Jazz: African American, Violet's Character
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Introduction of Toni Morrison
Ms. Morrison received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for Song and Solomon. In 1987, Beloved was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her body of work was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Jazz published in 1992, Morrison continues her theme of giving a voice to the voiceless. Once again she does everything she can to stretch the imagination. The novel makes both racial and historical statements about the inequalities of life for African-Americans in the post-slavery era. With the writing of Jazz, Morrison takes on new tasks and new risks. Jazz, for example, doesn't fit the classic novel format in terms of design, sentence structure, or narration. Just like the music this novel is named after, the work is improvisational. In this work, she is influenced not only by the Jazz, blues, and gospel music she was rared on, but also by the folklore, and ghost stories that her family told for entertainment. The result is a writing style that has a unique mix of the musical, the magical and the historical.
African-American:
Few writers have been as celebrated or influenced as Toni Morrison. She has won the Pulitzer Prize and is the first African- American women to be awarded the Noble Prize. In recent decades, a number of African- American women have made an important contribution to the national literature. For example, Toni Morrison’s novels explore the lasting effects of slavery as well as the ties that connect black women. Jazz was the first developed by African- American musician around 19oo. Jazz draws upon black folk music and African traditions. But it has a sound and style all its own. Jazz is the very flexible form of music and it has developed into many sounds and styles. While one of the greatest jazz musicians has been African- American like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, white musicians soon adopted jazz as well. Jazz has absorbed Latin sounds from the Caribbean and South American. It has even been combined with classical music. Today, musicians all around the world add their own cultural accents to Jazz.Q: Is Violet a convincing character?
The chief female character in the novel, however, is that of Violet Trace. She has given us not only the picture of her physique but also the mind developed in the consciousness of racial complex. She is the wife of Joe Trace, Violet is an unlicensed hairdresser, who is nicknamed ‘Violent’ after she invades Dorcas’ funeral to dishonor the girls’ face with a knife. Violet married Joe Trace in Virginia and she was similarly eager to disavow her memories of an itinerant father and a mother who killed herself by jumping into a well. In Harlem Violet struggles to preserve her sanity, amidst the tumult of three miscarriages, her husband’s affair, and her ebbing youth.In a text of the novel, Toni Morrison avoided giving any mental picture. Whatever she has given to convey the mind of the characters is through dialogues or their behavior with the other people. She has given the out appearance of Violet on these words:
‘She is awfully skinny, Violet; fifty, but still good looking when she broke up the funeral, You’d think that being thrown out the church would be the end of it- the shame and all- but it wasn’t. Violet is mean enough and good looking enough to think that even without hips or youth she could punish Joe by getting herself a boyfriend and letting him visit in her own house.’
‘Violet wore the same dress each time and Alice was irritated by the thread loose from her sleeves, as well as the coat lining ripped in at last three places she could see.’
To support her opinion about the psychology or mind of Violet Trace she has given two very powerful points or touches in the description of the novel. The first is Violet talking to her parrot. Now, the desire behind keeping birds and training them may not be always loneliness for not having children but in the case of Violet, it was definitely “deep silence and loneliness” that she wanted to counter. Her parrot was trained to say; “I love you.” They leave so powerful an impression of Violet Trace on our minds that we feel no further anxiety to know anything about her. The people living around her had started calling Violet not Violet but ‘Violent.’
Violet’s act of freeing the birds from the cage in the art of freedom; she loves freedom and hates the cage. Though Violet’s character is portrayed as a central character or heroine of the novel. The character equal to her stature both in presentation and significance is that of Dorcas Mansfred. After Dorcas’s funeral, Violet relies upon Alice Mansfred’s advice to stay with her husband. The conclusion of the novel indicates that even if Violet is unable to fully restore the physical body of her youth, she is able to resuscitate her marriage.
We definitely feel sympathy toward this character (Violet) because every woman wants to make her home free from tensions and wants a husband to be with her forever. And if someone wants to snatch her happiness or husband she became lioness to protect her home and members of the home. Same is done with Violet, though she had a husband, who is involved with some other woman, she can’t bear this- at all. But one thing that I personally do not appreciate about Violet is that her attack of the corpse of Dorcas with a knife. I think that this attack is not convincing. Apart from the woman’s jealousy, she should not do this thing at all.