The Pure Character of Karintha in Toomer’s Writing

by Juliette Zhu

In Jean Toomer’s short story “Karintha,” the author presents a modernist way to depict “Karintha” as the person that she is rather than the perceptions and prejudices she is labeled. As Werner Sollors writes in “Jean Toomer’s Cane: Modernism and Race in Interwar America” that “Toomer’s aesthetic modernism was connected to an attack on false perceptions, prejudices, a priori assumptions, and labels” (368). Tommer artfully avoids prejudices or prior assumptions that can be related to an African American woman by using various rhetoric techniques.

If the author did not use racially neutral language, the special complexion of Karintha could be the easiest part to be depicted in a prejudiced way because she would be considered to have non-white skin. Toomer’s uses the motif of “dusk” to describe Karintha’s beauty and also implies a partially dark complexion without directly stating that she has darker skin. He records that “Men had always wanted Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down…Her skin is like the dusk when the sun goes down” (Tommer, 3-4). The “Perfect dusk” alludes to a stage between day and night as well as black and white in which each aspect is equally expressed without emphasis. By describing Karintha’s skin tone as “like dusk,” Toomer uses a simile to reveal that Karintha could be a girl of mixed ethnicity. Toomer describes Karintha’s mixed ethnicity as the standard of beauty most desirable in Karintha’s community when he refers to it as “perfect”.

Beyond the depiction of Karintha’s complexion, Toomer uses simple words to present Karintha’s situation and experience without any adjectives or subjective descriptions. Toomer observes: “Karintha at twenty”, “Karintha is a woman, and she has had a child” and “She has been married many times.” (4). Toomer keeps repeating the fact that “karintha is a woman” but never adds an adjective to inform the readers what kind of woman she is, which perfectly avoids any prejudices and false assumptions that can possibly be inherent.

In this short story, Toomer is concentrated on presenting the character of Karintha authentically without any judgments and appreciating her beauty in a pure way throughout his poetic languages.
 

Work Cited:

 

Tommer, Jean. Cane. Ed. Rudolph P. Byrd, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York & London: WW Norton, 2011. Print.