Blood-Burning Moon Essay | Critical Essay #3

Blood-Burning Moon Critical Essay #3

Eldridge teaches in the English Department at the Community College of Baltimore. In the following excerpt from an article originally published in 1979, he discusses Toomer's use of imagery to develop his characters and themes.

"Blood-Burning Moon," the final piece in Part 1 [of Cane], is the story that typifies most dramatically the conflict and the union of black and white. A black and a white male, inseparable enemies, destroy each other over a woman who wants them both. Louisa, the focus of both men's love, stands as yet one more woman in Toomer's tales whose passivity, indecision, and self-directed concerns wreak destruction. The fulcrum of a seesaw courtship, she equally desires, and is equally desired by, her black and her white lover. The white Bob Stone and the black Tom Burwell are but reflections of each other; their significance is their togetherness. Louisa feels their complementary pull as...
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