82 pages • 2 hours read
Jean ToomerCane
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 1, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Karintha”
The chapter is prefaced by a four-line poetic epigraph describing a woman’s skin as “dusk on the eastern horizon” (1) at sunset. This chapter is interspersed with lines of poetry that repeat variations of the opening epigraph (“Her skin is like dusk…”). Chapter 1 begins with Karintha, a young girl in Georgia whose beauty has always attracted the premature sexual attention of men. At 12 years old, Karintha has a high-pitched voice and is lively and energetic. She is mischievous, but people in town believe her to be innocent. However, this perception of her changes when Karintha has sex with a boy.
The chapter jumps forward in time, and Karintha is a beautiful woman who has been married multiple times. Men still go out of their way for her affection, doing whatever they can to “bring her money” (3). Karintha gives birth in the forest and abandons the infant there. A year later, a sawdust pile at the nearby sawmill catches fire. The smoke spreads through the forest and over the valley. The smoke smell lingers for weeks in Karintha’s house. Someone writes a song about the smoke: “Smoke is on the hills. Rise up. / Smoke is on the hills, O rise. / And take my soul to Jesus” (3). Karintha’s soul was “ripened too soon” (3) by men’s sexual interest. The chapter ends by reiterating how beautiful she is and repeating the opening epigraph.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Reapers”
“Reapers” is an eight-line, single-stanza poem. The poem is in the present tense and written from the first-person perspective. The speaker observes Black reapers “sharpening their scythes” on stone. Black horses also pull mowers along, which cut a field rat in their path. The speaker observes the rat’s blood on the blade as the horses continue. The prominent imagery in “Reapers” is of sharp tools—scythes, blades, mowers.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “November Cotton Flower”
Like the previous chapter, “November Cotton Flower” is also a poem. Fourteen lines and composed of a single stanza, this poem begins by describing the failure of a cotton crop in the fall season after it has been damaged by boll weevils and changing weather. The crops’ soil has drawn water from all the nearby streams, and birds have died thirsty as a result. In this desolate season, a cotton flower somehow blooms. This unseasonal flower surprises old folks and takes on an air of importance and superstition. The poem ends with the following couplet: “Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear, / Beauty so sudden for that time of year” (5).
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Becky”
The story is preceded by an epigraph describing Becky as she is at the end of the story to come—dead, the mother of two Black sons, with a Bible atop the rubble of her cabin. The story then begins with Becky, a Catholic white woman with a “Negro son.” The white people in town condemn her for this, judging her as a “shameless wench.” Becky refuses to disclose who the father is; the people begrudge her this and consider the unknown father to be worthless. Black and white folks alike help her out, but they secretly pray for her to leave town. After the birth of her first son, the people cast her out. The only place she finds refuge is on a small strip of land between the road and the railroad. When the train passes by, it rattles Becky’s cabin. People offer her help, but they only do so secretly. As time passes, people leave her food, and train passengers toss prayers written on scraps of paper out the window. Though people come by, no one ever sees her. One day someone sees the boy outside holding a baby. News spreads through the town that Becky has another son.
The boys grow up as outcasts in town. They can’t keep a steady job, and they quickly resort to violence when confronted. They eventually leave town, cursing the Black and white folks and shooting their guns. Meanwhile, the townspeople are convinced that Becky is dead until they see smoke rising from the chimney. They start bringing her food again but not out of kindness; they are afraid that Becky is now a ghost. It is an autumn Sunday, and the narrator and other church folk are returning home. Their horses stop suddenly before they pass the road to Becky’s cabin. The horses are nervous, and the narrator feels chills. The people see smoke rising from the chimney again when the entire structure collapses. The narrator and Barlo go inside the cabin and find dust and bricks. The narrator thinks he hears a groan but is not certain. Barlo tosses a bible on the rubble, and the two men hurry away on their horses. They report the news to the townspeople. The story ends repeating the epigraph that came before it.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Face”
“Face” is a 13-line poem that does not follow a particular rhyme scheme. The poem describes the face of an older woman with “silver-gray” hair. The description of her is mixed with a sorrowful tone; her brows are “recurved canoes / quivered by the ripples blown by pain,” her eyes are teary, and even her muscles are “cluster grapes of sorrow” (10). She is not only the product of a difficult and tragic life experience but also the embodiment of such tragedy.
Part 1, Chapters 1-5 Analysis
“Karintha” introduces the recurring theme in Cane of women characters who are harmed by the perceptions and actions of people in town. Toomer describes the titular character as “a growing thing ripened too soon” (3), referring to her early sexual experiences. Her story ends with her abandoning an unwanted infant. Becky, too, offers an example of a woman who is damaged. Being a white woman with Black, fatherless children, she is shunned by everyone in town. In “November Cotton Flower,” Toomer gestures toward the beautiful women who serve as protagonists in many of the stories and poems in Cane, often lovely amidst a world of invasive gazes (see “Karintha”) or unfortunate circumstances. Through these characters, Toomer begins the novel with a meditation on the vulnerability of women in Southern America and the risks of the small rural town.
Repetition is also an important element in the first few chapters. This appears when the narrator calls Karintha “as innocently lovely as a November cotton flower” (2), which foreshadows the upcoming poem/chapter “November Cotton Flower.” Toomer also uses repetition through the epigraphs that repeat within the stories as well. As a technique often used in Modernist literature, repetition (among other elements) helps readers to identify this text as such.
In his poetry, Toomer uses stark imagery of nature and animals to make social commentary. In “November Cotton Flower,” he contrasts the beautiful cotton flower and the dying autumn environment. Through this contrast, Toomer makes a commentary on the possibilities for beauty in conditions of poverty and social inequality. In “Reapers,” Toomer introduces an element of violence into an otherwise ordinary rural undertaking—reaping a crop. It is perhaps a commentary on the damaging interactions between man and nature in a slowly but increasingly industrialized society. Yet, as Toomer draws a line between man and nature/animals, he also conflates the two (as he repeatedly does in Cane). For example, the “Black reapers” mirror the “Black horses” in their description and their parallel act of wielding sharp tools—the scythes and the mowers.
Finally, time is an essential element here in these chapters. The time of year (the fall season) is the backdrop for “November Cotton Flower;” likewise, it is autumn when the narrator witnesses Becky’s chimney collapse (8). Being early or premature features prominently in “November Cotton Flower” and “Karintha,” where the flower appears far before its season and where Karintha reaches sexual maturity as a child. In “Face,” the poem’s subject is a woman marked by time, her old age and sorrowful experiences apparent in her body. “Karintha” and “Becky” both offer examples where temporality is distorted. In both stories, the narrative has the characters age suddenly. In one paragraph, Karintha is a girl, and in the next, she is a woman; likewise, in one paragraph, Becky’s boys are a toddler and an infant, and in the next, they are “two big fellows” (7). Only “Reapers” has little to do with time, though it does depict what might be the harvesting season.
