It is no secret that pieces of literature can contain pieces of history. Many times authors will insert allusions that help to set the locale of their book without explicitly stating the setting. But literature doesn’t just interact with historical events; it also interacts with historical figures, particularly past writers.
Joe Moran in Interdisciplinarity says Harold Bloom “argues that authors are engaged in a kind of psychic struggle with great authors of past generations” (105). Of Bloom’s three arguments of authors completing, misreading, or purging themselves of “the influence of their predecessors’ work” (Moran 105), writer Alice Walker is essentially purging Jean Toomer’s Cane through her book Meridian. Walker wrote Meridian after Toomer wrote Cane– Walker’s book was first published in 1976 and Toomer’s in 1975, which is misleading, but Cane copyrights back in 1923 where Meridian is 1976. Therefore, she is responding through her writing to Cane in what Bloom would call a purge. As I connote purging as cleansing something that is unwanted or wrong, this would apply to Meridian responding to the ideas and structure of Cane. Walker takes elements of Toomer’s book, such as the use of vignettes that don’t directly relate to each other, and applies these to Meridian. Meridian contains chapters such as “Have You Stolen Anything?”, a passage dealing with Meridian’s guilt for stealing her mother’s serenity and emerging self, which is then followed by the chapter “Gold” where Meridian finds a piece of gold she buries and eventually forgets to dig up. Not only are these two chapters more episodic in nature, as they are loosely connected through the recurring characters and not the plots or themes, but they are also short in page number, like the vignettes and poems in Cane. Both books are broken into three parts, or arcs in Cane’s case, with chapters that range from very lengthy to miniscule.
Enumerating the idea that Walker is purging Cane is the fact that the plot lines are quite similar between the two books. For example, titular character Meridian Hill thinks of killing her child Eddie Jr., a boy eventually renamed Rundi, and in due course Meridian kills what would have been her child with lover Truman Held through an abortion. In the short story “Karintha” in Cane, Karintha also kills her child, like Meridian the second time she is pregnant. Though both characters kill a child, Walker is cleansing Karintha’s story by having Meridian act more humane than Karintha. For Meridian “the thought of murdering her own child eventually frightened her” (Walker 65) so Meridian starts to hold onto the thought of killing herself as opposed to killing Rundi to get her through life. Meridian actually tries to take care of her child, even when her husband Eddie abandons her and Rundi. Unlike Karintha, Meridian only gives Rundi up for adoption when she is given the extraordinary chance to go to Saxon College on scholarship. It can even be argued that Meridian might not have had an abortion if it were not for the fact that Truman goes back to dating Lynne Rabinowitz after having sex with Meridian. “It was for this reason, among others, that he never knew she was pregnant,” Walker states (118), leading readers to believe that the abortion was not just the fact that Meridian did not want to have another child. Karintha, conversely, makes women appear as near savages who heartlessly kill their children. In “Attachment and Separation: What Everyone Should Know” Doctor Peter Cook writes, “Nature has provided a process of ‘bonding’, so that normally a mother becomes attached to her particular baby, making her want to stay near him or her and respond to any crying or other signals.” Not only does Karintha have no bondage to her child, but Karintha does not show the reader any thoughts of remorse at killing her child. If she were bonded to her child, the attachment would have made her want to keep her child or respond to the probable cries of her child as she killed the child. This is quite unlike Meridian who ends up having nightmares of Rundi after giving him up for adoption because she isn’t there when he needs her. Walker is proving that there is more to giving up a child than just cleaning one’s life of discrepancies. Toomer writes, “Weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it in water” (5); Karintha wanted her life to be clear and clean like water, not filled with smoke, a symbol for her baby, because smoke is hard to breathe in and live with.
Bloom’s point of completing an author’s past work is emphasized by Toomer. Toomer is one who uses past author’s works, such as Bacchae by Euripides, differently than Walker does; Toomer instead completes Bacchae, as Bloom would say, by raising Bacchae’s points in a modern setting. Toomer proves that certain themes don’t just occur in the ancient city-state of Thebes; they also happened in the 1920s in America, both in the North and South. The motif of the Madonna-whore complex occurs in both books, where ‘whore’ Semele is punished for being immoral as a “mortal paramour won, belied great Jove as a author of sin” (Euripides 4). Semele is maltreated just as the women in Cane like Becky are. Semele’s child is Dionysus, who is half-god and half human, similar to Becky’s child, who is half-white and half-black. Both Semele and Becky have people lie behind their backs as a result of their children, making them out to be people “with no self-respect” (Toomer 8). Toomer does not change the endings of these women, either, like Walker might. Both are ostracized from society, outsiders to their own people. Cane is simply finishing Bacchae for this reason.
A key point in separating the difference between an author that is purging another author’s work as opposed to completing another author’s work is the use of plot. Walker changes key details in Meridian that originated in Cane. One example is how the father of Nelda’s first baby bought “her combs and blouses and Bermuda shorts, and her first pair of stockings” (Walker 87). This is much like how Karintha was given things like money and another character named Fern was sent candy every week. Though all three girls are given presents by men, Walker shows that Nelda is unable to escape her burdens, whereas Karintha is able to kill her child to essentially free herself and the narrator in “Fern” feels bound to Fern, unlike Nelda’s child’s father who seemingly abandoned Nelda judging by Meridian saying she “knew the father of Nelda’s first baby” (Walker 87). If the father were still involved, Meridian wouldn’t use past tense of “to know”. This is what truly shows that Walker is purging Toomer. Toomer doesn’t change key details when responding to Euripides’ Bacchae. This is illustrated when both Pentheus and Kabnis act as stereotypical women when donning costumes, proving that Toomer is completing Bacchae, whereas Walker might have responded by having a male character such as Truman put on a woman’s clothes but then still act as a man.
It is always interesting to see history interact with literature. When history is intertwined, whether from allusions of historical figures or events or explicit statements of a setting, it gives a fictional piece more meaning to the reader, as it relates to reality. Authors also insert history in their books by responding to the pieces of past authors. As Harold Bloom would say, an author can purge, complete, or misread another author’s works. While Alice Walker’s Meridian purges Jean Toomer’s Cane, Cane interacts with Euripides Bacchae to provide an ending in a more modern setting.