“Red nigger moon. Sinner! Blood-burning moon. Sinner! Come out that fact’ry door” (Toomer 652). This moon blazing scarlet in the night sky certainly sets the tone for Jean Toomer’s story, “Blood-Burning Moon.” Not only does it foreshadow the violence that darkens his tale, but it also symbolizes the irresistible forces that tug at the lives of our three main characters, pushing and pulling on the chords of racial inequality that bind the nation. The moral vacuum left by the First World War compelled such writers as Toomer to focus on the individual’s search for meaning in a purposeless society; but this task was made even more complex by the racial tensions that continued to broil beneath the surface of every man’s polite expression. Examining a single situation from three different perspectives, Toomer uses vivid imagery, shifting narration, and characterization to portray the power struggle that plagues society with fear and uncertainty in the early 1900s; by presenting a white man, a black man, and a black woman as the victims of a vicious paradigm shift, Toomer actually proves each person’s power to be an illusion in an attempt to weaken racial and gender barriers.
Acting as a powerful force in the Harlem Renaissance movement, Toomer centers this particular story on the themes of racism, social terrorism, and the search for racial identity in a shaken world. His distinct pride in African American culture is revealed by frequent references to African spirituals and other cultural aspects throughout the narration. In fact, the spiritual refrain from which the story derives its name is used in three different places in this short story. Near the beginning of the tale, Toomer paints a colorful picture that allows the reader a gli...
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..., and the fear of a privileged white male – serve to illustrate a single truth. The end of the Civil War was not the end of slavery, and the conflict would rage on in the lives of befuddled citizens (white and black alike) struggling to make sense of a world that had been turned on its head. They would have to abandon their delusions of grandeur, discover new values, and learn new parts in order to live in harmony with each other. Gifted men such as Jean Toomer sought to use imagery and perspectivism to awaken a compassion in humanity that had long been dormant but, once stirred, had the ability to subjugate every thought of racial or gender inequality.
Works Cited
Toomer, Jean. “Blood-Burning Moon.” The Norton Anthology of Literature of American Literature 8th Edition, Vol. D 1865 – 1914. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 651 - 657. Print.
There has been much debate over the Negro during the Harlem Renaissance. Two philosophers have created their own interpretations of the Negro during this Period. In Alain Locke’s essay, The New Negro, he distinguishes the difference of the “old” and “new” Negro, while in Langston Hughes essay, When the Negro Was in Vogue, looks at the circumstances of the “new” Negro from a more critical perspective.
The film observes and analyzes the origins and consequences of more than one-hundred years of bigotry upon the ex-slaved society in the U.S. Even though so many years have passed since the end of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement, some of the choice terms prejudiced still engraved in the U.S society. When I see such images on the movie screen, it is still hard, even f...
...eir lifehave felt and seen themselves as just that. That’s why as the author grew up in his southerncommunity, which use to in slave the Black’s “Separate Pasts” helps you see a different waywithout using the sense I violence but using words to promote change in one’s mind set. Hedescribed the tension between both communities very well. The way the book was writing in firstperson really helped readers see that these thoughts , and worries and compassion was really felttowards this situation that was going on at the time with different societies. The fact that theMcLaurin was a white person changed the views, that yeah he was considered a superior beingbut to him he saw it different he used words to try to change his peers views and traditionalways. McLaurin try to remove the concept of fear so that both communities could see them selfas people and as equal races.
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There are two real conflicts in Jean Toomer's "Blood-Burning Moon." The first is racial, which can be referenced in the very first sentence, and the second is a gender conflict, that subtly unfolds with the main characters' development. In this essay, I will show how Toomer uses vivid descriptions and comparisons of nature to establish these conflicts, and also to offer an explanation of their origin. He writes to argue that these roles, like the earth, are natural and therefore irrefutable. A close reading of the opening paragraph will reveal the sharp contrast between white and black, as it is described in a metaphor of wood and stone.