Comparing the Blues and Jean Toomer's Cane
"The difference between the possibility of Black life and the Reality of Black Life is the Blues"
(McKeever 196)
Debate centers around the structure of Jean Toomer's introspective work Cane. Whether viewed as a novel or a collection of short stories and poems, the impressions are poignant and compelling. They are full of passion and depict a writer casting a critical eye towards himself and his surroundings. The work is often read as a "portrait of the artist as a young man" more specifically a black man making his way in the South. As such, Cane is suffused with quest imagery and on a number of levels the work functions as a young man's introspective search for himself, his race and his place within both.
On the surface a discussion of the "blues" may seem a bit high-minded. How seriously can one take works entitled "Aggravatin Papa," "Need a Little Sugar in my Bowl," "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer, "when placed next to a work of such literary boldness as Cane; a work that William Braithwhite gushingly refers to as "a book of gold and bronze, of dusk and flame, of ecstasy and pain, and Jean Toomer is a bright morning star of a new day of the race in literature" (Baker 16). A closer examination of both forms reveal startling similarities in theme, structure and content and that most important attribute - spirit.
The ultimate goal for a system of visual perception is representing visual scenes. It is generally assumed that this requires an initial ‘break-down’ of complex visual stimuli into some kind of “discrete subunits” (De Valois & De Valois, 1980, p.316) which can then be passed on and further processed by the brain. The task thus arises of identifying these subunits as well as the means by which the visual system interprets and processes sensory input. An approach to visual scene analysis that prevailed for many years was that of individual cortical cells being ‘feature detectors’ with particular response-criteria. Though not self-proclaimed, Hubel and Wiesel’s theory of a hierarchical visual system employs a form of such feature detectors. I will here discuss: the origins of the feature detection theory; Hubel and Wiesel’s hierarchical theory of visual perception; criticism of the hierarchical nature of the theory; an alternative theory of receptive-field cells as spatial frequency detectors; and the possibility of reconciling these two theories with reference to parallel processing.
James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” is the authors most studied and critically analyzed piece of literature. The majority of these analyses focus on the obvious themes of the book such as jazz music, the unnamed narrator, or the rift that divides Sonny and his brother. Little critique has ever gone into the biblical and religious themes that run throughout the story of “Sonny’s Blues.” Furthermore, it is even more astonishing that there is little critique given Baldwin has such a strong history with the world of Christianity.
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Norton introduction to Fiction. 6th ed. Ed. Jerome Beaty. New York: Norton, 1996. 47-70.
Toomer became a famous African American writer after publishing Cane. Toomer inspired many authors with his book Cane. He had a lot of knowledge and education, but never completed a degree. He was a very intelligent man.
In the setting of “Sonny’s Blues” the element of illusion is used to create above all a world of beauty, illness and horror. Baldwin uses the sense of sight in his work. Using colors of vast difference to express to his readers their definition of what good vs bad, and light vs dark is. However it is so much more than that, he gives his readers the opportunity to consider truth. He introduces Sonny a character who fall’s victim to subjectivity and bias. With the tremendous use if illusion and color, Baldwin paints a picture and Sonny’s character is reviled in an almost angelic way. This theme is prevalent throughout the story, and Baldwin’s use of illusion really captures the truth in the story. He uses such colors as yellow to signify the illness of the streets and the drugs that consume them in the character of Sonny’s friend. The color of blue is one that is used often in the story but in different contrasts; blue signifies the beauty of Sonny’s conquering to his addiction...
Peter the Great would come to be one of Russia’s most influential and powerful rulers by implementing easily the greatest amount of reforms a Russian ruler has ever attempted and altering the course of Roman history for good. The Tsar’s many reforms brought Russia out of archaic times and into a more Europeanized modern age where not only was the entire structure of government changed but so too were extensive reforms brought onto late 17th century and early 18th century Russia’s industry, commerce, technology, military, and culture among other things. Peter the Great’s legacy brought Russia to the height of her power and is one that has inspired many Russians and historians alike through the centuries since his death.
...udy of Russian history has been the actual significance of the Peter's reforms. To some scholars, these reforms simply cannot be overemphasized; to others, their importance has been greatly exaggerated. Most scholars who study that period conclude that, while some of Peter's reforms were relatively limited in their impact, the impact of his economic and military policies in particular was decisive. Peter the Great's military reforms effectively modernized Russia’s Army and Navy. By his death in 1725, Russia's military was a force to be reckoned with.
Peter the Great had many goals during the time he ruled. One of his biggest goals was to modernize and westernize Russia. The main reason Peter the Great modernized Russia was because he did not want the country he ruled to be left vulnerable to expansionist powers in Europe. The powers were constantly at war, fighting to take over each other’...
James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues tells the story of the narrator and his brother and the hardships that they must endure. As Kahlil Gibran States “Out of suffering have emerged the strangest souls, the most massive characters are seared with scars.” (Gibran). In that very quote the real light is shown as it informs the reader that with suffering comes growth and once the person whomever it may be emerges out of the darkness they may have scars but it has made them stronger. The theme of light and darkness as well as suffering play a vital part in this story. For both men there are times in which they have the blues and suffer in the darkness of their lives but music takes the suffering from them.
Peter was only ten years old when the Kremlin saw an open and violent struggle of power between the Naryshkins and Miloslavskys. He had witnessed killings including his mother’s former guardian. These vicious and unnecessary killings created a deep hatred in Peter for the streltsy and revulsion against the Kremlin and its politics. Peter had spent the next seven years in the village of Preobrazhenskoe and his mother whom now served as a head of state. Peter then used his own devices to familiarize himself which in fact were military matters and Western technology. His mother’s death in 1694 and Ivan the Terrible’s death in 1696 made Peter the sole ruler of Russia. (Gupta, 2006) Despite the fact that he had no formal or complete education, Peter was beyond his years physically and mentally. He gained knowledge from mostly foreigners when it came to technical skills who worked for Russian service that had lived nearby. He spent a majority of his time in the German quarter in Moscow learning from the scholars from the German University. (Hutchinson, 2011) A new revolt of the streltsy took place in...
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
Daschle, Tom, Scott S. Greenberger, and Jeanne M. Lambrew. Critical: what we can do about the health-care crisis. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008. Print.
Objects that are conveyed by the senses are such as “hard,” “red,” “loud,” and the like. Some are combinations of more than one simple idea derived from more than one sensory input. In the case of “fast,” the speed of something can both be derived from seeing motion as well as feeling motion. Objects conveyed by the operations of the mind are such a...
As with the mental map experiments, the fact that reaction time depends directly on the degree of rotation has been taken as evidence that we solve the...