READING SHEET

TITLE OF THE BOOK: Jazz (1992)

AUTHOR: Toni Morrison (black woman)

GENRE: Historical Novel - Drama Novel

MAIN CHARACTERS:
JOE TRACE:

So much of Joe's character can be summed up in his last name.

When he is in school, he's asked to supply a last name for himself and he comes up with
Trace because, when his adoptive mother tells him "O honey (your parents) disappeared
without a trace," he understood her to mean that they disappeared without him (aka
Trace).

Poor Joe never knew his parents. This is hard, and it's only made harder by the fact that
Joe's mama is a pretty wild woman named, well, Wild, and Joe spends a good part of his
childhood, and then adulthood, searching for her. A feeling of abandonment and an
uncertainty about his identity plagues Joe his whole life. Joe does not know where he
comes from and thinks, mistakenly, that he cannot be complete without this information,
thereby deferring his happiness and looking to others to make him whole.

Adult Joe is still an adolescent inside, still searching for his mom and for reassurance.
This is partially why, when Violet stops talking to him and nurturing him and starts carrying
a doll around instead, Joe begins to feel a loneliness that he never knew before with her,
ips out and looks for loving elsewhere. That's right: when Violet becomes girlish, no
longer like a capable mother, he nds another woman to take her place.

And whom does he land on? Dorcas, the wild child. He nds a young woman who is
equally wild (though more mentally stable) than his own mother.

But the real Mommy/Dorcas intersection comes when he is stalking Dorcas around New
York and keeps thinking about his mommy dearest in the meantime. When Dorcas scorns
him, his pain is compounded by a deeper anguish as he watches the third woman in his
life abandon him. Therefore, Joe's su ering explodes into an act of violence in his murder
of Dorcas.

Luckily for both Violet and Joe, Violet turns back into a mother gure supreme when
Felice comes to visit. After this, Joe and Violet are back in love and their marriage is
smooth sailing once again—after all, Joe nally has his mama back.

VIOLET:

Violet was raised by her mother, Rose Dear, in Virginia, as one of ve children. Her father
would leave the family for long stretches of time and had also signed a paper that gave
collectors the right to repossess everything that his wife and children had, leaving the
family in utter squalor after he had disappeared. When the family lost all of their
belongings, Violet's mother, Rose Dear, stopped speaking.

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 Rose Dear's mother, True Belle, received word of her daughter's misfortune and moved to
Virginia to help out. But four years later, Rose Dear threw herself in a well. Only a few days
later, her long-absent husband nally reappeared with gifts and money.

Now Violet’s a fty-year-old hairdresser living in Harlem with her husband Joe, and she
has a touch of the old multiple personalities.

It's not a seriously debilitating condition, because Violet can still hold down a job, but she
still su ers from the feeling that there are (at least) three Violets hanging out in her head.
Let's take a look at what makes these Violets tick.

Young Violet: Strong and Sensual

Young Violet is a woman with very few regrets and a ton of plans.

Young Violet reacts to her mother committing suicide with the decision to stop the mental
illness gene in its track by not having any babies, and sticks by her guns.

Young Violet goes to get work on a cotton farm and is terrible at it, lagging behind with
the twelve-year-olds. It's pretty humiliating. But Young Violet perseveres and decides to
give it her all, and ends up a "powerfully strong young woman who could handle mules,
bale hay and chop wood as good as any man." Once Young Violet makes her mind up
about something, she gets it.

It's Young Violet who has the idea to move to a big city.

Young Violet intentionally miscarries 3 times. This is all good and makes nancial sense
until years later, when the woman we'll call Crazy Violet, becomes unhinged partially
because of a gnawing baby-hunger.

Crazy Violet: Stealing Babies and Talking Nonsense

When Young Violet hits forty, she becomes not-so-Young Violet and starts wanting a
baby.

The desire to hold a baby is so strong it's described as a "skipping, running light" in her
veins. Only she's too old to have a baby. Cue irrational behavior.

What irrational behavior? Well, Violet starts saying things that don't make sense. She also
sits down in the middle of the street for no good reason, and tries to steal a baby out of a
baby carriage. Plus she starts hugging a doll.

