Use of Imagery in Jean Toomers Cane Essay - 2438 Words

Use of Imagery in Jean Toomers Cane Dusk. It is that darker side of twilight when the sun has just set, but the moon has yet to take full charge. It is a time of mergings, of vagueness and ambiguity, when an end and a beginning change places. The sun steps aside and lets the moon and stars take over for a while. As the most pervasive image in the first section of Jean Toomers Cane, it is the time of day when [t]he sky, lazily disdaining to pursue/The setting sun, too indolent to hold/ A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,/Passively darkens (Georgia Dusk, 15). It is also a reflection of the souls of the characters, like Karintha, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down (3). Dusk and its smoky, dreamlike†¦show more content†¦In keeping with the vision of modernism Toomer concentrated greatly on stretching the boundaries of language and forging new imagistic representations of political and societal convictions. However, his use of imagery seems in pointed contrast to many of his white contemporaries. For Toomer in Cane, dusk is most importantly an image of fusion, of something ending and beginning simultaneously in a way difficult to perceive: as the narrator of Fern meditates, Dusk, suggesting the almost imperceptible procession of giant trees, settled with a purple haze about the cane. I felt strange, as I always do in Georgia, particularly at dusk. I felt that things unseen to men were tangible immediate. It would not have surprised me had I had a vision (19). How strikingly modern is this image, yet how different from a similar representation in Yeats Into the Twilight where the same time of day represents inspiration and imagination: Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,/Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn (141, lines 3-4). Or think of the obvious relation to Eliots [l]et us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (482, lines 1-3). Here the twilight, or dusk, is a suffocating time reminiscent of impending death. Toomers dusk is of a completely different time and place andShow MoreRelatedAn Analysis Of Jean Toomer s Georgia Dusk 1849 Words   |  8 Pages24 April 2015 The Struggle to Rise in Jean Toomer’s â€Å"Georgia Dusk† People struggle with the concept of identity who you are? What do you do? What makes you this way? Why did you chose to be like this? Did you choose to be like this or did somebody choose for you? Why do you do what you do? Is it because of where you grew up or how you were raised? These questions will be asked all throughout your life as you struggle to grasp the concept of identity. Jean Toomer struggled with his identity. ToomerRead MoreAnalysis Of The Poem The Intersections Of Cane 2235 Words   |  9 PagesRenaissance Professor Miller December 15, 2014 The Intersections of Cane The Great Migration marked the mass exodus of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north. The migration was sparked by increased racial violence in the South, the promise of better economic opportunities for Blacks, and a strong desire for reinvention. Influenced by the plight of African Americans in both regions, Jean Toomer published Cane in 1923. Using a mixture of poems and short stories, Toomer focuses onRead MoreHistory5499 Words   |  22 Pagesthe intricate relationships between aesthetics and racial politics that have long plagued black Americans. As Harlem Renaissance artists articulated individual and collective visions of black identity, they were beset by conï ¬â€šicting demands that they use their art either to distance themselves from or bind themselves to white American culture. THE DEBATE OVER ‘‘NEGRO ART’’ Perhaps the most famous examples of these conï ¬â€šicts came in a pair of essays that appeared in consecutive issues of The Nation