Storm Ending

The central theme of “Storm Ending” is the awe-inspiring power of nature. According to Bernard W. Bell in “Portrait of the Artist as High Priest of Soul: Jean Toomer’s Cane,” Toomer “captures the insensitivity of man to the awesome beauty of Nature” (article excerpted in the 1988 Norton Critical Edition of Cane). Nature appears in several elemental forms throughout “Storm Ending,” including thunder, sunlight, and the earth.

The thunder’s placement, in relation to the speaker, indicates its position in the natural hierarchy: Thunder is “above” (Line 1) humans. The prepositional phrase is both literal (thunder originates in the sky) and metaphorical. Humans are only represented by parts of their anatomy (metonymically) in the phrases “our heads” (Line 1) and “our ears” (Line 4). This emphasizes the lack of significance, or even completeness, of humans in comparison to the power of nature. The poem focuses on the natural, not even including a complete individual.

Far above humans in the natural hierarchy, the sun sits above the thunderclouds. This is, again, literal in terms of the cosmos and atmosphere, as well as metaphorical. The thunderclouds are “[b]itten by the sun” (Line 6)—and bitten violently enough to bleed, as described in the following line.