Things to Consider:

• Harlem Renaissance 
• Northern Migration
• Images and their Symbolic Significance
• Dusk
• Harvest
• Cane/Cain?
• Religious Practices
• Social Conventions: Southern/Rural vs. Northern/Urban (Same or Different)
• Race: Relationships between Blacks and Whites
• Context (See interesting class description )
• See a Very Interesting Collection of Images 

(See Sets Two, Three  and Four )

Part One:
Turner Introduction:
128:

• What did Toomer do in Sparta, Georgia in 1921?  What are the consequences of this experience?

• What is the Harlem Renaissance?  What new themes were examined during this period?  (See 133)

• Describe the three sections of Cane.

• What is this poem about?  Explain the significance of the subject matter.
• What does the field rat symbolize?
• What do the reapers symbolize?
• What is the rhyme scheme of "Reapers"?

• Identify and explain one metaphor.
• Identify and explain one simile.
• Explain lines 10-13.

• To whom is the poem addressed?
• What does "profligate" (7) mean?
• How are slaves "dark purple ripened plums" (16)?
• Explain lines 18-20.

• What is being described as a beehive?  Who are the "bees" (2)?
• Is this a favorable description?  Explain.
• Explain the final two lines.

• What does it mean to "ripen a growing thing too soon" (3)?
• How is a November cotton flower "innocently lovely" (3)?

• Why does Karintha resent the old men?

• Why do White and Black folks both build her a house?

• How does Becky die?  Why does the House collapse?
• How does this story relate to the poems ("Face" and "Cotton Song") that follow?

• What example(s) of conflict arise in this story?
• How is it / are they resolved?

• What are "Negro shanties" (30)?
• Why is Louisa being compared to an oak tree?
• Explain:  "By the way the world reckons things, he had won her" (30).

• Why do the dogs and roosters join in Louisa's song? (see also 31-32, 35)

• Explain:  "Words is like th spots on dice" (32).  What literary technique is being employed here?
• Has Tom really cut two men? Explain.
• Explain: "White folks aint up t them tricks so much nowadays" (32).

• Explain:  "His family had lost ground" (33).

• Explain:  "It was because she was nigger that he went to her" (34).

• Why do the witnesses to the fight go home and blow their lamps out?

• Explain:  "Where were they, these people?" (36).  To whom is Louisa referring?  Where are they?

• Explain: "He is a nigger. . . .  That's why I love" (72).

• Why does Bona stop Paul from kissing her?

• Explain:  "Their stares, giving him to himself, filled something long empty within him" (76-77 ).

• Explain:  "Queer about him.  I could stick up for him if he'd only come out, one way or the other" (77).

• Explain what Paul says to the doorman at the end.
• Why does Bona leave?

• Why does the appearance of a cotton flower raise superstition?  What does it symbolize?
• What does "beauty so sudden for that time of the year" (14) mean?
• How does this poem relate to the story of Karintha?

• Explain:  "hewit" (2),  "hump, (14), "eoho, eoho" (15).
• What is the purpose of this song?
• Explain line 3-4.  What are they going to do without waiting for Judgement Day?
• Explain: "Bodies like to roll the soul" (6).
• What is the rhyme scheme of "Cotton Song"?

• What is karma?  Does it come into play here?
• What is a Georgia chariot?
• Explain: "She does not sing; her body is a song" (12).

• Explain:  "Time and space have no meaning in a canefield" (13).
• Why does Carma pretend to shoot herself?
• Why does Bane slash the man who stumbles over Carma?
• Explain the lines of poetry that get repeated throughout the story.
• How does this story relate to the two poems ("Song of the Son" and "Georgia Dusk") that follow?

• What is being described in this poem?  What is happening?
• What does "indolent" (2) mean?
• What is being described as "blue ghosts of trees" (14)?
• Explain lines 17-20.
• Explain "the pine trees are guitars" (21).
• Explain the final two lines.

• Explain:  "Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War" (41).
• Explain the wedge metaphor used on this page.
• Why would a "Nigger God . . . .  duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day" (41)?

• Several critics have identified Avey as a prostitute.  What evidence is there for this claim?

• Explain:  "I like to feel that something deep in me responded to the trees, the young trees that whinnied like colts impatient to be let free" (44).

• Why doesn't the speaker want to disturb her at the end?

• What are the "yellow globes" (1,5)?
• Bernard Bell says that this poem "focuses on the lips, the breath, and the tongue as transmitters of the electrical current of the soul" (226).  What does this mean?
• How does this poem compare to "Face"?

• Explain the sensual imagery used in this poem.
• Explain the theme of this poem.

Watkins, "Is There a Unifying Theme in Cane?" 215-17

• Does Watkins' discussion incorporate consideration of race?  Explain.

• What, according to Watkins, is Toomer saying throughout Cane?

• According to Watkins, what, if any, is the unifying theme in Cane?

223:

• Bell calls Cane "a pastoral work" (223).  What does that mean?
• What kind of imagery is used in these poems, according to Bell?

• According to Bell, how do the poems function with the stories?  Provide an example of a poem and story and describe how they work together.

• According to Bell. how do the poems in Parts One and Two relate?

238:

• Explain:  "The structure of the book reflected the relationship of the individual parts to the whole" (238).  Explain how this is so in Cane, according to McKay.

• Explain:  "In writing Cane [Toomer] gave expression to feelings that overwhelmed him concerning the southern experience" (242).

• Explain the "modes of presentation" present in the three sections of Cane, according to McKay.