Jazz

Like her husband, Violet carries a history of trauma on her shoulders. Her father has a gambling addiction and leaves his family for years at a time. When he cannot pay his debts, white men enter Violet’s childhood home and take everything, including the chair her mother is sitting in. Violet’s mother dies by suicide a few years later, and the young girl is raised by her grandmother. When she meets Joe, she decides he will be hers, mirroring Joe’s decision to possess Dorcas. Violet earns the nickname “Violent,” because she has a history of strange behavior. After two miscarriages, Violet begins sleeping with a doll and steals a baby from a neighbor. Later, Violet claims that she was wrongfully accused. When she learns of her husband’s affair and that he murdered his young lover, she attends the funeral and attempts to cut Dorcas’s skin from her face. She becomes obsessed with Dorcas and tries to learn everything she can about her. Violet’s fascination with the dead girl is connected to the loss of her children, and she wonders if she has replaced them with Dorcas. Violet wavers between two selves—the woman who married Joe and moved to the city and the woman who uses violence and anger to protect herself.

Violet is a dynamic character and experiences a transformation when she kills the side of herself that adheres to anger. When Alice tells Violet that she should love while she still can, Violet chooses to love herself and Joe. She rediscovers an authentic identity that recalls the confidence she had when she first met her husband. Violet’s journey is symbolized by Birds and Birdcages. In the exposition, Violet keeps birds in cages. After the funeral, she releases them. At the end of the novel, Violet obtains a new bird and heals it by giving it fresh air and music. Joe watches Violet’s shoulders transform into the wings of a blackbird, symbolizing her liberation.

When the narrator first describes Dorcas’s appearance, it is through the lens of Joe Trace. Joe does not see her as a perfect being, although he does idolize the time he spent with her. As he lies in bed, thinking about her, he pictures “her sugar-flawed skin, the high wild bush the bed pillows made of her hair, her bitten nails, the heart-breaking way she stood, toes pointed in” (28). Dorcas’s skin is associated with Peppermint Candy, symbolizing her youth. However, Dorcas does not want to be young. The narrator, Alice, and Felice criticize Dorcas for trying too hard to appear older. She wears grown-up clothes and underwear and attends adult parties. Felice calls Dorcas selfish and “ugly,” and the narrator claims that Dorcas is untrustworthy. Violet also says she is “ugly,” inside and out. However, Joe tenderly loves Dorcas and believes her to be innately good.

Morrison paints Dorcas as she does the other characters—a complicated figure with her own trauma and emotions. Both of her parents die in riots in East St. Louis, and she moves to New York City to live with her aunt. The city entices her, and Dorcas is desperate to be a grown-up. She wants to be possessed and owned by a man, which draws her to the older Joe. However, his kindness causes her to look elsewhere. Dorcas likes Acton because he tells her what to do and how to act. When Joe shoots her, Dorcas refuses to say his name or go to the hospital, giving him time to get away. Felice tells Joe that Dorcas said his name when she died, but her comment leaves the reader to wonder whether she spoke out of love or delirium.

The narrator is a mysterious figure in Morrison’s Jazz. The narrator is ungendered and appears to be omniscient at first. In Chapter 1, the narrator claims to have no muscles and explains that their only defense is to know everything they can about everyone. Throughout the text, the narrator offers unfiltered and extremely critical opinions about the characters and the choices they make. One example of this is the narrator’s assessment of Joe: “He pays almost as much money for stale and sticky peppermint as he does for the room he rents to fuck in. [...] Rat” (121). Despite the narrator’s condemnatory attitude, they frequently reverse their beliefs. Although the narrator disparages Golden Gray’s actions with Wild at first, they later explain that they allowed their personal views to get in the way of the truth. The narrator suggests that they have a habit of imposing their own ideas about human nature onto others, always believing the worst in people.

In the opening chapter, the narrator suggests that the friendship among Joe, Violet, and Felice will mirror what happened with Dorcas. In the last chapter, the narrator casts doubt on the testimony of the entire text. The narrator explains that they wrote what they wanted to believe to be true about the characters. They allowed their negative perception of others to influence the way they told the story.

Wild is a woman who lives in the woods and is usually accompanied by a small group of blackbirds. Golden Gray finds her one day injured by the side of the road and deposits her at Henry’s home. Wild has no interest in her son. When Joe seeks her out as a teenager and attempts to connect: “All she had to do was give him a sign, her hand thrust through the leaves, the white flowers, would be enough to say that she knew him to be the one” (37). Joe tries to kill her before realizing the shells for his gun are in his pocket. Later, the narrator hints that Golden Gray is living with Wild in a cave in the woods.

Some speculate that Wild is the embodiment of Beloved, a character in the first novel of Morrison’s trilogy. In Jazz, Wild functions as a foil to Violet’s character and a symbol of liberation. While Violet is constrained, silent, and imprisoned in her own mind, Wild is uninhibited and free. When Joe finds her, she is singing to herself. As Dorcas dies, she hears a woman singing, referencing Joe’s mother. At the end of the novel, Joe sees Violet’s shoulders turn into blackbird wings, indicating that she is finally free.