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Fern
The narrator of “Fern” is a Black man from the North. On a visit to Georgia, he sees Fern and becomes obsessed with her. Eventually, he invites her to take a walk with him in the cane fields. When he does something (he does not specify what) that alarms her, she faints in his arms. This doesn’t make him very popular with the locals, many of whom are in love with Fern and who already mistrust the man for being a smug and aloof Northerner. The narrator sees Fern for the last time from the train as he goes home at the end of his visit.
Narrator of “Fern” Quotes in Cane
The Cane quotes below are all either spoken by Narrator of “Fern” or refer to Narrator of “Fern” . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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10. Fern Quotes
Her eyes, if it were sunset, rested idly where the sun, molten and glorious, was pouring down between the fringe of pines. Or maybe they gazed at the gray cabin on the knoll from which an evening folk-song was coming. Perhaps they followed a cow that had been turned loose to roam and feed on cotton-stalks and corn leaves. Like as not they’d settle on some vague spot above the horizon, though hardly a trace of wistfulness would come to them. If it were dusk, then they’d wait for the search-light of the evening train which you could see miles up the track before it flared across the Dixie Pike, close to home. Wherever they looked, you’d follow them and then waver back. Like her face, the whole countryside seemed to flow into her eyes. Flowed into them with the soft listless cadence of Georgia’s South.
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Narrator of “Fern” Character Timeline in Cane
The timeline below shows where the character Narrator of “Fern” appears in Cane. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
10. Fern
...lip, for example—their attention will always be drawn back to her eyes. They give the narrator of “Fern" the same sense of sadness he’s had when listening to a Jewish cantor sing.
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...he finds himself staring at her mysteriously compelling eyes again. That’s what happens when the narrator of “Fern" , visiting from the North, sees her for the first time. And it is what...
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Drawn by Fern’s eyes and their mysterious sadness, the narrator of “Fern" goes to visit even though he has nothing to offer her but conversation about his...
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People gossip about Fern and the narrator of “Fern" in the cane field, but nothing comes of it. Soon, he goes back to the...
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