Jazz

“Not only is she losing Joe to a dead girl, but she wonders if she isn’t falling in love with her too.”

For both Joe and Violet, Dorcas is representative of the theme Desire and Possession. Each desires Dorcas in a unique way. Joe desires her for her youth and intimacy, while Violet sees her as the child she never had. After Joe murders Dorcas, both he and his wife attempt to cling to Dorcas and her memory.

“There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves. And in the beginning when they first arrive, and twenty years later when they and the City have grown up, they love that part of themselves so much they forget what loving other people was like—if they ever knew, that is.”

The city is an important symbol that is woven throughout the book. It often functions as its own character, influencing and impacting the characters’ lives and decisions. Here, the city offers Joe and Violet the opportunity to reinvent themselves. They feel alive and reborn among the crowds and music. This is the source of their Desire and Possession. They want to recapture the feeling of youthfulness and vibrancy that the city brought them when they were a young married couple. Instead of looking back on their relationship with one another, Joe and Violet bemoan their younger selves.

“Important things like how the hibiscus smells on the bank of a stream at dusk; how he can barely see his knees poking through the holes in his trousers in that light, so what makes him think he can see her hand even if she did decide to shove it through the bushes and confirm, for once and for all, that she was indeed his mother?”

Joe tells Dorcas things that he feels he cannot tell Violet, including the story of how he tracked down his birth mother. In this story, Joe hides in a bush and talks to a woman he believes is his mother. He tells her to thrust her hand through the branches to confirm that she is his mother, but the darkness makes him unsure whether he really sees her hand or not. Joe’s desperation for his mother to love him is transferred to Dorcas, causing him to react violently when he feels her pulling away from him. The connection between his desire for his mother’s acknowledgment and Dorcas’s love reveals the complicated interplay between Relationships and Trauma.

“Alice Manfred had worked hard to privatize her niece, but she was no match for a City seeping music that begged and challenged each and every day. ‘Come,’ it said. ‘Come and do wrong.’”

The city entices the characters in the novel, sharpening their hardest edges. Dorcas is drawn to the vibrant life and sensuality of the city. Morrison shows that the characters’ trauma makes them vulnerable to the trappings of the city. Dorcas’s need to be loved and controlled is exploited by a city full of people eager to capitalize on a young girl’s body.

“Black women were armed; black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose. Who were the unarmed ones? Those who found protection in church and the judging, angry God whose wrath in their behalf was too terrible to bear contemplation.”

In this passage, Alice Manfred contemplates whether she was right to align herself with fear all her life. She wonders if she should have, instead, armed herself. She is critical of Violet for her behavior at the funeral, but she also understands the deep sense of hate that Violet feels. Violet challenges Alice, asking if she would fight for her man, and Alice is taken aback by the question. The inquiry relates to the theme Violence as an Act of Love and explores whether this type of fighting is an expression of love, hatred, or both.

“The thing was how Alice felt and talked in her company. Not like she did with other people. With Violet she was impolite. Sudden. Frugal. No apology or courtesy seemed required or necessary between them. But something else was—clarity, perhaps.”

Violet and Alice’s relationship mirrors the female relationships found in the third book in the trilogy, Paradise. Violet’s behavior at the funeral and Alice’s love for her niece make them an unlikely pair, but their experience strips them of a need for pretense or civility. The two women can speak frankly to one another. Violet and Alice’s friendship offer the first glimpses of joy in the novel, and this joy comes only as the women begin to unpack together their history of Relationships and Trauma.

“I got quiet because the things I couldn’t say were coming out of my mouth anyhow. I got quiet because I didn’t know what my hands might get up to when the day’s work was done.”

Each character responds to trauma in a unique way. Some characters—like Dorcas and Joe—express their trauma externally. Violet, however, feels she is split into two people. One version of herself expresses her trauma outwardly, such as when she shows up at Dorcas’s funeral. The other side version of Violet, however, turns her trauma inward. She becomes silent and unfeeling.

