Content of the Problem:
An author, philosopher, and spiritual adviser, Washington, D.C., native Jean Toomer (1894–1967) challenged the accepted race and social labels during the mid-twentieth century. Toomer’s father left his wife and son in 1895, forcing the single mother to move in with her father, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, the former governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction and the first U.S. governor of African American descent.
Toomer was of European and African American ancestry, which sometimes allowed him to pass in society as a white man. For example, his registration for the draft identifies him as African American, but both of his certificates of marriage to white women list him as white (Byrd and Gates).
Shortly after Toomer’s birth, his Caucasian father [Was Toomer’s father Caucasian? See below notes on Jean Toomer’s Father] deserted his wife and son, and in 1896 Toomer’s mother, Nina Toomer, gave him the name Nathan Eugene. Thus, Nina and her son went to live with Grandfather Pinchback, and Jean used the name Eugene Pinchback Tomer (which he later shortened to Jean).
The Pinchbacks lived in a racially mixed neighborhood, but [telling] Jean attended the all-black Garnet Elementary School. At the age of ten he was stricken with severe stomach ailments which he survived with a greatly altered life. He showed strength early – when faced with adversity, rather than wring his hands and retreat further into himself, Toomer searched for a plan of action, an intellectual scheme and method to cope with a personal crisis. Toomer writes in Wayward and Seeking, “I had an attitude towards myself that I was superior to wrong-doing and above criticism and reproach … I seemed to induce, in the grownups, an attitude which made them keep their hands off me; keep, as it were, a respectable distance.”
Nina, a new husband, and Jean, moved to New Rochelle, New York, in 1906. They lived in a white neighborhood and Jean attended an all-white school; however, upon Nina’s death in 1909, Nathan moved back to Washington and his grandparents. He attended the very good all-black Dunbar High School [whose faculty, even then, had teachers who had graduate studies under their belts]. After graduation in 1914, he renounced racial classifications and sought to live not as a member of any racial group but as an American.
Jean Toomer began traveling. He studied at five places of higher education in a period of less than four years. At the University of Wisconsin (1914-1915), he enrolled in the agriculture program. Half a year later, however, he determined that Wisconsin was an atmosphere not meant for him, and he thus moved to Massachusetts to study at the Massachusetts College of Agriculture (1915). During his period of transition between the two colleges, Toomer found an interest in physical fitness. Before officially enrolling at Massachusetts College, he changed his mind, opting instead to begin taking classes at the American College of Physical Training (1916) in Chicago. Five months later, in January of 1916, he moved to Chicago to begin his studies. By the fall of 1916 he also began supplementing his education with studies at the University of Chicago. Moving to New York, he studied at the City College of New York (1917), and New York University (1917). Toomer never took a degree.
Most of his formative years were spent in all-white neighborhoods, although he attended the all-black Dunbar High School in Washington. The profound and varied racial influences within Toomer’s life would inspire his writing and his philosophical pursuit to transcend the self, as seen in his novel Cane and his poem “The Blue Meridian.”
After his graduation from high school in 1914, Toomer questioned the labeling of race according to skin color, instead embracing his self-appointed identity as an “American.” In his words:
Literature Review:
Cane is notoriously difficult to summarize because it is not exactly a novel; rather, it is a collection of short prose pieces, poems, and a longer short-story/drama hybrid. However, there are a few ways to look at the overarching work, especially as it comes in three parts. Part I is set in the South (Georgia, specifically). It contains prose pieces about women and men, as well as several poems. The prose pieces include “Karintha,” “Becky,” “Carma,” “Fern,” “Esther,” and “Blood-Burning Moon.” Almost all of these stories center on a woman, and how she is alluring but mysterious to the men around her. These women are solitary creatures, mournful and private. They keep their souls and their hearts to themselves, no doubt because love proves to be dangerous or disappointing.
The poems include “Reapers,” “November Cotton Flower,” “Face,” “Cotton Song,” “Song of the Son,” “Georgia Dusk,” “Nullo,” “Evening Song,” “Conversion,” and “Portrait in Georgia.” The poems deal with the work of field laborers, blooming cotton, the intoxicating brutality and beauty of the South, weary black faces, and the displacement of African religion by Christianity. Loss and violence lurk below the surface; there are allusions to the horrors and legacies of slavery and its marks on the land. A few of the poems have an energetic rhythm akin to slave spirituals, while others are broken and halting.
Part II moves to the North. It contains the prose pieces “Seventh Street,” “Rhobert,” “Avey,” “Theater,” “Calling Jesus,” “Box Seat,” and “Bona and Paul.” These works are set in the streets, clubs, and theaters of the Northern city. Jazz, smoke, and tension fill the air as men vie to control women and women long for love and comfort. Communication and harmony prove difficult, though, and many of the pieces express alienation and disillusionment.
Part II also includes the poems “Beehive,” “Storm Ending,” “Her Lips are Copper Wire,” “Prayer,” and “Harvest Song.” The poems express physical and spiritual hunger, desire, and longing for release and escape.
The third and final part is one prose work entitled “Kabnis.” It is structured like a drama, but there is a great deal of exposition provided, which makes it seem like a more traditional short story. Ralph Kabnis is a Northern black man who moves to Georgia to teach underprivileged black people. He is frustrated by the strict rules he must follow (no drinking or smoking), and is also immensely frightened by the stories of lynchings and racial violence. His fear goes hand-in-hand with his arrogance and volatility, and he is eventually fired from his teaching post. After this, he lives with a friend, Fred Halsey, and works with him in his wheel shop. Kabnis is utterly inept at this kind of work and grows increasingly frustrated. One night Halsey invites three people over to drink: two young women, and a friend, Lewis, who is another Northerner planning to return home on account of the townspeople’s hostility towards him. At this gathering, Kabnis becomes very intoxicated and pompously rambles on about how he is an orator and has shaped words his whole life. He rejects the South and his connection to it, and feverishly tries to separate himself from all that vexes or confuses him. He breaks down after Halsey’s elderly father, who rarely speaks and has a prophetic mien, mumbles the word “sin” over and over again.