This behavior culminates with the ultimate act of Crazy Violet's: slashing dead Dorcas's
face and letting all of her birds (that she had caged and loved very much) free. When we
understand Crazy Violet's baby-hunger, we can see that these acts are very symbolic of
letting go of the possibility of maternity.

Present-Day Violet: All's Well That Ends Well

When someone talks about killing themselves—twice—it's usually not a good thing.
However, when Violet talks about killing herself twice it's awesome and sane. This is
because present-day Violet, after some conversations with Alice, does away with Young
Violet and Crazy Violet.

"How did you get rid of her?"

"Killed her. Then I killed the me that killed her."

"Who's left?"

"Me."

We're guessing that Young Violet (super strong-willed and resolute) killed Crazy Violet,
and then present-day Violet did away with Young Violet.

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 Violet, in fact, searches for peace and longs to heal herself and her marriage, discovering,
nally, that she has to "make it" by taking ownership of her happiness and refusing to be
a victim.

Also pretty cool is the fact that Violet, like Joe, is now a murderer of sorts. This helps
them get back on good footing with each other. Whatever it takes to make a marriage
work, we guess? And whatever it takes to feel sane again.

Present-Day Violet also retains the good things from Young Violet and Crazy Violet.

Young Violet was strong-willed and determined, and Present-Day Violet is still these
things. For her part, Crazy Violet was eager to be maternal, and when Present-Day Violet
cooks for Felice and takes care of Joe we see these attributes front and center.

DORCAS:

Dorcas is a real wild child, a apper, a jazz lover, a juvenile delinquent, and a speakeasy
a cionado. She's the 1920s in a nutshell: a very sexually attractive nutshell with long hair
and bad skin. We learn that she had asked Joe to give her the beauty products that would
help her blemishes but he was glad that they never worked because the marks on her
face were like a kind of trail for him to follow.

As a young girl, Dorcas lost both of her parents in the same day when her father was
killed on a streetcar and her mother died in a burning building during the East St. Louis
riots, which left her orphaned and homeless.

(In 1917, angry white workers lodged formal complaints against black migrations to the
Mayor of East St. Louis.  After the city council meeting had ended, news of an attempted
robbery of a white man by an armed black man began to circulate through the city.  As a
result of this news, white mobs formed and rampaged through downtown, beating all
African Americans who were found. The mobs also stopped trolleys and streetcars,
pulling black passengers out and beating them on the streets and sidewalks).

Dorcas went to two funerals in ve days but never spoke of her sadness. Instead, she
concentrated on her wooden dolls and imagined how they must have burned in the re.

Like so many of the characters in the book, Dorcas migrated to the City where her life
was to be rebuilt by the obsessive care of her aunt, Alice Manfred.

However, as a teenager, Dorcas begins to rebel against her aunt's old-fashioned tastes,
and refashions herself as a sexually-desirable woman. Dorcas wants to be looked at and
admired and when Joe visits her aunt's house she successfully captures the older man's
gaze. The morality of sleeping with a married man who is old enough to be her father
does not factor into Dorcas's decision to be with Joe. Like a little girl, she is eager for the
gifts that he brings her and she becomes petulant and moody when she does not get her
way. However, Dorcas also wants an authority gure and when she realizes that Joe is
completely malleable she bores with him quickly. Her new boyfriend, Acton, promises to
shape Dorcas and control her, so she allows her identity to be created for her.

When Joe shoots Dorcas, she chooses to die in order to be watched, making herself a
martyr by bleeding to death rather than going to the hospital. However, the narrator
shows Dorcas as one sees her and it does not correspond with her inside life. Dorcas isn't
exactly a character whose interiority is explored. Everyone else in the book has an opinion
about Dorcas, but we don't get many of Dorcas's thoughts.

It's not that surprising that Dorcas doesn't have a lot of interiority, because she’s basically
related to as a dead girl: the memory of her is more important than her actions as a esh-
and-blood living woman in this book. The dead, after all, can't talk.

