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Cane
Appearing mostly in the second, Northern section of Cane, houses represent both the promise of the Great Migration as well as the oppression of social expectations. Most of the characters in the Southern section live in shacks and cabins, while the Northern characters have houses. This suggests the degree of social mobility and economic power that Black people gained during the Great Migration. However, Cane also explores the trade-offs of this exchange. Northern Black characters are disconnected from the land and from the communities of their ancestors. Although he yearns to return to the safety of the North, Ralph Kabnis nevertheless feels an almost inborn, elemental yearning for the landscape and soil of Georgia. In their most pointed metaphorical usage, houses—and the rigid expectations and gentility they imply—become literal weights of oppression on the body of Rhobert and the psyche of Dan Moore.
House Quotes in Cane
The Cane quotes below all refer to the symbol of House. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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18. Rhobert
Quotes
Rhobert wears a house, like a monstrous diver’s helmet, on his head. His legs are banty-bowed and shaky because as a child he had rickets. He is way down. Rods of the house like antennae of a dead thing, stuffed, prop up the air. He is way down. He is sinking. His house is a dead thing that weights him down. He is sinking as a diver would sink in mud should the water be drawn off. Life is a murky, wiggling, microscopic water that compresses him. Compresses his helmet and would crush it the minute that he pulled his head out. He has to keep it in. Life is water that is being drawn off.
Brother, life is water that is being drawn off.
Brother, life is water that is being drawn off.
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25. Box Seat
Quotes
Houses are shy girls whose eyes shine reticently upon the dusk body of the street. Upon the gleaming limbs and asphalt torso of a dreaming nigger. Shake your curled wool-blossoms, nigger. Open your liver lips to the lean, white spring. Stir the root of a withered people. Call to them from their houses, and teach them to dream.
Dark swaying forms of Negroes are street songs that woo virginal houses.
Dan Moore walks southward on Thirteenth Street. […] The eyes of houses faintly touch him as he passes by them. Soft girl-eyes, they set him singing. […] Floating away, they dally wistfully over the dusk body of the street. Come on, Dan Moore, come on. Dan sings. His voice is a little hoarse. It cracks. He strains to produce tones in keeping with the houses’ loveliness. Cant be done. He whistles. His notes are shrill. They hurt him.
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House Symbol Timeline in Cane
The timeline below shows where the symbol House appears in Cane. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
18. Rhobert
...the burden of his life like a “monstrous diver’s helmet” or like an empty, crumbling house, on his head. His legs are spindly and crooked because he had rickets as a...
(full context)
24. Calling Jesus
...dog follows her around, but at night, when she goes to bed in her “large house,” she dreams of places where no vestibules or doors are necessary. The little dog of...
(full context)
25. Box Seat
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...
(full context)
29. Kabnis
...the “awful, intangible oppression” of the world. From where he stands, Kabnis can see the house where the headmaster (Hanby) and his family live and the trees of the Georgia forest....
(full context)
