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27. Harvest Song
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
In the gym of a Chicago school, young men and women are doing basketball drills. Bona, who told the teacher she felt ill, watches from the sidelines as everyone moves in syncopated rhythm. But her attention is drawn the most a White-passing Black man named Paul. She thinks he is beautiful, even if all the girls gossip about him and claim that he’s Black. After the class is over, Bona stays and talks her way into the boys-versus-girls pickup game so she can get close to Paul. He accidentally bumps her off balance. When he grabs her to keep her from falling, the touch is full of electrifying, erotic energy for both of them.
Cane positions “Bona and Paul” as a companion piece to “Blood-Burning Moon.” Each is the final story in its respective section; both are significantly longer and more developed than the other stories in their section; and both center around interracial relationships. Crucially, “Bona and Paul” is set in the North, the part of the country that allegedly offers greater economic and social opportunities for Black and mixed-race people like Paul. Yet it’s immediately apparent that social mobility doesn’t include interracial relationships, and that segregation and prejudice are just as alive and well in the North as the South.
Themes
Later, Paul is in his apartment, watching the sunset and thinking of Georgia, where he used to live. His White roommate, Art, comes in. He’s fixed up a double date for them and he wants Paul to get ready. Paul sometimes frustrates Art with his mooniness. Art’s heard the rumors that Paul has “dark blood,” and he doesn’t believe them, but the nevertheless make him wonder. Still, he reasons that Bona wouldn’t be interested if Paul were Black.
Paul came to the North as part of the Great Migration. Yet the story doesn’t emphasize the benefits of this transition so much as what Paul has lost, including his connection to the land itself. In exchange, he doesn’t seem to have gained many benefits, either, for even here he isn’t free from racial prejudice or taboos against interracial relationships. In “Blood-Burning Moon,” Bob thought about how his Northern friends would be just as repulsed by his feelings for Louisa as his Southern friends, if not more so. Art’s musings here confirm that suspicion.
Themes
Walking toward the girls’ dorm, Paul notices how the darkness drains life from Art’s pale face. In contrast, he feels “detached” and “cool as the dusk.” Everything changes at night, Paul thinks, gets a little more moony. He knows that Art considers him, Paul, moony. But, he thinks, Bona doesn’t.
Paul, whose identity is unfixed at least in part because he passes as White, reflects on the way that everyone’s skin changes colors based on the lighting. His musings suggest resentment that skin color—in the context of race—is given such an emphasis in society, when it’s ultimately unimportant. The way characters in this short story use the term “moony” suggests lunacy (originally, madness associated specifically with the moon and its phases) with a tinge of menace. This, too, suggests the ways that racism is both menacing and contrary to rational thinking.
Themes
Art plays piano in the dorm sitting room while they wait, under the watchful eyes of portraits of famous American poets. When Bona and Helen, Art’s date, arrive, Bona suffers a momentary crisis of confidence under Paul’s scrutiny. Outside, as the foursome walks down the street, Paul and Bona make poetic small talk. She wants him to tell her “something about” himself, but he demurs. Each is powerfully attracted to the other. Bona confesses that she loves Paul, and when he doesn’t say the same to her, she accuses him of being cold. Internally, she associates his coldness with being “colored” and “wrong somewhere.”
The portraits in the common room take the place of chaperones, looking on and judging what happens in the room. It goes without saying that these poets are all White. As such, they serve to symbolize broader American society with its intolerance for people who, like Paul and Bona, willfully transgress the boundaries between races. It’s clear from their highly stylized small talk that Bona and Paul are well matched intellectually and emotionally. Yet there is “something”—Paul’s race—that nevertheless stands between them. Readers should note that not only is Bona clearly anxious about transgressing the taboo against interracial love, but she’s casually and unthinkingly racist even about someone whom she’s supposedly attracted to.
Themes
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Although people stare when Paul walks into the Crimson Garden nightclub, no one bars the door to him. But he knows that people don’t find his darker complexion more different than attractive. At the table, Paul admires the beautiful White faces of the other patrons, feeling separate and distant from them. He feels their scrutiny as an increasing burden. He suspects what Bona is curious about. Art becomes increasingly bothered by Paul’s silent staring and cryptic words. He admires Paul, but he wishes Paul would put an end to the rumors about his race once and for all. Helen resents Paul because she knows he doesn’t like her. Yet, she can’t stay away either. She tells herself this is because Black men fascinate White women, and she can’t be responsible for being fascinated.
Paul is passing as White, but it’s clear that his awareness of his secondary status as a Black person takes a steep toll on him. The way other people treat him is dehumanizing, and the book forces readers to consider that pain by consistently putting them in Paul’s perspective. It puts readers in Helen’s mind, where they can see some of the ugly machinery of racism at play. Helen’s attraction to Paul isn’t a problem in and of itself—it’s only a problem because their society maintains strict boundaries between races. She deals with the discomfort and cognitive dissonance of being attracted to a person she feels she shouldn’t be attracted to by absolving herself of responsibility and resorting to racialized and fearmongering narratives about Black men’s sexuality being dangerous to White women like herself.
Themes
Helen says that she’s glad Paul, who is a deep thinker, has finally found someone (Bona) to interest him. Without thinking, Bona bursts out, saying that she doesn’t think Paul finds her interesting. She wants him to tell her otherwise, but before he can answer, the band strikes up a song. Art, Helen, Paul, and Bona go to the dance floor. Bona calls Paul “Mr. Philosopher” and angrily accuses him of being emotionally cold. She tries to pull away, but he won’t let her. Their struggle becomes increasingly sexual and increasingly obvious to the other couples. Without discussion, they decide to take it outside. The Black doorman has a knowing look in his eyes as they bumble into their coats in their rush to escape the club.
In addition to taboos around interracial relationships and questions of identity and race, “Bona and Paul” also explores the ways in which language is and is not capable of remaking the world. By withholding his words—by not confirming or denying the rumors about his race—Paul maintains his precarious social standing. But he can’t talk his way past Bona’s fear of transgressing taboos against interracial romance. And her snide “Mr. Philosopher” comment suggests her suspicion that Paul hides behind his words. Words—including labels like “Black” and “White”—are ultimately less eloquent than the physical attraction and sexual tension between Bona and Paul.
Themes
The cold outside air shocks Paul back into thinking. He sees the doorman’s Black face leering at them, and he turns and rushes back into the nightclub. He faces the doorman and tells him that what is about to happen between him and Bona is beautiful and good. They came to the Gardens as strangers, but now they will finally know each other. He tells the doorman that White faces are like rose petals and Black faces are like “petals of dusk,” and that he’s going out to gather petals. He shakes the doorman’s hand. And when he goes back outside, Bona is gone.
At least it seems like words are less powerful than feelings for a moment. But as soon as the cold air hits Paul, he remembers that he lives in a world in which words like “Black” and “White” do mean a lot. Paul tries to evoke an Edenic, pre-historical space in which he and Helen can “know” each other—both recognize each other’s humanity, but also “know” each other (as in the old-timey, Biblical euphemism for sex). But his impassioned speech to the doorman is incapable of bringing this place into existence.
Themes