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 SECONDARY CHARACTERS:
Alice:

Nine years before Dorcas's murder, Alice Manfred became the guardian of her orphaned
niece.

Alice is the old guard, the kind of woman to whom the idea of jazz is insane and crude.

Her parents raised her with a set of now-antiquated rules concerning how women should
behave: If you behave like a lady, everything in your life will be good and you'll get
respect.

And what happened? Uh, not the happy-life thing — instead, her husband left her for
another woman (then, before she could do anything decisive, seek revenge or rectify the
situation, her husband died; his mistress attended the funeral, inappropriately dressed in
white; moreover, the married couple had never been able to have children of their own)
and her sister and brother-in-law got murdered.

And yet, while everyone else blamed the riots on angry black veterans or white workers,
Alice blamed the violence on the smooth new music that she feared and found sinful. She
sought to escape the tunes of soulful female voices while her young niece felt the rhythms
and longings deep in her soul.

So she tells Dorcas in no uncertain terms that sex is bad, jazz is bad, and dressing in a
super-modest burlap sack is the only way to salvation. This is weird, right? After a life that
has derailed, even though her parents assured her that if she was a good girl everything
would be peachy-keen, she decides to pass on these antiquated rules to her niece.

So Alice exists as a character to propel Dorcas toward a love of jazz and vice. Because
nothing makes Dorcas want to do something more than if she is told not to do it.

Alice also exists as a character in order to help Violet heal. Violet shows up on Alice's
doorstep as kind of a shell of a woman, mourning and angry and a little insane. Alice's
no-nonsense reaction to Violet is the equivalent of slapping Violet across the face and
saying "Snap out of it!" Which is exactly what Violet does. It helps that Alice's demeanor
is similar to True Belle's, and Violet feels as though she is in the presence of her level-
headed grandma once again.

After her niece’s murder, Alice never considered calling the police about either Joe or his
wife, because she feared the law and mistrusted cops, black or white.

And yet she feels deeply betrayed by Joe Trace, a man whom she had trusted and who
corrupted her niece.

One day Violet asks Alice if she would ght for a man. Alice remembers her husband and
his in delity and realizes that she, too, would have directed her anger at the other woman
if she had had the chance.

Golden Gray:

Golden Gray is the result of a forbidden love between a white woman and black man.

With his golden curls and light skin, Golden looks completely white and he is raised to
believe that he is so.

His mother does not claim him as her own but says that he was adopted.
When his nurse, True Belle, tells him the truth of his parentage, Golden's sense of his own
identity is destroyed.

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He sets out to hunt down and kill his father, because he assumes that the black man
violated his mother. He holds a racial stereotype of black deviance that is deeply set in
white male consciousness.

Once in Virginia, Golden's plans change when he witnesses Wild give birth to Joe Trace.
Rather than strike out the part of his identity that does not correspond with his own sense
of self, Golden seeks refuge in Wild's blackness and escapes from society with her,
roaming free in the woods. Golden abandons the white upbringing that his mother o ered
him and also knows that the black community will never fully accept him. He straddles
the two worlds but belongs to neither so he reverts to a natural existence that lies beyond
the community.

With Wild, Golden reverses the racial scheme of his parents' sexual and romantic
relationship, continuing a legacy of interracial companionship and passing it down to the
next generation. Both of the interracial couples, that of Golden’s parents and of Golden
and Wild, disprove the common association of biracial babies with the physical assaults
of slave owners on black, female slaves.

OTHER CHARACTERS:
• Malvonne —> she rents one of her house’s rooms to Joe while she’s working
downtown; he pays her 2 dollars a month in addition to xing up any leaks or problems
around the house since she lives alone; Malvonne at rst refuses, saying that she
wants no part in Joe's in delity; but then, although she is troubled about being an
accomplice to a man's treachery, Malvonne agrees to the arrangement with the proviso
that she will not pass notes or messages between the couple or help them to arrange
meeting times; she also begs Joe not to get involved with a woman who has young
children
• Rose Dear (Violet’s mother)

