Comparing the Blues and Jean Toomers Cane :: comparison compare contrast essays

Comparing the Blues and Jean Toomers Cane The difference between the chance of Black life and the Reality of Black Life is the Blues (McKeever 196) Debate centers around the structure of Jean Toomers introspective work Cane. Whether viewed as a clean or a collection of short stories and poems, the impressions are poignant and compelling. They are full of passion and depict a writer casting a circumstantial eye towards himself and his surroundings. The work is often read as a portrait of the artist as a young man more specifically a black man making his way in the South. As such, Cane is suffused with quest imagery and on a number of levels the work functions as a young mans introspective search for himself, his race and his place within both. On the surface a discussion of the blues may seem a touch high-minded. How seriously can on e take works entitled Aggravatin Papa, Need a Little Sugar in my Bowl, Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer, when displace next to a work of such literary boldness as Cane a work that William Braithwhite gushingly refers to as a book of specie and bronze, of dusk and flame, of ecstasy and pain, and Jean Toomer is a bright morning star of a new day of the race in literature (Baker 16). A adjacent examination of both forms reveal startling similarities in theme, structure and content and that most important attribute - spirit.