SOURCE: “The Unifying Images in Part One of Jean Toomer's Cane,” College Language Association Journal, Vol. XXII, No. 3, March, 1979, pp. 187-214.

In the following essay, Eldridge discusses the recurring imagery in the first part of Cane, asserting that it functions to unify the overall themes of the work.

Although many of the poems and stories in Jean Toomer's Cane¹ were published separately in little magazines like Broom, S4N, and Double Dealer, the final complication of Toomer's book was no random collection of writings. In July of 1922 Toomer wrote of his desire to put under one cover some of his writing because “… I feel a precipitant is urgently needed just at this time. The concentrated volume will do a great deal more than isolated pieces possibly would.”² By December of that year Toomer had compiled his writings into what he called a “circle design,” the symbol of which...