Seeds of Change: Food, Culture, and Work
Some Basic Terms and Strategies for Literary Analysis

Although it sounds obvious, one of the most important things about dealing with literature is to remember that it is a constructed thing (a work of art), in addition to being a text that might tell us something about social and historical "realities."  Hence, besides looking at what a given story or novel is about, it is crucial to look at how it is put together, and the ways in which the artistic structure supports, amplifies, or in some cases, undercuts the theme or "message" of the text. 

Here are some questions for thinking about these issues:

1.  Title  What does the title of the work have to do with what the work is about?  [For example, why is Toomer’s title Cane?  What does it tell you about the work's themes?  Why isn't it called something else (e.g., Cotton or Memories of the Deep South or The Land Where Blues Began or…)?  What does cane itself come to represent in the text as a whole?]

2.	Plot vs. Theme  In basic terms, the plot of a novel is what happens in the story, while the 
theme is what the story really means. In terms of plot, we could describe the events as they unfold, including conflict(s) and their resolution(s).  The theme of the book, however, is its "message."  The theme is somewhat subjective in that the reader must identify it from her/his perspective, but it must be supportable by textual evidence.  
For example, IMDb summarizes Burn!’s  plot as follows: “The professional mercenary Sir William Walker instigates a slave revolt on the Caribbean island of Queimada in order to help improve the British sugar trade; years later he is sent again to deal with the same rebels that he built up because they have seized so much power that [they] now threaten British sugar interests” (IMDb).  A major theme of the film that surfaced in our discussions was that freedom is not freedom if it is given (by someone with control or power).  You may have noticed other themes or “messages,” but these should be explained using evidence from the film.
[In the case of Cane, however, Toomer does not offer a traditional plot, but rather a series of unfolding and interrelated portraits.  How would you describe the events in these portraits?  What are its themes and how do they emerge, if not primarily from a plot?]

3.	Time and Place  Where and when does the story take place?  In addition to keeping track of 
these "facts" of the text, you should consider whether the novel has a special philosophy of time or place that is part of its message. Are there ways in which certain characters try to control time or have a special relationship to it?  Are there especially significant places or spaces in the text? What do these mean, each individually, and each in relation to the others?  [As you think about these questions, you should consider why Cane begins in the south, moves to the north, and returns back to the south.  What might that mean?  How are rural and urban environments portrayed?]

4.	Characterization  How does the author tell us about her/his characters as people?  How do 
we get to know their traits and foibles?  What is each character's stake in the novel's main conflict?  Why does each have certain characteristics and what might they mean?  [For example, many characters in Cane face complicated dilemmas about their racial, gender, and class identities, dilemmas that seem to complicate clear-cut dichotomies.  Make a list of major characters, who they are in terms of their gender/race/class roles, and what dilemmas each faces in the text.]

5.	Tropes and Symbols  Tropes are recurring images, words, or events in the story; symbols 
relate a concrete thing or person to an abstract quality for literary effect.  Repeated images, acts, phrases in any literary work are likely to be significant and merit thought.  [We have noted that cane is a trope and is likely to be a symbol—of what?  The sun and moon, the colors red and brown, the repeated use of verses (work songs?) in the prose sections all merit thought as to what literary effect they achieve.  Are there any actions in the novel that are repeated—sexual desire, violence, work?  How does each time they occur relate to the others?]

6.	Structure  Why is the text put together the way it is?  Why does it have certain chapter 
breaks or parts and certain narrators for them? Note that the term "narrator" (the person who tells the story, as opposed to the author) denotes a perspective, which may change over the course of the novel (1st, 2nd, 3rd, omniscient, etc). What distinguishes the text’s various parts from each other?  What creates unity across the various parts?  [These questions are especially crucial for Cane, as the text consists of three parts, each a combination of prose and poetry selections that form a kind of thematic whole; how would you describe what holds together each part, and what the progression of the three sections suggests?  Why does the author offer a text where readers have to create connections between the pieces?  Note also that the narrator is at first omniscient then emerges as an unnamed first-person narrator, and then has a name; what’s the point of that trajectory?]

7.	Language and Tone  What kind of language does the author use?  Does it sound really 
formal and technical?  Informal?  Lyrical?  Indirect?  What kind of person seems to be talking?  Does this change at different points in the text? What attitude(s) does the narrator have toward what's being said, if any? [What’s the role of African-American vernacular, specifically, in Cane? Why does the author use this particular style of language?  Does it do something for the story being told?  Why does the author use other styles of language?]

8.  Relationship between form and content  What does how the story is told have to do with what the story is about?  This includes the ways the formal elements listed here (1-7) aid and abet-- or tear apart-- the novel's main themes or messages.  

9.	Relationship between text and context  What does the story have to do with the historical 
and cultural context of its setting? What does the story have to do with the historical and cultural context within which it was written?  (these may be two very different questions, as in a novel written in 2007 about 1945).  [What does Cane say about the Great Migration of African-Americans to the northern US during the first decades of the twentieth century?]

10.	Relationship of text to program themes  What does this story tell us with relation to the 
guiding questions of our program (see syllabus)?  [What does Cane illustrate about the legacies of sugar production in the US and worldwide?  What does it say about specific political economic relationships of power, along the lines, of race, class, and gender?  What does it say about culture and resistance?  About art’s role in social change?]

11.  So what?  What makes any of the above issues important?  What's at stake in the discussion?  Why make a work of literature, specifically, about these issues?  Who cares and why?