Toni Morrison's Jazz

Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz, is an experimental postmodern novel that is essentially about the Great Migration and the African-American migrant experience. The novel powerfully captures a vision of an urban setting, specifically Harlem, where the main characters are all migrants from the South, whose stories are shared by shifting narrators. Indeed, the narrator switches so often that by the end of the novel, the book itself narrates as a “mega-voice.” This “voice” can be easily compared to jazz music, because of the improvisational style of the book. The New York City itself plays a very important role in the book. Morrison gives “the City” a capital C, which is also the last letter in the word “music.” The author make a direct connection between

When Dorcas moves with her aunt to Harlem, she is also driven by forces the city unleashes in her; she becomes a rebel, a “wild” creature of the city. Her life story reveals the tremendous impact the city makes on the young and defenseless. It deludes them into believing that they are free to do what they want without repercussions. Unfortunately, they do not realize that the city has “plans” of its own; its streets make people act as it wills. The intoxicating rhythms of its music, with its jazz beat, never stops; the beat urges everyone to be different, to undergo spiritual metamorphosis. The city “pumps desire” and transforms love into a soaring “love appetite”; and yet, only a nameless parrot can vocalize “I love you” (34, 67). Additionally, the music of the city makes the migrants feel that they are stronger, but this new, adventurous identity is achieved at a high cost. As the narrator notes, the newcomers come to “love that part of themselves so much they forget what loving others people was like” (33). Indeed, the music operates like a mechanism of seduction. Dorcas lives in the city, “seeping music that begged and challenged each and every day. ‘Come,’ it said. ‘Come and do wrong’” (67). Thereupon, people who live here are directly exposed to the overwhelming temptation of crime, and the carnal “appetite” of its seductive music. It is very difficult to

Morrison creates a text that represents the hybrid of two powerfully creative and expressive art forms: music and literature. The way the city is described in the novel is similar to the way a piece of jazz music is designed. The basic cords are the frame of the music, as the city appears to be the frame for its inhabitants; the improvisations every instrument plays add to the overall harmony in the same way as the city incorporates people's individual experiences. Surely, Joe and Dorcas lives were irretrievably changed by music and the city. They both were inspired by the city, it made them act and think differently, it changed their souls, and they became a new “improvisation” of the old southerners themselves. The narrator begins the novel with words that can be applied to all New Yorkers, “I’m crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces…Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place….” (5). Indeed, anything can happen in this beautiful, sometimes scary, untamed