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8. Song of the Son
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
The sun sinks below the horizon as people celebrate the end of the workday with song and their dogs join them in the chorus. The sawmill ceases its buzzing as smoke lazily rises from the sawdust piles. The men, bearing the pride of their great ancestors, tramp through the forest paths, their song rising like prayers into the heavens.
This relatively formal poem (its seven stanzas have a definite rhyme scheme and are written in careful iambic pentameter) speaks to both the beauty and difficulty of life in the American South (especially for Black people) in the early 20th century. The men find a connection to their ancestors and also to the divine in the natural world around them—a world with which they’re intimately connected, since the poem implies that they work in nature-oriented jobs, like fieldwork and forestry.
Themes