• True Belle (Violet’s grandmother; she had left Virginia a slave but when she returns in
1888 to help her daughter, Rose Dear, she is a free woman)

• The Grays (Golden Gray’s family) —> WHITE

• Henry LesTroy aka Hunters Hunter (Golden Gray’s father)

• Honor (errand boy)

• Wild (Joe’s mother)

• The Williams (Joe’s adopting family)

• Victory (Joe’s stepbrother)

• Felice (Dorcas’ bestie)

• Acton (Dorcas’ lover)

PLACES:
• New York City (in particular Harlem: Manhattan’s Afroamerican block)

• Virginia (where Joe and Violet’s past takes place)

• Missouri (Dorcas’ childhood)

TIME:
Winter - Spring of 1926 - with ashbacks and stories from the late nineteenth century
(during the mid-1920s, it took place the Harlem renaissance, a revival of the Afroamerican
culture and music)

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 NARRATION TECHNIQUE:
Modality:

in order —> description, narration, dialog (it’s mixed and sudden, just like Jazz music)

Narrator: the book often switches from the rst person to the third one, which is
omniscient and sometimes intervenes subjectively (and with gossip); 

moreover, sometimes there are streams of consciousness (when the narrator explains the
characters’ minds and thoughts);

at rst, the narrator seems to be a middle-aged woman who is part of the Harlem
community, but then, we guess it’s the City itself

Point of view: mobile, both internal and external

Language:
• Syntax: mixed —> it gets complex and long during descriptions

• Tone: mixed —> it gets informal with slang and idiomatic expressions in the dialogs
• Tense: mixed —> it alternates between the present and past tense

Structure: the novel is made up of 10 sections that have no numbered divisions or

chapter headings but follow each other with unequal lengths and pick up the story at
unexpected places in the narrative track

THE MESSAGE:
Themes:
• Violence
• Black culture
• Race
• Women
• Migration
• Orphanage

Purpose:
• Highlighting the socio-historical reality of the 1920s in the US

• Depicting the human soul’s complexity, as well as mankind’s emotions, vices, and
virtues

SUMMARY:
START: main story sections
The narrator tells us that she knows "that woman," as though Violet is walking along the
street before us.

The narrator also knows her husband and goes on to give an encapsulated summary of
the couple's tale: the husband fell in love with an eighteen-year-old girl, went mad with his
love for her and then shot her.

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 Violet appeared at the young girl's funeral and slashed the face of the dead body with a
knife before being thrown out of the church. This causes Violet to get renamed “Violent".

No one ever prosecuted Violet's husband, Joe Trace, for shooting his young lover. The
girl's aunt knew that hiring cops was not worth it because Joe cried every day in grief and
was already repentant.

Violet had gone on to get herself a boyfriend in an attempt to get revenge for her
husband's a air but this tactic didn't seem to work. Joe sat around the house listless and
sullen so Violet tried instead to regain his love. However, she could not break through their
embittered silences.

Finally Violet decides to nd out more about her husband's dead lover. She haunts the
young girl's schools, asking her teachers about their former student, and learns to imitate
the girl's favorite dance moves. She even gets her hands on a photo of the girl. During
nights that winter, Violet and Joe wake up in turns to go to the living room and stare at the
photo of Joe's dead lover, Dorcas.

But where did the photo come from? A few months after Dorcas's murder, Violet comes
to see Alice Manfred for the rst time, but Dorcas's aunt only grudgingly opens the door
for the woman who ruined the ceremony and stole the spotlight away from the task of
mourning.

A week after Dorcas's funeral Violet started slipping notes underneath Alice's door. At rst
Alice was scared, then angry and puzzled. When Violet comes to the door in February
saying that she just needs a place to rest, Alice lets her in. Violet walks straight to a side
table where a photo of Dorcas stands and she stares at it spellbound.

The second time Violet stops by, Alice asks whether Joe had ever beat her, to which
Violet responds, “no."

