Jazz (Toni Morrison) Essay
Reconnection
While the struggle to individually survive is inherent in Toni Morrison’s Jazz, what stands out more is the way companionship helps the characters to survive. The relationships that develop within the story are potent in their effects on characters, especially Joe Trace, a fifty-three year old man struggling with a failing marriage. Trying to fulfill his own desires, he has an affair. But because he kills Dorcas, his young lover who does not truly love him, Joe finds himself isolated from his wife and the rest of society. By reestablishing his relationships and connections to people who want to truly care for him, Joe is able to make himself whole again.
In his previous relationships that are problematic, such as his relationships with Dorcas, Joe lacks true communication and feeling. Even with Violet, his wife for over 20 years, Joe is unable to share experiences or have even a normal conversation. Joe does not know about Violet’s problems, for he never talks to her: Joe never learns “of Violet’s public craziness” after they move to the city—Violet is afraid to even reveal her own problems to herself, let alone Joe (22, 97). Revealing of the poor state to which the bonds between them have deteriorated, the narrator describes: “20 years after Joe and Violet train-danced on into the City, they were still a couple but barely speaking to each other” (36). In what is supposed to be the strongest relationship in his life at this point, Joe cannot sustain a meaningful link between him and his wife. Preventing these connections that had been present in the beginning of their relationship, in Virginia, when Violet “worked at anything to be with Joe whenever she could” are the changes that have occurred between them—changes that are brought by age and lack of communication (105). Violet no longer seems to care for Joe as she did before, for Joe describes to Malvonne, the woman with whom Joe is pleading to borrow her apartment for his affair, “Violet
While the struggle to individually survive is inherent in Toni Morrison’s Jazz, what stands out more is the way companionship helps the characters to survive. The relationships that develop within the story are potent in their effects on characters, especially Joe Trace, a fifty-three year old man struggling with a failing marriage. Trying to fulfill his own desires, he has an affair. But because he kills Dorcas, his young lover who does not truly love him, Joe finds himself isolated from his wife and the rest of society. By reestablishing his relationships and connections to people who want to truly care for him, Joe is able to make himself whole again.
In his previous relationships that are problematic, such as his relationships with Dorcas, Joe lacks true communication and feeling. Even with Violet, his wife for over 20 years, Joe is unable to share experiences or have even a normal conversation. Joe does not know about Violet’s problems, for he never talks to her: Joe never learns “of Violet’s public craziness” after they move to the city—Violet is afraid to even reveal her own problems to herself, let alone Joe (22, 97). Revealing of the poor state to which the bonds between them have deteriorated, the narrator describes: “20 years after Joe and Violet train-danced on into the City, they were still a couple but barely speaking to each other” (36). In what is supposed to be the strongest relationship in his life at this point, Joe cannot sustain a meaningful link between him and his wife. Preventing these connections that had been present in the beginning of their relationship, in Virginia, when Violet “worked at anything to be with Joe whenever she could” are the changes that have occurred between them—changes that are brought by age and lack of communication (105). Violet no longer seems to care for Joe as she did before, for Joe describes to Malvonne, the woman with whom Joe is pleading to borrow her apartment for his affair, “Violet