities besides found in the verse form Reapers and November cotton flower. “ Blood-stained, go on cutting weeds and shadiness ” ( page 7 ) shows how the African Americans in the South had to continually labour to fend for themselves and household. In the South, the inkinesss grew cotton for a life but in November cotton flower, they had convulsion but seen no wagess of their labour, the natural resources were depleted thereby go forthing the Fieldss empty. “ And cotton scarce as any southern snow ” ( page 8 )
Toomer ‘s cane is compiled of brushs with both inkinesss and white and black. In Karintha, we see brushs between inkinesss and white. Karintha was a black adult female who was sexually appealing to both the white and black work forces in her community. However, in Reapers and November cotton flower we see the antonym of such brushs. Even though white work forces are attracted to karintha, in Reapers, and November cotton flowers, we see that they belittle the twilight tegument colour and subject them to a life of changeless labour.
Toomer besides paints the theme decease in these three consecutive pieces that start the book cane, as it would besides be discussed in the other verse forms and narratives that followed. In karintha, we see towards the stoping that she cryptically has a kid who dies, Toomer likens the decease to “ smokes that curl up ” in the community. Furthermore, Toomer uses animate beings in Reapers and November cotton flowers to mean decease. In harvesters, “ And there a field rat, startled oinking bleeds, ” ( page7 )
Shows the black harvester slays the rat and leaves it shed blooding without offering any understanding to it. Toomer besides describes the characteristics of a dead land in November cotton flowers. ”aˆ¦dead birds were found ” ( page 8 ) .
Toomer ‘s description of Karintha as a November Cotton flower shows the thought of dual consciousness because karintha was depicted by Toomer as a violent kid who was arch and ever lapidating the cow, yet the sermonizer convinced himself that there was nil incorrect in her Acts of the Apostless and regarded her as a November cotton flower. Toomer tries to portray how the Whites thought their ill-treatment of the inkinesss were justified and lawful. Which, is besides the same thing seen in Harvesters when the harvester refuses to admit the fact that he had hurt the rat.
The debut of the mowers by Toomer in the harvesters besides signifies the birth of modernism and the new Negro motions, which, is besides repeated in November cotton flowers when the cotton flowers begins to out of the blue turn and the inkinesss see a hopeful hereafter after the decease of karintha ‘s kid which signifies the decease of the old Black and old cultural manner because every bit shortly as Toomer passages to the rural scene, the common people vocal puting seems to disappear.
Jean Toomer ‘s cane is a book that takes into awareness, the lives lived by Negros at that peculiar epoch and his work was considered as the New Negro art that led other black poets or authors to compose other books in that visible radiation.
