Summarizing the observations on Cane that groups made last time:

• Prevalence of the indeterminate ending
• Fragmentation in narration, with no connections between segments: fragmentation, omissions, stream of consciousness
• Connections between racism, violence, and sexuality (“Blood-Burning Moon”); also, fire, sunset, and dusk as important signifiers in these stories.
• The door and threshold as a means of separation—between shantytown and the mill, between races (metaphorically); appears also in “Box Seat” as a barrier between Dan and the mechanical/sophisticated world
• The blood-burning moon as metaphor for several things:
• Violence inherent in the landscape and in nature
• The stain and violation of the woman (Diana)
• Nostalgia for an imagined past and a sense of longing for a better, simpler past (“Georgia Dusk”)
• Race memory and its high priests, now transplanted to a black south
• Virgin and the “re-virginization”—can become one in memory. If you think about this, this speaks to the violation of being the victim of a crime of possession yet being blamed for it, // the black experience in the U. S. (See “Karintha,” “Fern,” “Avey,” etc.)
• Song as a means of recovering memory and the past, an authentic past to replace that which was snatched away in slavery. Songs also appear as a cleansing agent and something that can put an aura of hope around the literal (violent) history of the south.

• In most of these pieces, you need to fill in the gaps with your imagination.
• Fragmentation of identity as in “Bona and Paul”: Paul is confused with his identity, and we never find out what happens to Bona. The class difference here is elided but not the race difference.
• “Bona and Paul” takes the identity theme of college fiction and uses it as a metaphoric site for understanding racial identity as well.
• In “Box Seat,” borrowings from other cultures and a sense of multiple realities. Class is important here, too. There’s also indeterminacy: rape or no rape?
• Important symbols: eyes, mirrors (Dan blinded by his reflection), color.
• Themes: redemption, spontaneity, search for identity—to which could be added the pull of primitive and primitivism. Note how Dan responds to the woman who sits next to him and how he feels that she’s rooted. Note how he regards the deracinated Mrs. Pribby and the vital Muriel who’s being sucked dry by her and her class-conscious ways.
• The grotesque nature of the conflict (dwarf heavyweights) and its results (a blood-spattered rose): romantic ideal but always tinged with the physical reality.