“By and by longing became heavier than sex: a panting, unmanageable craving. She was limp in its thrall or rigid in an effort to dismiss it.”

Later in her life, Dorcas becomes consumed with sadness. Her two miscarriages lead her to wonder how old her children would be now if they had lived. She sees in Dorcas the child she has lost, affixing Dorcas to Violet’s struggle with Desire and Possession. After Joe murders Dorcas, Violet attempts to learn everything she can about the girl and even displays a picture of Dorcas in her home. Through her attachment to the dead girl, Violet tries to hold on to a life she never had.

“Was she the woman who took the man, or the daughter who fled her womb?”

This quotation further solidifies Violet’s attachment to Dorcas as the replacement for her lost child. As Violet contemplates whether she should leave her husband, she sympathizes with his attachment to Dorcas, even as she is angered by it.

“I thought it would be bigger than this. I knew it wouldn’t last, but I did think it’d be bigger.”

Alice and Violet develop an interesting relationship throughout the novel. Contributing to the theme Relationships and Trauma, the two women find comfort and solace in one another’s company. Together, they speak boldly about life and their feelings without worrying about offending one another. In this passage, Violet explains that she thought her life would be bigger than it really was. As she grew older in a city that promised her everything, Violet began to recognize that her life was hollow and small.

“That’s the way the City spins you. Makes you do what it wants, go where the laid-out roads say to. All the while letting you think you’re free.”

In this passage, the narrator provides a direct assessment of Joe Trace. They are suspicious of him, suggesting that he will soon turn to gambling. Joe came to the city to find freedom from the oppressive atmosphere of the South, but the narrator reveals how trauma follows the characters and impacts their desires. The city, enticing and full of life, convinces Joe, Violet, and Dorcas that there is freedom to be found in the delights it has to offer, never explaining the cost of those temptations.

“I wanted to stay right there. Right after the gun went thuh! And nobody in there heard it but me and that is why the crowd didn’t scatter like the flock of redwings they looked like but stayed pressed in, locked together by the steam of their dancing and the music, which would not let them go. I wanted to stay right there. Catch her before she fell and hurt herself.”

This is the first direct reference from Joe to his murder of Dorcas. Two themes interweave in this passage. First, Joe’s desire to possess Dorcas and the youthful love and intimacy he experiences with her cause him to shoot her. He feels she is slipping away from him; he sees killing her as a way for him to preserve their relationship in the amber of the moment. Second, Joe’s feelings contextualize the theme Violence as an Act of Love. Joe shoots Dorcas because he loves her, not because he hates her. He sees the act as one of passion and care. Even after he shoots her, he feels that he must hold onto her and protect her, not fully understanding the weight of what he has done.

“Everything about her is violent, or seems so, but that is because she is exposed under that long coat, and there is nothing to prevent Golden Gray from believing that an exposed woman will explode in his arms, or worse, that he will, in hers.”

Golden Gray cannot help but see himself in the naked woman he encounters on the side of the road. Her nudity shames him as he grapples with the reality of his own racial background. The narrator criticizes Golden for his aversion to touch the woman while recognizing the hurt he is experiencing. Golden’s story reveals the shame that accompanies racial trauma. The woman symbolizes the part of himself that he has not yet come to terms with or made sense of.

“I am not going to be healed, or to find the arm that was removed from me. I am going to freshen the pain, point it, so we both know what it is for.”

Golden’s avoidance of the woman mirrors his avoidance of the truth about his own past. He does not want to touch her and seems dismissive at the idea of helping her. Rather than carrying her into the house immediately, he lets her lie exposed in the carriage while he cares for his horses and trunk. When he learns that he is in his biological father’s house, Golden puts on formal clothes, feeling the gravity of what faces him. He does not anticipate feeling healed or reconciled, but he knows that he must soon face the pain that he is actively avoiding.

“I have been careless and stupid and it infuriates me to discover (again) how unreliable I am.”

