Analysis Of The General Observation Is The Narrator Of Cane

“Passing,” for The Ex-Colored Man gives him an initiation into a “freemasonry of…race;” gaining access to a secret knowledge that is out of reach for most individuals (Johnson 59). His ability to view the world from both races enables him to experience “the attitude of the whole [community] to change,” when he is “passing” as a black; he is treated differently than when he is “passing” for white (Johnson 95). This “freemasonry” is what convinces him the white society is the dominant culture. Success can only be

Toomer is a controversial literary and cultural figure who gets criticized by people for rejecting his race. He is praised by others for the confines of rigid ethnic distinctions. Toomer’s rejection of race drew sharp criticism from many people, especially from members of the African American community. They found him being self- loathing rather than racial unification (Claypool 2). Toomer has been criticized for failing to write about the experience after Cane. Many people said he denied his African American heritage out of shame and cowardice (Claypool 4). Many critics have credited his work with ushering in the Harlem Renaissance noting the book’s representations of African American characters and culture. Others have located it within the lost generation owing to its literary experimentation, romantic primitivism, and its critiques of postwar values (Jones 3). The analysis of Cane contains Toomer denying his racial heritage. This book also contains the extracts from most of the important early Cane criticism (Golding 3).

Racism is an issue that blacks face, and have faced throughout history directly and indirectly. Ralph Ellison has done a great job in demonstrating the effects of racism on individual identity through a black narrator. Throughout the story, Ellison provides several examples of what the narrator faced in trying to make his-self visible and acceptable in the white culture. Ellison engages the reader so deeply in the occurrences through the narrator’s agony, confusion, and ambiguity. In order to understand the narrators plight, and to see things through his eyes, it is important to understand that main characters of the story which contributes to his plight as well as the era in which the story takes place.

However, the narrator’s story takes a turn for the worse when the world ever so slowly and subtly becomes more harsh towards him and slowly makes him feel even more exiled, till finally, he feels completely cut off and invisible to society. As he began life as the “model” black citizen but was then thrusted into invisibility by the preconceived ideas of those around him and himself. Not to mention the narrator begins to feel

In one way it is symbolic of the African Americans' struggle for equality throughout our nation's history. The various hardships that the narrator must endure, in his quest to deliver his speech, are representative of the many hardships that the blacks went through in their fight for equality.

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

In the beginning chapters of the book, we get a glimpse of the typical home and community of an African American during segregation. Many Africans Americans were too adjusted to the way of living, that they felt

“Slavery in the south was brutal as anybody could imagine” an idea expressed by Jean Toomer through his poem called “November Cotton Flower”. The poem is fourteen lines of rhyming verse describing the harsh, sudden and questionable bloom of a cotton flower in the month of November. It is composed of heroic couplets, with a regular rhyme scheme, which is as follows: A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E, E, F, G, H, H, but the poem reads like Shakespearian sonnet - three quatrains developing a certain tone and theme, followed by a couplet that undercuts or reverses them. In the beginning it portrays the scuffle for survival of cotton flower during November’s harsh winter weather; but towards the end, it describes the sudden bloom of it. The author goes in depth with most of the descriptions to give a reader a clear and strong mental image.

He is taken as a lesser person because he is a black man, but he wants to be treated as if he is the same as the white family he lives with. They don't let him sit at the table because of the color of his skin but his sense of pride doesn't let him get upset “besides, They’ll see how beautiful i am And be ashamed-...”6 . He keeps his head up and still knows that he can be as great. He believes that he will overcome their judgements. With his pride he knows that he will end up at the table instead of in the kitchen one day and that is all that he hopes for, it is what he will work for. He believes that he is in America the so called land of the free, “I, too, sing America” “I, too, am America”7. He wants to be treated as every other american and not like just because he is black doesnt mean to leave him out because he will still laugh everyday and grow strong, waiting for the day that they will treat him as a man and not as a subjective object that they can tell what to do. He knows one day his pride will lead to others not having to go through the

In one way it is symbolic of the African Americans’ struggle for equality throughout our nation’s history. The various hardships that the narrator must endure, in his quest to deliver his speech, are representative of the many hardships that the blacks went through in their fight for equality.

essential to the reading of the narrator’s struggle with his own identity and how the black

This text is an excerpt from Chapter 13 of Richard Wright’s Black Boy. Richard currently values his money, pride and dignity, his pride and dignity stopped him from conforming. Richard is still in the South where blacks are mistreated, and discriminated but plans to move to the North. This passage occurs while he contemplates his options in the South. Richard realizes he has no options in the South so he wants to move to the North. The author informs the readers that adjusting to the norm in the South is like death.

In Cane by Jean Toomer, the novel has a unique set up in which before and after each short story in the first and second sections, there’s a poem that has a relationship with the short story. The third portion of the novel however, is written in more of a traditional writing style for a novel. Before each section of the book there’s a blank page with a single arch on it, the first arch facing the upper left corner of the page, the second facing straight up to the top of the pag and the third, almost forming a circle. The two arch’s depicted before the final section of the book come close together but do not touch. The emptiness in the circle’s formation may take into account that throughout history, in the lives of African American citizens, there’s always something missing. Toomer’s novel brings about themes of imagery and how people were treated in the Jim Crow south of that time period.

In exploring the problem of identity in Black literature we find no simple or definite explanation. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that it is rooted in the reality of the discriminatory social system in America with its historic origins in the institution of slavery. One can discern that this slavery system imposes a double burden on the Negro through severe social and economic inequalities and through the heavy psychological consequences suffered by the Negro who is forced to play an inferior role, 1 the latter relates to the low self-estimate, feeling of helplessness and basic identity conflict. Thus, in some form or the other, every Negro American is confronted with the

He lets himself be ridiculed by turning into a puppet for the ignorant white men for entertainment purposes. Still, he holds onto the assumption that if he degrades himself, he will be rewarded in the end. As a result, the narrator does not advance in his journey to find his identity, but rather degrades himself even more and makes him dependent on other’s opinions.