Writing Homework Help

Cane: An Eye-Opening Experience

The narrative Cane was kind of difficult to
grasp at first because of the intense poetic vignettes that Jean Toomer
portrayed in the first section of his novel. Hearing the stories in the
MP3 allowed me to visualize better what Toomer was getting across in the
first few stories. The vignettes allow the reader to really get an
intense picture in their mind of what the African American woman went
through in the South. The book Cane and the stories told within
this novel are eye opening experiences into what the South was like
during the time period and the North (Washington D.C.).

In the first part of the novel Toomer talks about African
American women who were living in the South in Georgia. This book goes
into great detail about what the women went through and the first
vignette that is used in this book is Karintha. Karintha is a women who
even from a little girl all the men laid their eyes on her and
complimented her often. Karintha would play “home” with a small boy who
wasn’t afraid to imitate what she had seen her parents do. In this story
Toomer depicts a seen where Karintha is having a baby in the forest on a
bed of pine needles, going on to say there is a sawmill nearby. “A
child fell out of her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the forest.
Pine needles are smooth and sweet. They are elastic to the feet of
rabbits…A sawmill was nearby. Its pyramidal sawdust pile smouldered. It
is a year before one completely burns.” I read this passage two times
and it wasn’t until I heard the MP3 version that I realized that
Karintha had performed infanticide. I kept trying to figure out what
happened to the baby. When I realized this I wondered what Karintha was
thinking and it took me further into the time period and wondering if
she was trying to protect that baby from the world she was living in.
This vignette to start off the book is very prominent and makes you want
to keep reading to see what the other women also went through.

The poem he writes “Portrait in Georgia” comes right
before narrative that follows a women named Louisa being pursued by an
African American man (Tom) and a Caucasian man (Bob). It ends with the
two men brawling and Tom slits Bob’s throat who makes it back to white
land to tell everyone and they charge factory land to burn Tom at the
stake. This poem was fitting for before this section because Toomer
wrote “Hair – braided chestnut, coiled like a lyncher’s rope, Eyes –
fagots, Lips – old scars, or the first red blisters, Breath – the last
sweet scent of cane, And her slim body, white as the ash of black flesh
after flame.” Toomer was foreshadowing what would happen to the women in
the next section and how Tom would be burned at the stake. I really had
to read a lot of these vignette narratives over again and the poems
before them to catch how they related to each other. The stories of
these women were eye opening to see what all they went through in that
time period Toomer did an excellent job of bringing in the poems,
sonnets, and vignettes to really help the reader understand and get a
clear picture of what Toomer was trying to get across.

The imagery that Toomer uses throughout the novel is
thought provoking and really gives you an insight into the rural and
urban life of the Southern African American women and men. He often
states the smell of the sugar cane and when the mention of Karintha and
her infant after placing them in the sawmill Toomer said “Meanwhile the
smoke curls up and hangs in odd wraiths about the trees, curls up, and
spreads itself over the valley…Weeks after Karintha returned home the
smoke was so heavy you tasted in the water.” The imagery of the smoke
being so bad after this incident that you could taste it in the water is
just mind boggling to really think about the smoke being that bad that
you could taste the smoke even weeks later in the water. Also, the
imagery used in the “blood moon” section where it talks of Tom and Bob
Toomer states “ A great flare muffled in the black smoke shot upward.
The mob yelled. The mob was silent. Now Tom could be seen within the
flames. Only his head, erect, lean, like a blackened stone. Stench of
burning flesh soaked the air. Tom’s eyes popped. His head settled
downward.” The imagery Toomer uses makes you feel like you are right
there in the middle of this morbid event. It puts a fire inside myself
to never go back to this time period Toomer was writing with such
imagery to get his point across of how we as a nation were failing the
human race we are all a part of. Its not just red, white, black or
yellow we are all a part of one race and that is the human race and no
one should be treated different because of the color of their skin.

In conclusion, the imagery, vignettes, sonnets, and poems
they all played a role in the way Toomer portrayed that time period for
the African Americans. He used this style of narrative to really get
his point across of how the African Americans were treated and so that
it would bring it to the attention of the people of that time and also
make people aware in the present of what the African Americans went
through in the beginning. Also to me as the reader the way that he wrote
this novel it makes me even more aware of what African Americans went
through and continue to go through and how no matter what your skim
color is no one should treat you any different then the next person.
This book was definitely an eye opening experience for me to read and go
through this experience through Toomer’s eyes.

1. Why do you think that Toomer used the imagery that he did throughout the book?
2. What does vignette mean? And how well do you think that Toomer used the vignette throughout his book?