Alice tries to understand this couple with whom her niece had gotten involved. However,
she still feels uncomfortable knowing so much about their lives so she gives Violet the
photo of Dorcas to get Violet to leave her house. But when Violet returns, starting from the
next day, Alice begins to look forward to these visits from Violet, but she does not
understand why. With Violet, Alice is less polite and well-mannered than with anyone else
and yet the two women speak to each other with a clarity and candor that they do not
nd elsewhere.

Violet continues to appear at the door without warning, but Alice begins to recognize her
knock.

Violet is a hairdresser so while Joe mopes around the house, missing workdays, she goes
to the homes of neighborhood women to make some money.

She becomes increasingly obsessed with the idea of Dorcas and has imagined
conversations with the young girl.

Even before the incident with Dorcas, Violet has had a history of bizarre public behavior.
One day she walked o with an infant whom she was asked to watch for a moment.

When she was younger she was snappy and con dent but over the years she found
herself slipping into a quiet sadness, except for times when her wayward mouth led her to
speak nonsense. Joe is rst annoyed and then depressed by the change in his wife.

Joe and Violet met 20 years before Dorcas's murder and Violet's breakdown: when Violet
was 17, her grandmother True Belle sent her and her sisters to go and pick a cotton crop
in Virginia. The job was to last for three weeks. One night Violet lay down to sleep under a
walnut tree. With a thud, Joe Trace fell out of the tree and startled Violet, explaining to her
that he worked in the gin house and had been sleeping in that tree.

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The two talked all night and when the three weeks were up Violet sent her money home
with her sisters and moved to the nearby town to work for a family and stay close to Joe.
He was 19 at the time and living with an adopted family. Within a short time they found
themselves heading on a train up north to New York City, intoxicated by their hopes, love,
and their dreams of urban life.

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, a great number of
blacks from all over the country migrated to New York City, to escape eld labor, racism,
and the expectations of rural life. Upon arrival in the great metropolis it was easy to forget
about their previous existences and these migrants felt that the city had always been
home.

Neither Joe nor Violet ever really wanted children, and Violet had already had three
miscarriages. However, by the time she hit 40, Violet craved a child and imagined what
her last baby would have been like.

20 years after their arrival in the city, Joe gives up trying to make a marriage with Violet
work and begins his a air with Dorcas.

Joe and Dorcas’ a air lasted for 3 months.


Joe met Dorcas when he was going over to sell cosmetics to a group of women gathered
at the home of Alice Manfred.

While the other women plied him with food and irted harmlessly, Alice Manfred became
uncharacteristically quiet, as though she sensed that something was amiss or she had a
premonition of what would happen.

When they rst slept together, it was Dorcas's rst time and in a way it was Joe's rst
time too. He felt that he had chosen her and that he had risen rather than fallen in love.

For their late night dates, Joe rents a room from a neighbor (a woman named Malvonne
who cleans the o ces of powerful white businessmen every night from six until 2:30a.m)
for 6 hours out of the week, allowing him to bring Dorcas to bed with him and tell her
things about his childhood.

At the end of each meeting, Joe gives Dorcas a present.

He tells her that when he was fourteen and still in Virginia he sat by a riverbank at dusk
and spoke to a woman who he believed to be his mother as she hid in a bush. He asked
the crazy woman to make a sign with her hand to tell him de nitively if she was indeed his
mother but in the dim evening light he could not be sure that she had done so.

Dorcas understands the emptiness that Joe feels because she feels it too: she didn’t have
a good relationship with her mother and when her house burnt down in a re caused by
the riots in Missouri, she only grieved the loss of her box of dolls. Her father had died
earlier that day because he got tread on during that very same riot.

MIDDLE: second story sections

The narrator begins this section by telling the story of True Belle, Violet's grandmother.

True Belle had worked on the estate of the Grays, where one of the daughters became
pregnant by a black man.

Her parents disowned her and left her enough money to live elsewhere, so she took her
slave True Belle with her. True Belle left her daughters with an older sister when she left.

The girl named her illegitimate child Golden Gray because he had golden curls. She and
True Belle adored him, spoiling and pampering him.

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 When Golden is eighteen years old, he nds out that his father is black from True Belle.
His mother refuses to talk about it but True Belle tells Golden that his father was a black
man named Henry LesTroy living in Virginia.

