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24. Calling Jesus
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cane, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Navigating Identity
Racism in the Jim Crow Era
Feminine Allure
Nature vs. Society
The Power and Limitations of Language
Summary
Analysis
As Dan Moore walks down the street to Muriel’s house, he tries to sing a song. But the neat rows of houses look to him like so many shy girls—prim, orderly, stuck up—and he can’t hold his tune.
Dan can’t find the bell, so he pounds on Muriel’s door until her guardian, Mrs. Pribby, lets him in. While waiting on the porch, Dan worries that people might mistake him for a burglar or criminal. He’s all too aware of what American society thinks about Black men like himself. Mrs. Pribby, a woman as prim and orderly as the houses, shows Dan into a sitting room, calls Muriel downstairs, and retreats to a safe distance to read her newspaper. Dan knows, however, that she’s eavesdropping.
The fact that Dan can’t find the bell (and that he then pounds on the door like an uncivilized boor) emphasizes how poorly he fits into this world. In large part, this reflects the way society talks about and treats Black men like him. Dan worries he might look like a criminal not because he knows himself to be but because White society projects criminality onto Black men like him. He is, however, willing to deviate from social expectations in at least some ways, as his eagerness to escape Mrs. Pribby—the representative of polite society—shows.
Themes
Muriel, dressed to go to the theater with her friend Bernice, comes down to talk to Dan. Their conversation is awkward. Muriel loves Dan but she’s irritated by his selfishness and unwillingness to conform to society’s standards. She encourages him to find work to support himself. Dan loves and desires Muriel, but he’s frustrated by what he perceives as her shallow pursuit of happiness and orderliness. Dan tries to take Muriel into his arms, but she pushes him away, reminding him about Mrs. Pribby’s surveillance. Dan wishes she would stand up against all the Mrs. Pribbys in the world, but before he can try to force her, Bernice arrives.
Muriel seems happy with her comfortable and privileged life. She doesn’t find it confining, like Dan does. Their conflict speaks to tensions within a Black community that is, in the early 20th century, working to define itself for itself, rather than be defined by White society. And while the story doesn’t wholly endorse Dan’s point of view, it does seem to agree that Muriel’s mode of thinking is self-limiting and potentially problematic.
Themes
At the theater, Muriel and Bernice take their box seats. Muriel is wearing an orange dress that flatters her beauty but would clash with the red velvet drapes of the box, so she keeps her coat on. She thinks to herself that she doesn’t want to see Dan again; he makes her feel and think strange things. But then she looks up and sees that he’s followed her and Bernice to the theater.
A box seat is expensive and so sitting in one communicates Muriel’s and Bernice’s social status to the other theatergoers. Notably, the jobless and evidently prospectless Dan can’t afford such an extravagance and is stuck in a regular row. In this moment, Dan becomes a thorn in Muriel’s side, a reminder of the constraints she allows society to impose on her.
Themes
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Dan squeezes past other patrons, including an old man with corns, to take his seat. He’s repulsed by the people around him and he longs to sink into the peaceful strength of the earth beneath his feet. He divides his attention between the show and Muriel. The way she smiles and claps even though he thinks she must be bored by the show disgusts him. He sees her as a “slave” to social expectations, but he’s aware that his love for her makes him her “slave,” too. Dan fidgets, bothering the old man with corns and other patrons.
Dan finds polite, privileged, Northern Black society—in the form of the theatergoers—stifling and offensive, almost monstrous. To calm himself, he thinks about the rich dirt of the earth, using nature as a source of strength and solace. Dan characterizes Muriel as a “slave,” suggesting that she (and potentially other well-to-do Black people) have merely traded one form of enslavement for another. No longer enslaved by White farmers, they nevertheless confine themselves by their willingness to stick to their segregated spaces instead of working toward greater representation and by their conscientious copying of White society rather than imagining or creating their own. But as much as Dan hates Muriel for this weakness, he knows that he is prone to it too—the story understands why people would choose this route even if it doesn’t endorse it.
Themes
On the stage, two little people are boxing. Dan suspects one (Mr. Barry) of them of trying to impress Muriel. Dan wishes he could force Muriel into a relationship with him, blaming “feminism” for stopping him. A new round of boxing begins. Dan begins to imagine that the old man with corns was probably born before the end of slavery. He might even have been born enslaved himself—slavery ended not so long ago. He wonders if the old man ever saw Walt Whitman.
For Dan, the little people represent the monstrousness of society. He’s both offended and unimpressed by them. This rather pointedly suggests a belief that people who follow society’s rules and dictates make themselves small in a way that Dan refuses to do. Yet some of these rules are protective, like the ones that prevent Dan (or any other man) from forcing women into coercive relationships.
Themes
The boxing ends and for an encore, Mr. Barry comes out and sings a love song. He holds a rose and a mirror, and he uses the mirror to shine the spotlights on the faces of women in the audience as he sings. Dan imagines himself tearing down the theater with his bare hands. Mr. Barry, as a joke, flashes the light in Dan’s face and the audience laughs. Then he shines it on Muriel. When he finishes his song, he bows, kisses the rose with lips bloodied by the boxing match, and offers it to her.
As the show becomes more ridiculous (at least to Dan), his thoughts become increasingly violent. He longs to tear the theater (representing society) down with his bare hands. He feels belittled when Mr. Barry makes a joke at his expense. Dan resents society for defining him, but by this point, it should be clear to readers that Dan lacks a clear definition of himself to fall back on. He defines himself by the way others see and treat him; thus, if Muriel accepts Mr. Barry’s attentions after rebuffing Dan’s, Dan can’t help but see it as a reflection on himself.
Themes
Dan looks at Mr. Barry’s face—a face he sees as hideous—imagines Mr. Barry telling Muriel that he was made in the image of God. Screaming, “JESUS WAS ONCE A LEPER,” Dan springs to his feet and stepping on the foot of the old man with corns. The man shoves him. Dan suggests that they take their fight outside and the old man agrees. He leads Dan up a dark alley, followed by the crowd. The man takes off his coat to fight, but Dan keeps on walking.
Unable to define himself in a positive sense, Dan can only define himself by what he is not—that is, by what he rejects. He rejects polite society, and he rejects his connection with what he sees as Mr. Barry’s monstrousness. It’s possible to read this moment as Dan’s attempt to reject his own Blackness—or at least the negative things that society at large connect to it. But ultimately, he fails even in this when he flees from the fight with the old man.
Themes
