Jean Toomer's Cane: An Analysis

In December 1922, Jean Toomer sent a letter to novelist, Waldo Frank describing his intentions with writing Cane. He said, “From three angles, Cane’s design is a circle. Aesthetically from simple forms to complex ones, and back to simple forms...Or, from the North down into the south, and then a return North” (Davis 10). In Cane, Jean Toomer aesthetically creates a “circle” which is a continuity of ideas by interconnecting two forms of writing: lyrical poetry and narrative prose. By using two dynamic forms of writing, Toomer creates movement, going from “simple forms to complex ones,” in which Toomer emphasizes both the convergence and distinction between such forms. Subsequently, he also uses this idea of movement to mark his literal and …show more content…
In the process, Toomer narrows his focus on racial identity, particularly emphasizing the importance of acknowledging mixed race as a separate yet equivocal identity, and idea that in itself is vague and lacks distinction in rural southern society of the 1900s. By using two very different yet connected types of writing: prose and poetry, Toomer approaches the rigid concrete definition of race by color and questions whether people of mixed backgrounds can be confined to color categories. By using the connected ideas of prose and poetry, Toomer draws out the difference between black and white, yet at the same time, he embraces the gray, the duality. In other words, Toomer uses specific word choice to point out the dissimilarity in textual form, but in the same context, he connected the writings by creating a lyrical effect with the words in rhythmic format. Toomer is reflective of race as individual entities of black and white, yet he also explores the mixture of such entities and what it