Blood-Burning Moon by Jean Toomer

First published: 1923

Type of plot: Symbolist

Time of work: The early 1920's

Locale: Rural Georgia

Principal Characters:

• Louisa, a black woman
• Tom Burwell, a black man who loves her
• Bob Stone, a white man who loves her

The Story

The last of six prose pieces in the first part of the cycle of poems and stories entitled Cane (1923), about young black women, "Blood-Burning Moon" is the tragic story of Louisa and her two lovers, a white and a black; its action occurs in a small factory town and the surrounding sugarcane fields in rural Georgia early in the 1920's.

Louisa works in the kitchens of the Stones, a leading white family of the community, and young Bob Stone loves her; as the narrator says, "By the measure of that warm glow which came into her mind at the thought of him, he had won her." Tom Burwell, called "Big Boy" by everyone, also loves her, but because he works in the fields all day, he cannot spend as much time with Louisa as Bob Stone can. Further, even at night, when he does come to her, "Strong as he was with hands upon the ax or plow," he finds it difficult to hold her. Both men, for different reasons, have problems communicating their feelings to her. Louisa's attitude toward the pair is ambivalent; Tom's "black balanced, and pulled against, the white of Stone, when she thought of them." On the night that the action takes place, Louisa is scheduled to meet Stone in the canebrake. There is a full moon that, rising from the dusk, lights the great door of the antebellum cotton factory, an omen that the black women attempt to neutralize by means of a song: "Red nigger moon. Sinner!/ Blood-burning moon. Sinner!/ Come out that fact'ry door."

Thus, in the first part of this story Jean Toomer not only introduces the players and sets the stage for a confrontation and its consequences but also introduces three primary themes: the conflict between the races, the economy that historically is a source of the problem, and the black woman as sex object.

The second section opens at a clearing on the edge of the cane forest where men grind and boil the cane stalks while listening to Old David Georgia chatter about "the white folks, about moonshining and cotton picking, and about sweet nigger gals." When someone links Louisa with Bob Stone, Tom Burwell menacingly announces, "She's my gal," and threateningly brandishes a long knife, an action that foreshadows the pivotal confrontation to come. He then heads toward factory town, shuddering at the sight of the full moon and thinking about Louisa and Stone ("Better not be"). When he comes to Louisa's place, however, he is a different person: gentle and withdrawn, unable to speak. He grins and begins to move on, but she prompts him ("You all want me, Tom? . . . You wanted to say something?"), and he bursts forth with a confession of his love and his hopes (including having his own farm, "if ole Stone'll trust me," and "silk stockings an purple dresses" for Louisa), but he also wants reassurance: "Bob Stone likes y. Course he does. But not the way folks is awhisperin. Does he, hon?" She feigns ignorance ("I dont know what you mean, Tom") but asks what he would do if the rumors were true. "Cut him," he replies, "jes like I cut a nigger . . . already cut two." Then, hand in hand, the two walk off to make love in the canebrake.

Bob Stone, meanwhile, also is thinking of Louisa; he regrets, too, the passing of the old order, when as a white master he could have gone into the house and taken Louisa ("Direct, honest, bold") without sneaking about as he now must do. He also speculates about how his mother, sister, and friends up north would react if they knew about him and Louisa, whom he considers "lovely—in her . . . Nigger way." Unable to articulate even to himself what he means by "Nigger way," he wonders if "Nigger was something . . . to be afraid of, more?" Though he rejects the idea, it leads him to think of Tom Burwell and that "Cartwell had told him that Tom went with Louisa after she reached home," but he refuses to believe this. Stone's reaction, therefore, precisely matches Burwell's, even including a threat ("No nigger had ever been with his girl. He'd like to see one try"), and when he goes off in search of her, he hears (as Burwell does) the men at the stove talking about the trio and how the affair likely will lead to violence: "Tom Burwell's been on the gang three times fo cuttin men. . . . Young Stone ain't no quitter an I ken tell y that. Blood of th old ones in his veins."

The talk has the same effect on Stone as it has on Burwell, for he must prove the truth of the overheard characterization of him. A captive of his love for Louisa and the blacks' expectations, Stone goes to the canebrake, where he normally meets her. Because this is their regular meeting time, he assumes that she is with his rival, and he tastes blood: "Tom Burwell's blood." Trying to find the pair, he trips over a dog and starts a ruckus that stirs Burwell. They confront each other and fight; when Stone starts to lose, he takes a knife from his pocket, but Burwell cuts his throat.

The blacks who observe the struggle sneak into their houses and blow the lamps out; the white men, "like ants upon a forage," trap Burwell. They bind his wrists, drag him to the factory, pile rotting floorboards around a stake, pour kerosene on the boards, tie him to the stake, and fling torches onto the pile. As the ritualistic lynching reaches its climax, the triumphant yell of the mob echoes "against the skeleton stone walls and [sounds] like a hundred yells." Louisa, who has gone home and does not hear the cries of the lynching mob, apparently senses that something is wrong, for her eyes open slowly and she looks at the full moon, "an evil thing . . . an omen."

Bibliography

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Wagner-Martin, Linda. "Toomer's Cane as Narrative Sequence." In Modern American Short Story Sequences, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995.