63 pages • 2 hours read
Toni MorrisonJazz
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
In the opening of the chapter, the narrator describes the city in the spring. It is a time of contradiction, and everything is softened by rain. Joe is seen every day in front of his window, crying. Violet carefully launders his handkerchiefs that he uses to dry his tears. The narrator predicts that Violet will one day put away the handkerchiefs and light her husband on fire. After watching Joe for years, the narrator is certain that he is not to be trusted. Despite his friendly demeanor, he wears his hat at a slant. The narrator distrusts Joe’s easy mannerisms with women and predicts that he will soon take up gambling.
The rest of the chapter is told in Joe’s voice. He shares more of his history with Dorcas, including the days leading up to her murder. Joe was not interested in bragging about his affair. He was only interested in Dorcas. When he first met her in the apartment, he was overtaken. She represented a new version of himself, and he had been through many versions already. He knew people thought he treated Violet badly, but he was never able to get close to her or anyone since Victory, a boy he was raised with like a brother.
Joe was fostered by a couple in Virginia with their six children, including Victory. He did not know the identity of his parents, and when he asked about them, he was told that they disappeared without a trace. Joe took the surname “Trace,” representing what they left behind. Victory and Joe were trained by a local hunter, renowned for his skills. Joe learned a lot from the hunter, including how to follow a trail. After that, he met Violet, and the couple moved around, each time giving Joe a sense of newness. Then, Violet began sleeping with a doll.
Joe understands why Violet was sad, and he feels responsible for ruining her life and taking motherhood away from her: “Don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t Violet’s fault. All of it’s mine. All of it. I’ll never get over what I did to that girl. Never. I changed once too often” (129). Joe describes his history as a series of changes, each time transforming him into someone different. Meeting Dorcas marked the most recent change.
Dorcas had acne, but Joe did not want her to fix it. He liked the hoofmark scars on her face and saw this as a kind of trail. One day, Dorcas missed their date, and Joe was confused by a timeline she offered. When his neighbor Malvonne could not conceal that she was laughing at him, Joe knew that Dorcas had slipped away from him. He tracked her for five days and brought her back to Malvonne’s apartment. Dorcas said mean things to Joe, and he realized that other men did not have to track women down. Joe explains that following a trail almost always ends in a gunshot, even when one has no intention of using it.
Chapter 6 Summary
To explain her husband’s absence, Rose told others that her husband became fed up with his work and quit. The truth was too difficult for her to speak aloud—that he had saddled his family with debt and abandoned them. When True Belle moved back to help Rose take care of Violet and the other children, she told stories about living in Baltimore with a white woman and her adopted baby. Vera Louise Gray, the daughter of True Bell’s enslaver, became pregnant. When Colonel Gray found out that the baby’s father was an enslaved Black man, he gave his daughter a case full of money and told her to leave. Vera took True Belle to Baltimore where the two women raised the boy as an orphan. Vera named him Golden Gray after his blond curls. The women loved and doted on the boy. When True Belle learned of her daughter’s situation, she told Vera that she was dying and returned to Virginia to spend the next 11 years raising her grandchildren.
Before she left Baltimore, True Belle told Golden Gray the truth about his father. The rest of the chapter tells the story of Golden’s journey to meet his father for the first time. The narrator interrupts frequently during the description to offer assessments of Golden’s thoughts and character. Golden drove his carriage to Vienna to find his father. While traveling, he came across a naked Black woman running near the road. The woman ran into a tree and was knocked unconscious. At first, Golden wanted to drive on and pretend the woman was nothing more than a vision. He examined her and noticed that her belly was moving. Golden was repulsed by the darkness of her skin as he struggled to make sense of his own identity. Not wanting to touch her, he wrapped her in a coat and placed her in his carriage.
He drove until he saw a small cabin and imagined that it might belong to his father. He imagined himself entering as a hero, a man who rescued this poor woman from the side of the road. The house and stable were empty. Before he carried the woman inside, he cared for his horses and secured his trunk. He threw a dress he found in a closet over the woman and began drinking whiskey. The narrator is critical of Golden’s treatment of the woman and failure to even wipe the blood from her face: “This is what makes me worry about him. How he thinks first of his clothes, and not the woman. How he checks the fastenings, but not her breath” (151).
The narrator retells the story, this time more sympathetically. Golden was confused and hurt. The narrator recognizes that Golden avoided the woman because she represented a part of himself that he had not yet made sense of. A young Black boy arrived and told Golden that the house belonged to Henry Lestroy, Golden’s father. Henry was away for a few days, and the boy was there to care for his animals that often escaped the stable. While the boy located the missing livestock, Golden changed into formal clothes. He wondered if meeting his father would help him to feel whole again. When the boy returned from caring for the animals, he began to tend to the woman and give her water. The narrator decides to wish Golden well.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
In these chapters, the narrator continues to cast judgment on the characters, criticizing them for their choices and making assumptions about their internal worth. The unnamed and ungendered narrator asserts that Joe’s interest in Dorcas is an attempt to recapture his youth. The narrator argues that all people seek to recapture the love of their youth. However, the narrator’s opinions waver throughout the text, calling into question the reliability of their omniscient authority. The narrator turns their criticism inward, explaining that they tend to make hasty judgments rather than empathize with others. The reader is forced to question whether what is presented is true or an assumption based on the narrator’s own biases.
Each character in Morrison’s novel is haunted by the past, deepening the theme Relationships and Trauma. The characters’ histories inform how they see one another and themselves. This is expressed in the narrator’s treatment of Golden Gray. At first, the narrator describes him as self-absorbed and unfeeling. His actions seem to support this assessment. Golden sees a woman, hurt and naked on the side of the road, and nearly leaves her there. Golden is repulsed by the color of her skin, and he shudders at the thought of the woman leaning on him in the buggy. The thought of being treated as a hero for rescuing her compels him to help the woman, but he is careful not to touch her skin as he lifts her into the buggy with a coat. When he arrives at Henry’s house, he leaves her in the buggy and tends to his horses and clothes first.
Later, the narrator recognizes that their critical attitude may be misdirected. When examining the story from a different perspective, the narrator sympathizes with Golden: “How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place” (160). He is a man who recently learned something which upended his identity and sense of self. While attempting to reconcile his feelings, he finds a woman who embodies his complicated emotions. She is “feral” and naked, a glaring representation of the part of himself he feels he is not yet ready to face. This part of himself is not the color of her skin or his own skin. Instead, he grapples with the rewriting of his history, the existence of a father he never knew he had, and a loss of belonging. He is just like Wild, living outside the bounds of what society accepts.
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