Cane

Toomer, Jean. "Cane." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 318-32. Print.

First, I want to say that I found the stream-of-thought writing style very difficult to follow, so I’m sure I missed a lot.

The ending of the little narrative spoke to me the most clearly in terms of symbolism. Obviously, Toomer is trying to say that, black or white, any feelings you have for members of the other race are founded on absolutely nothing. The different races, at the time, didn’t bother to get to know each other, and therefore the contempt felt (in this case, anyway) by the black man for the white woman was unfounded. The message at the very end, where Paul attempts to explain to another black man that, although he and his white date are different, they are still human (“white faces are petals of roses … dark faces are petals of dusk”, meaning that everyone is a “petal”, just of a different sort) is kind of beautiful in a sad way. After Paul spends the night trying to come to terms with the differences between black and white, he finds his answer but, in the time needed to explain this to another man, he loses his date. Symbolically, Toomer is trying to warn people that we need to accept each other for the humans we are, accept our differences and love anyway before it’s too late and one of us walks away.

Like I said, I’m not sure if I interpreted this correctly because the narration style is so confusion, but it seems to make sense.