{"id":428,"date":"2017-10-29T22:46:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T02:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=428"},"modified":"2021-08-18T15:19:17","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:19:17","slug":"canes-apocalypse-in-review-revisiting-jean-toomer-and-revising-own-writing-on-toomer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/10\/29\/canes-apocalypse-in-review-revisiting-jean-toomer-and-revising-own-writing-on-toomer\/","title":{"rendered":"Cane’s Apocalypse In Review: Revisiting Jean Toomer And Revising My Own Critical Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Please open the link in the first line on a new tab.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recently, I have written a post for another academic blog on Jean Toomer\u2019s <\/span>Cane<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a novel set in Georgia and the south on the suffering of black community similar to Toni Morrison\u2019s <\/span>Beloved<\/span><\/i>. The book is written in a blend of prose, poetry, and rhetoric that makes it difficult to categorize by genre. In two sections, it covers multiples stories alongside poems that respond to the images and themes that are contained within them. Some of the most powerful moments of the book such as \u201cEsther\u201d, the story a storekeeper who is fascinated by a black man who returns to her town not as impressive as she once thought. A two-page story, \u201cRhobert\u201d, also caught my eye as a fascinating image of a run-down, black home in the south. I also liked several poems in the book, including \u201cSong of the Son\u201d, \u201cReapers\u201d, and \u201cHarvest Song\u201d. In my initial blog post, I connected several themes of the end and death to apocalypse, in that the poem\u2019s images of darkness, death, and ends. But these were shallow close-readings of the images. I titled the piece \u201cThe Gentle Apocalypse\u201d. But it is not always gentle. One story, \u201cBlood Burning Moon\u201d, confused me as it was a strikingly violent story of lynching that stuck-out next to my examples. This example was not the exception. My idea of the \u201cgentle apocalypse\u201d was the exception. I addressed Toomer\u2019s use of female objectification, violence, and \u00a0brutality in the south toward the end, but I am troubled as to how well I accomplished that. \u00a0The goal of this re-reading of both the post and <\/span>Cane <\/span><\/i>is to pinpoint where I could improve the accuracy in my analytical writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some aspects of the blog post had commendable aspects, despite several notes it could have addressed several errors in my writing or expanded my argument. It was a good thought to lead with a <\/span>definition of apocalypse inspired by Susan Bower\u2019s <\/span>“Beloved and the New Apocalypse”. Apocalypse is looking into the boundary or edge of one realm to another, while observing both and anticipating change. Despite my definition being worded quite differently, \u00a0I realized I should have cited her and explained the quote in more detail. In editing the post, I have added the citation for ethical reasons. I realized this post, while confined to only 250 words, had become blatantly \u201c1-on-10\u201d as Writing Analytically would put it (WA, 207). I mention images in Cane like,<\/span> \u201cdusk and night\u201d at first, but forget to mention locations of this conversation such as in the poem \u201cSong of the Son\u201d (Toomer, 17). The poem literally addresses, \u201cfor though the sun is setting on \/ A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;\u201d among other lines that compare the dawn and dusk to an eternal memory of slavery. The example of the story \u201cEsther\u201d in <\/span>Cane<\/span><\/i> could have gone farther. While it stated Esther changed her, \u201cperspective of the town possibly because she lost her reason to stay\u201d, I failed to acknowledge that this was in reference to a scene where a girl was disgusted to have almost slept with Barlo, a man many years his senior. There needs to be more discussion of how Esther was humiliated into changing her perspective of the town, that her reason to stay was lost due to becoming an object of sexual objectification. Finally, I needed to wrap together how these images of departure, of violence, and of time passing in dusk and dawn, culminates to this definition of apocalypse. This conclusion would further ask how Toomer imagines the future of the South. Any blog post could be tighter and more composed if it recognizes it\u2019s key point or definition and concludes by bringing it to a new stage of questions. Which is what I am about to do right now:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Toomer once called <\/span>Cane<\/span><\/i> a \u201cswan-song of the South\u201d after observing how the black folk spirit of the south fading with the Great Migration. Can Morrison\u2019s <\/span>Beloved<\/span><\/i> be seen as a text which can converse with Toomer on Slavery? Is this apocalypse of the south also a Slave apocalypse, a South apocalypse. Or both? I favor both as an answer, but I wonder if the two apocalypses should be considered separate epochs. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As for my original blog post, how do you think I did with my self-study? Visit the link and let me know what you think.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works cited:<\/span><\/p>\n

Bowers, Susan. “Beloved and the New Apocalypse.” Critical Studies in Black Life and Culture, Toni Morrison\u2019s Fiction Contemporary Criticism, Garland Publishing, 1997, pp. 209-228.<\/span><\/p>\n

Toomer, Jean, and Rudolph P. Byrd. Cane: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. W.W. Norton & Co, 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, I have written a post for another academic blog on Jean Toomer\u2019s Cane, a novel set in Georgia and the south on the suffering of black community similar to Toni Morrison\u2019s Beloved. The book is written in a blend of prose, poetry, and rhetoric that makes it difficult to categorize by genre. In two … Continue reading Cane’s Apocalypse In Review: Revisiting Jean Toomer And Revising My Own Critical Writing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}