SOURCE: Solard, Alain. “Myth and Narrative Fiction in Cane: ‘Blood-Burning Moon.’” Callaloo 8, no. 3 (fall 1985): 551-60.

In the following essay, Solard provides an analysis of “Blood Burning Moon,” citing the story as an example of Toomer's point of view regarding race relations and spirituality.

Jean Toomer's Cane,¹ from which “Blood-Burning Moon” is taken, is a collection of short-stories interspersed with poems, which makes up a whole. It is divided into three parts. The first part includes the portraits of six southern women who are victims of the caste system. Most of the narratives in it take place in the atmosphere of a setting sun, at dusk, a symbol of the vanishing slave culture. The four stories of the second part are staged in northern cities; the protagonists, mostly black, cut off as they are from their spiritual heritage and unable to conform to white standards, suffer from a sense...