Aside from my excitement in regards to reading Cane, it truly is amazing how without interdisciplinarity, there would be no Cane. Before reading the “Afterword” of Cane, I never quite connected interdisciplinarity to real-world examples.
Jean Toomer’s chaotic and quite indecisive life is the reason that Cane is the masterpiece that so many critics claim. Our stigma of a “successful person” is against everything that Toomer had done throughout his life but yet he was still successful. Due to his switching schools, indecisiveness regarding his race, indecisiveness regarding his jobs, he came to have the experiences necessary to writing a successful composite novel. The many disciplines that Toomer had the opportunities to experience, each created a conversation within each other (interdisciplinarity) that allowed this novel to come about. Had Toomer not had the experience at the movie theatre for example, “Box Seats” would not be a part of Cane.
I believe herein lies an opportunity to connect the importance interdisciplinarity has on shaping an individual and one’s own motives. No longer do we, especially as college students, have to believe that the only way to be successful in the end is to persevere and work really hard until things go right (because things have to go right eventually, right?). There is a sort of ease when recognizing this subtle reminder through this “coincidental” academe that these different opportunities and experiences throughout multiple disciplines can in the end, be just as important as perseverance.