When he rst heard the news of his father's blackness, he was unsure of how to deal with
his rage. True Belle suggested that he’d go to his father and Golden Gray took her advice.
He thinks nding his father will somehow make him whole, and he also fantasize about
killing him. Golden has always loved True Belle, the black woman who smiled at him as a
boy and took such good care of him as he grew up, but he does not know how to deal
with the fact that she’s black. Same disgust is raised by the thought of having a black
father. His whole understanding of his privilege and identity are therefore thrown into orbit.

As he drives through a heavy rainstorm, he sees a naked black woman in the woods
along the road. When she sees Golden, she turns to run but hits her head and falls to the
ground, unconscious.

Golden, revolted by her blackness and savage looks, contemplates leaving her there.
Walking to her, he sees that she is very pregnant so he lifts her into the carriage and
drives on to his father's, hoping to look heroic when in fact he is a hypocrite: he does not
want this black, unconscious, naked woman, covered in blood, to lean on him during the
ride. He only worries about his ne clothes getting dirty.

After a ride of several hours, Golden comes upon a simple house that he assumes is his
father's. The house is empty when Golden arrives, and the black pregnant woman
continues to lie unconscious. Golden worries about her waking up or going into labor and
he brings her into the empty house his father.

Some time later, he hears a horse approaching. When he goes to the door, he nds a
young black boy standing there. The 13-year-old black boy is named Honor and he tells
Golden Gray that LesTroy has been away from his house for several days, and that he
could arrive at any moment. LesTroy had asked the young boy to come by and take care
of his livestock, the animals that wander around behind the house.

Golden Gray tells him to come in and help him with something: the unconscious woman.

Then, LesTroy, also known as “Hunters Hunter” (because he is so good at tracking

animals), approaches his cabin and becomes frightened when he walks in his front door
to nd Honor and a golden-haired gentleman leaning over a naked pregnant body.
Golden Gray stares at his father long and hard with his gray eyes and then calls him
“Daddy.”

Hunters Hunter didn't know of Golden Gray's existence before this meeting. Before the
father and son can really talk about anything, the pregnant woman wakes with a scream
and begins to give birth. Honor and Hunters Hunter help in the delivery. Afterwards, as
Hunters Hunter bends over her body to cover her, the silent crazy woman bites his cheek.
Because of this act, he names her “Wild.” She wants nothing to do with the little boy to
whom she has given birth, so Joe gets adopted, thanks to LesTroy, by the Williams, and
has also a stepbrother: Victory.

Still, Wild never leaves the area after she gives birth. Joe has a feeling that Wild was his
mother even though no one tells him so outright.

When Joe and Victory are young men, they set out to do short-term labor all around the
county.

The pace of his jobs is maniacal and leaves him only enough time to sleep for a few hours
here and there in the walnut tree where he meets Violet.

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ENDING: main story sections
Now, as if he were speaking before a judge, Joe gives his testimony to us, avowing that
when he left his apartment with a gun in his pocket on the rst day of January he never
intended to hurt or kill Dorcas. She had said hurtful things that he knew she didn't mean
and he simply meant to nd her. He only meant to reach to her and having a gun with him
seemed like a natural part of the process.

Dorcas is at a party full of men and women dancing and drinking in a packed apartment.
She dances with a young man and feels happier than she has ever felt before. This young
man, adored by all women, has been extremely selective in choosing her, and they seem
to dance and move in perfect harmony.



Dorcas begins narrating her side of the story at this point and worries that Joe will come
looking for her at this party expressly because she told him not to.

Though she had not meant to be mean to him, when she told him to leave her alone it had
come out cruelly. She had said to him that his marriage was the main issue and that she
wanted to talk openly with her friends about her relationships, but in that situation she
couldn’t. She had not mentioned anything about Acton, the good-looking young man
with whom she is dancing at the present.

Dorcas knows that Joe will come to nd her after that conversation. She worries that she
sees him on the street and she knows that if he doesn't tonight, he will nd her tomorrow.

