Nature and its implications in Cane and Killers of the Dream
Andrew Harry
Lillian Smith's Killers of the Dream often uses natural imagery to convey a sense of place. Similarly, Jean Toomer's Cane locates the reader in the South through the use of natural imagery and darkness. The poem “Georgia Dusk” and the short story “Carma” both use natural imagery to convey a sense of place. The lines of demarcation for the American South are subjective, yet these authors locate their readers in the deep South with images of swamps, pines, cane, and cotton. The use of nature within these texts also functions as a harbinger of darkness and night. Thus, in Killer of the Dream and Cane, nature proves to be embedded within the culture of the South, and amplifies the sickness of a geographic region wrought with self-consciousness, hatred, and guilt.
Toomer's short story “Carma” begins with lyrical verse: “Wind is in the cane. Come along./ Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk” (10). The wind and the sugar cane are equated with each other and this combination of pastoral images initially unifies the natural world that is presented. Yet, the cane takes on an anthropomorphic “talk” which connects the natural image of the sugar cane to the southern dialect. The unified natural image quickly unravels and enters the commons of language and southern tradition. Additionally, the narrator states that the talkative cane “choruses above the guinea's squawk.” A guinea's squawk sounds harsh, repetitive, and almost mocking.
Yet, the “rusty talk” of the cane overshadows any mockery or criticism that the guinea can offer. Ultimately, Carma runs away into the cane field and fires a shot and the men gather with guns of their own to chase after her. Bane “wasted half an hour gathering the neighbor men” to hunt down Carma. In this sense, the lyrical repetition of “come along” represents the mob rule that Bane invokes to capture Carma. This mob dehumanizes Carma. The narrator says, “one would have thought that they were cornering a rabbit or a skunk” (11). This dehumanization occurs within the canefield and follows the natural imagery of the cane lightly rustling in the wind and the “mangrove-gloomed” face of Carma. While environment is beautiful, it is at the same time haunting because the dominant white males use the same natural imagery to turn humans into “rabbits or skunks.”
Similarly, Lillian Smith's Killers of the Dream begins the first chapter of part three with natural, pastoral scenes. She states, “always the swamp back of you or the dark hills, or empty field... Far off, the Negroes singing in dim lantern-lit churches” (159). Smith opens the final segment of the book with swamps, hills, and fields, and her nod to the pastoral offers a break from heavy-handed social commentary. She exits part two “The White Man's Burden” and enters part three with a seeming breath of fresh air. She talks about rural life, saying, “country folks have lived in a blackout since time began. Darkness comes. Sounds creep out: whippoorwill, tree-frogs, roar of alligator back in the pond, rustle of the palmetto, restless, never-ending, as if an unseen hand brushes over it and it cannot let go” (159). Smith's idea of a blackout in the South takes on double meaning amidst segregation and Jim Crow Laws. While Smith's childhood in Georgia featured few electric lights, at the same time segregation forced the “blacks out” of places where whites didn't want them. The sounds of nature “creep” into the white southerners' consciousness, just as Smith attempts to inform the reader about the sociological, psychological, and physical toll on the people living in the South. At the same time, this awareness of guilt locates itself within the text. Smith says, “That is rural adventure, rural fun! No wonder a man-hunt took on jest, with no more thought given the running,frightened human being than to a running, frightened animal” (160). Smith moves from the “creep” of the tree frogs, to the “roar” of an alligator, to the actions of a rural farmer. The voice of nature (the “roar” of an alligator) gives way to the actual voice of those living in the South, and this voice is immediately tied to a dehumanizing and racist manhunt. Thus, like Toomer, Smith embeds natural images in the culture of a region misunderstood and at once misunderstanding. Additionally, the rustle of the palmettos echoes the rustle and talk of the sugar cane in Cane, and this rustling comes to represent a similar manhunt and inequality in the South.
