In Darwin T. Turner’s Introduction to the 1975 Edition of Jean Toomer’s Crane, the writer tries to gives us a fuller understanding of the author, his era, and his works. From the depiction of Toomer’s life and philosophies, we can immediately like the character because he was an individual who analyzed himself and others “Cane was not Toomer’s life; it was perhaps merely an interlude in his search for understanding” (Turner 138).
Toomer not only tried to understand himself and his own experiences, he also tried to understand the human experience as it applied to human beings universally. In particular, he sought to bring about a higher degree of humanity and racial harmony through socialism. In doing so he often had to explore his own psyche as deeply as he attempted to do through his psychoanalytically-based characterizations “In short fiction he psychoanalyzed men who can never realize themselves because they never comprehend the human experiences” (Toomer 137).
Through such works and explorations, Toomer also helped usher in the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance in works he felt were written and designed to give the Negro back to himself. In so doing, Toomer also championed the cause of liberation for others, especially women who he felt were greatly restricted by socially constructed limitations reinforced by social institutions. This process eventually made Toomer deny his own status as an African-American, in part because he wished to be labeled on his writing merits, talents, and philosophies as opposed to the color of his skin. As Turner (136) notes “Part of Toomer’s resistance undoubtedly reflected the internalization of his thesis that America had given birth to a new race, which subsumed all the old identities”.
It is easy to like a character such as Jean Toomer who appears to want to use creativity, psychoanalysis, and socialism as his main means of realizing his
...