Jazz
By Toni Morrison
Review by Vicki Elliott
The novel, Jazz, by Toni Morrison, tells a story of an affair between a man, Joe and a teenage girl, Dorcas. Joe is married to Violet and they are both of Virginian decent. However, their marriage, in the beginning of the novel, is falling apart. The book falls into a fiction/literature genre, it is a story of deadly love. This novel really shows you the effects of love and how negative or positive it can really be.
The novel opens with Violet taking all of her beloved birds, one always says” I love you” to her, and setting them free. Violet is a fifty-six year old black woman, whose father abandoned her family and whose mother, Rose Dear, committed suicide by jumping down a well because all of her belongings were taken away. Violet moved to Harlem with her husband Joe when their marriage was still in the “honey-moon” stage, or in other word they were still madly in love. As the years past Violet fell into depression and Joe became unfaithful to her.
Joe Trace also had what can be called a tragic childhood, he was adopted because his mother deserted him. Joe knows that he was adopted, throughout the novel you will see that it causes him to not be sure about where he came from. Joe grew up wondering what his roots were, in a way your parents define who you are and Joe had no idea who his were. Even thought Joe meets Violet, falls in love, gets married and moves to the City, their love starts to fade away and Joe falls in love with a young, teenage girl Dorcas. The beginning of the novel really captures the essence of how Joe feels about Dorcas when Morrison stated that he loved her “with one of those deep down, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going”. When Dorcas leaves Joe for a younger man all those feelings of being deserted and confused by his mother come rushing back and Joe shoots her. While telling my mother about this sad character Joe we realized that all of the women who were supposed to be important to him deserted him. Violet deserted Joe in an emotional way not literally left him such as Dorcas and his mother did.
Dorcas, Joes teenage lover, lives in Harlem with her aunt Alice Manfred who took her in after she was orphaned when both her mother and father died during a riot. This gives Dorcas a connection to Violet and Joe who also lost their parents. Dorcas got involved with Joe Trace after he came around trying to sell beauty product. Joe was obsessed with her love and attention because she was a woman in his life who actually paid attention to him. When Dorcas got sick of the older man she formed a relationship with a younger boy, Acton, who was a no good boyfriend as it turns out. When Joe shoots Dorcas in the shoulder, I believe it was, she chooses to die. If Dorcas let someone call the ambulance and went to the hospital she would have survived, but she chose to bled to death.
This novel was one of my favorites, as a reader I love Toni Morrison’s work, she has a way of captivating you and putting you into what she is writing. The main reason I chose this book for my summer reading was because my sophomore year I read another one of her novels, The Bluest Eye and I absolutely loved it. Both of these novels are based around black history, even though I am of Caucasian decent, her novel gave me great perspective, also her writing style really allows you as a reader to picture the novel almost as movie as you read.