Narration

The narration of this book is uneven, changing from section to section, providing readers more with a feeling than with a direct story. Throughout the book, the language is very poetic, with words often chosen for their sounds and power. It even breaks directly into poetry, not only in the poems that hold their own pages but also sometimes within story segments, such as "Karintha," "Blood-Burning Moon," and "Box Seat." Because of this, critics have trouble with deciding what to call it. The critic Edward W. Waldron, for example, classified Cane as a "novel-poem." Others have called it an impressionistic piece or an imagistic novel.

The voices telling the stories vary greatly. There is often a third-person narrator, telling the story from an omniscient perspective, which means that the narrator has access to all of the characters' thoughts and can tell them to the reader. In "Blood-Burning Moon...