Cane is not a typical novel. It is, in fact, sui generis—a unique piece of writing in American literature as well as in the entire scope of Third World writing. I suggest that Cane should be regarded as a lyrical novel—a narrative structured by images instead of the traditional unities. Its tripartite structure is developed from a series of thematic tensions: North/South; city/country (with the almost ubiquitous image of the land); past/present; black/white; male/female. Structured by these counterparts or tensions, Cane achieves a lyrical beauty and power which make it, for me, the most compelling novel ever written by a black American writer. (pp. 30-1)
The most fascinating aspect of Toomer's novel for me is … the narrator-observer who wanders throughout the book. This is the author's emotional center, for the fact is that Cane does have a central character—a figure who resembles Toomer himself, though cleverly disguised. In the course of the narrative he undergoes a number of metamor-phoses, sometimes appearing as a first-person narrator (in 12 of the 28 sections of the first two parts), that is, as a participant in the activities described; or as an observer in a third-person narrative, like Conrad's Marlow. In two other main sections ("Bona and Paul" and "Kabnis") Toomer has disguised himself as the mulatto who cannot decide whether he should be black or white, thus introducing the theme of passing. Cane, then, may be regarded as the story of Jean Toomer's own vacillation between races—a rather common theme of American fiction during the 1920s….
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