Cane

Preceding each of the novel’s three parts, there is an arc or part of an incomplete circle. Before Part 1, it is the top left quarter of the circumference of a circle; before Part 2, it is approximately the top third of the circumference of a circle; before Part 3, it is two quarters of a circle’s circumference, specifically the top right and bottom left. As Toomer experiments with form in Cane—using prose, poetry, and song and pushing against traditional sentence structure and narrative conventions—these symbols introduce yet another formal experiment.

George Hutchinson’s introduction reproduces Toomer’s explanation in a letter to Waldo Frank about the narrative circularity that the arcs convey:

From three angles, Cane’s design is a circle. Aesthetically, from simple forms to complex ones, and back to simple forms. Regionally, from the South up into the North, and back into the South again. Or, from the North down into the South, and then a return North. From the point of view of the spiritual entity behind the work […], the curve really starts with Bona and Paul (awakening), plunges into Kabnis, emerges in