She couldn't tell Joe that Acton gives her a personality and a feeling that she is
somebody while Joe seems to accept her any old way. Acton tells Dorcas how to wear
her hair and clothes and wants to shape the woman she becomes. She loves dancing
with him and making the other women jealous. And she knows that if Joe shows up at the
party he will see that she belongs to Acton now.



All of a sudden, Dorcas begins to narrate her death. She is dancing with Acton when she
sees Joe arrive. She begins to fall as she is hit with the bullet.

The room goes dark and then light as she falls in Acton's arms. Then she is put on a table
and people crowd around her but all she can see is Acton at the foot of the table, dabbing
a bloodstain on his coat. He seems annoyed about the stain as she lies dying and a
woman approaches him to remove it.

Meanwhile people are asking Dorcas who shot her. Finally, Felice, Dorcas’ best friend,
appears above her and holds her hand and leans in close to her mouth. Dorcas screams
Joe's name in Felice's ear. Then she dies.



In the spring, Joe mourns Dorcas's death and he and Violet patch things up in their
relationship, mediated in part by their new friendship with Felice herself.

At this point the girl begins to tell the story of her upbringing.

When Dorcas started seeing Joe, she tried to keep it from Felice who gured out anyway.
Felice overheard two hairdressers talking about the couple after they had gone to a
nightclub together. While everyone else thinks that Violet is crazy, Felice does not. 



During her rst visit, Felice tells the couple that Dorcas let herself bleed to death rather
than let anyone take her to the emergency room. It was her fault that she died. Felice was
angry with Dorcas when she died so she didn't go to the funeral. For three months she
heard about Joe Trace crying his eyes out and she gured she should tell him about
Dorcas to console him somehow.

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The narrator speaks out in this nal section and feels that she has failed as a voyeur of
other peoples' lives. Looking in on the lives of other people in the City, the narrator forgot
to have a life of his or her own. She was sure that Joe would kill Violet or vice versa and
had been waiting for it to happen. She also says that she made further assumptions all
throughout the story about the characters' thoughts and their pain. She assumed that
history would repeat itself but no one turned out to be as predictable as the narrator had
guessed.

Instead, the notorious couple naps together, walks around the neighborhood, plays cards
and holds each other under the covers.

The narrator tries to gure out what it is in the shadows of the City or the quality of the
music that drives men and women to love each other, meeting secretly and feeling
intensely. The narrator envies the love that Joe and Violet share, one that is private and
secret, public and mundane. While Joe and Violet can show their love in public, simple
ways, the narrator has only known the secret kind of love but wishes to say out loud to
someone that she needs and wants that person.

PERSONAL COMMENT:
I was fascinated by the ideas behind this book, but still had trouble getting through it;

for all its ambition, it is far too long and would have worked much better as a novella.


I soaked up the parts about the city, drunk on Morrison’s words, but there were also large
parts that dragged on for so long that I lost focus altogether. There are run on sentences
with little meaning.



So, full marks for concept, but I have to deduct some points for execution. Even though,
Jazz might still be worth a read ‘cause the idea sounds intriguing.

TO WHOM WOULD YOU SUGGEST THE BOOK?:

I’d suggest Jazz to anyone who’s tired of common writing styles.

The language of this novel is totally Morrison’s, and it’s unique in its use.

You’ll never read again a story told from many perspectives, but still not getting whose
point of view you’re following.

This book is jazz. It’s like listening to music without the actual sound, without your ears
but through your eyes.

The way black culture gets an overview is also interesting. From an author like Morrison,
we would expect a story typical of the Afro-Americans, but instead, we have a tale that
could be about anyone, despite their race: this book shows what it means to be human,
and you don't have to be black to relate to these characters. Blackness’s just one part of
who they are (Golden Gray being the exception).

These characters are real. They're awed; and they're you and me.

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 THE CONTEXT
AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS:
• Black she-writer

• Feminist
• Anti-racism exponent
• In 1993 she won the Nobel Prize in literature

SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

• Late post-colonialism (which is a set of socio-cultural and political events which
characterized the nally colonialism-free societies)
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