This passage, told from the perspective of the unnamed narrator, initiates more questions about the role of the narrator and the influence they have over the story. While sharing Golden Gray’s story, the narrator heavily offers opinions, admonishing him for his treatment of the woman he encounters and his behavior in the house. Here, however, the narrator turns, calling into question their own reliability as the omniscient voice in the text. A few lines later, the narrator explains that it is not enough to like or even love Golden. They must alter the story, causing the reader to question whether what follows is real or not.

“Didn’t think I had to teach you about people. Now, learn this: she ain’t prey. You got to know the difference.”

In this passage, Henry admonishes Joe for his flippancy about Wild. Young Joe jokes that he will kill her when he finds her, but Henry tells him that she is not an animal to be hunted. Developing the theme Desire and Possession, Joe sees women as objects he can own. Later, he learns to see women as people with their own thoughts, feelings, and desires, though this comes at the expense of Dorcas’s life.

“Hunter relied on most—redwings, those blue-black birds with the bolt of red on their wings. Something about her they liked, said Hunter, and seeing four or more of them always meant she was close.”

Hunter, another name for Henry, tells Joe that his mother is usually with blackbirds. Wild’s association with these birds is a contrast to the caged birds in Violet’s apartment. Wild, who lives freely in the woods, embodies freedom. Joe tries to capture and possess her, but she refuses him. Violet, who is trapped by her pain, embodies captivity. When she returns home from Dorcas’s funeral and sees the birds in their cages, she releases them, overwhelmed by her own entrapment.

“Joe liked for me to eat it all up and want more. Acton gives me a quiet look when I ask for seconds. He worries about me that way. Joe never did.”

In contrast to Joe’s desire to possess, Dorcas desires to be possessed. She prefers Acton over Joe because he is domineering, dismissive, and cruel. Dorcas confuses his control with love and affection, and she rejects Joe because she believes he is too kind and accepting of her. Dorcas’s view is impacted by her trauma. The loss of her parents and Alice’s controlling supervision cause her to both act out and seek an authoritative lover.

“I want to sleep, but it is clear now. So clear the dark bowl the pile of oranges. Just oranges. Bright. Listen. I don’t know who is that woman singing but I know the words by heart.”

As Dorcas dies, she sees a bowl of oranges and tells Felice to relay a message to Joe that there is only one apple. Most interpretations conclude that Dorcas is sending a message to Joe that she still loves him, but others conclude that she is remarking on the bowl of fruit in front of her. Dorcas also hears a woman singing, alluding to the sounds of a woman singing in the woods that Joe hears. He believes this woman to be his mother.

“But I had visited them three or four times before I ever saw him smile. And that was when I said animals in a zoo were happier than when they were left free because they were safe from hunters.”

This remark from Felice engages with the theme Desire and Possession and the symbolism of Birds and Birdcages. Joe smiles at the comment because he has learned that this is not true. As a hunter, he sought to possess both animals and women. He learned, however, that only freedom brings happiness.

“The way she said it. Not like the ‘me’ was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on.”

Violet is nothing like the rumors Felice heard about her. Instead, she is joyful, confident, and content. Violet learns to love and trust in herself. She lets go of Violence as an Act of Love and finds a version of herself that does not need to live in anger. Felice admires Violet’s self-confidence and hopes to be like her.

“‘Why’d you shoot at her if you loved her?’ ‘Scared. Didn’t know how to love anybody.’”

In this short statement, Joe summarizes the motivation for his actions. Joe shoots Dorcas because he is afraid of losing her in the same way that his mother abandoned him. His childhood left him without an authentic expression of love, and he spends his adult life trying to capture it. This connects to the theme Relationships and Trauma. Joe’s action is informed by the trauma he carries from his mother’s repeated rejection and his understanding of Violence as an Act of Love.

“It never occurred to me that they were thinking other thoughts, feeling other feelings, putting their lives together in ways I never dreamed of.”

In the concluding chapter, the narrator expands upon their unreliability. They explain that they expected Joe, Violet, and Felice to live out the same violence that the couple shared with Dorcas. The narrator shows what happens when people are viewed through a narrow lens of perception and bias.