Jazz

The Roaring 20's Background

• The Roaring 20's was also the time of the Harlem Renacasnce
• This was a time of African American pride and discovery
• The streets were crowded and noisy
• Music and poetry were a large part of life

Toni Morrison's Achievements

• Displaying an early interest in literature, Morrison studied humanities at Howard and Cornell Universities
• followed by Texas State and
• and being a chair at Princeton and Yale
• as well as working as an editor for Random House Publishing
• She made her debut as a Novelist in 1970
• First African American to win the nobel prize for her works

Summary

• Published in 1992, Jazz by Toni Morrison is a novel that holds the readers interest with mystery and love
• There are two unhappily married people named Joe and Violet, but Joe falls in love with a eighteen year old named Dorcas
• Dorcas and Joe meet when Joe comes to sell cosmetics to her aunt
• The affair ends when Dorcas dates boys her own age and starts to party

Continued

• Dorcas is cruel and mean to Joe and tells him that he makes her sick
• Continuing Joe tracks Dorcas down at a party and shoots her in the shoulder
• Dorcas tells everyone to not call an ambulance allowing herself to bleed out

continued

• Rumor of Dorcas and Joe affair quickly spreads after her death
• Violet appears at the funeral for Dorcas (Open casket) and stabs her in the face
• later on Violet begins to visit Dorcas' aunt and they form a friendship over grief

Major🔑theme #1

• The first major theme that stands out in "Jazz" is violence
• From the first attack on Dorcas to the next one at her open casket funeral violence proves evident
• From each character's childhood there also comes a background of violence

Quotes for Theme #1

• "When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face, they threw her down the ground and out of the church."(Morrison 1)
• "He was pulled off a streetcar and stomped to death..."( Morrison 57)
• "Did police put their fists in women's faces so the husbands spirits would break just as the women's jaws?" (Morrison 82)

Major🔑Theme #2

• Love is the second major theme
• Joe falls in love with Dorcas who is only 18 at the start of the book
• Love can control a lot of aspects of people's lives

quotes for major theme #2

• "Know her husband too, he fell for an eighteen year old girl with one of those spooky loves that made him both happy and sad..." (Morrison 1)
• "And besides that, she found that the man who killed her niece cried all day..." (Morrison 3)
• "Don't ever think I fell for you, or I fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it." (Morrison 135)

Love and Violence

• Sometimes we find that love makes people do crazy things
• and with that we see love and violence go hand in hand
• When Joe falls for Dorcas it consumes him and when she stops feeling the same it drives him to do horrible things

How does this text reflect the time period

• Jazz is set in Harlem, New York City
• Harlem was home to the Harlem Renaissance which was a period where African American culture thrived
• This novel has a large emphasis on music and poetry which were a huge way to express the hardships and other elements of oppression of African Americans

Thematic QUote

• "But I can't say that out loud, I can't tell anyone that I have been waiting for this all my life and being chosen to wait is the reason I can. If I were able to, I'd say it. Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you, because look, look where your hands are. Now" ( Morrison 229)
• The sentence structure and word choice in this quote reflect the author and her longing for love in her own life.
• This also shows the mystery of the novel as a whole very well

American Identity

• Toni Morrison writes about one of the most important times in American history and shows exactly what it was like to be there
• She makes you dig deeper about the themes and topics in the novel like love and violence and question what they are really about

Works cited

• Lewis, David Levering. "Harlem Renaissance." Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Ed. Colin A. Palmer. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006. 998-1018. U.S. History in Context. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
• "Toni Morrison." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Biography in Context. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.