Previous
4. Becky
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
A female face has silver-gray hair falling around it “like streams of stars” and brows that are like canoes floating through the waters of its wrinkled brow. Her eyes glisten with tears and her face bears a sorrowful expression that bunches her mouth together like a cluster of purple grapes that are “nearly ripe for worms.”
Unlike the first two poems, the third feels far less formal as it’s written in free verse. It takes the form of a blazon, a poetic meditation on the beauty of a woman’s face that relies on similes and metaphors. The feminine beauty here, like Karintha’s in the opening vignette, becomes a source of inspiration for the poem’s speaker. And although the poem’s subject is beautiful, the hints of past suffering attest to the difficulty of life for Black people—especially in the South.
Themes
