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7. Carma
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cane, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Navigating Identity
Racism in the Jim Crow Era
Feminine Allure
Nature vs. Society
The Power and Limitations of Language
Summary
Analysis
A soul flies over the land at dusk as if it’s sawdust smoke. The land has rich red soil and pine trees; it is the mother of many people, some of whom have, until recently, been enslaved. The enslaved people harvested ripe plums for their enslavers, but they left one hanging on the vine. When it’s planted, it will grow into a “singing tree” that tells the stories of the souls of enslaved people.
The speaker of this poem is a Black person who has returned to the South and discovered a sense of connection to that land. The poem’s formal tone—it is written in iambic pentameter, has a formal rhyme scheme, and uses repetition in the final lines of each stanza to add to its incantatory, prayer-like feeling—adds weight to the speaker’s words.
Themes
