SOURCE: “A Particular Patriotism in Jean Toomer's ‘York Beach,’” in College Language Association Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3, March, 1986, pp. 288-94.

In the following essay, Noyes explicates the major themes of Toomer's short story, “York Beach.”

Jean Toomer's short story “York Beach”¹ was published six years after his masterpiece, Cane. While this neglected story differs in most respects from Cane, the works share a central theme: “The sin whats done against the soul.” The sin against the soul in “York Beach” is vulgar commercialism, a theme common throughout American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne presented it in the symbol of the organ grinder's ugly monkey in The House of the Seven Gables. Melville continued it in The Confidence Man. William Dean Howells developed it further in The Rise of Silas Lapham. Sinclair Lewis parodied it in Babbit and Dodsworth. Yet by decrying modern man's dislocation in the cosmos, Toomer seems closer in...