Jazz Figurative Language

In the excerpt from the novel Jazz by Toni Morrison, the author develops the themes gender roles and identity through conflict and creating a tense tone and mood with the use of sentence structure, diction, punctuation, figurative language and other elements. Sentence structure is used throughout the excerpt allows the author to create the conflict; Alice vs. men in society in lines 5-8. The author writes a list of all the uses Alice gives men’s old shirts. Using a specific list of uses such as “rags tied around pipe joints to hinder freeing” and “salt bags to scrub teeth” show how Alice no longer has respect for the shirts. In the same way that Alice lacks respect for the men’s shirts she used to iron she also lacks respect for men in society. This helps develop the theme of gender roles, Alice doesn't have respect for men because she thinks women are forced to do things they shouldn't have to like share, fight,a nd fight over men. The short sentences used to

The author uses imagery; “The dark hat made her face even darker.”(17) and a similie “Her eyes were round as silver dollars...”(17-18) to describe Violet. Having round and silver eyes implies that she is curious while being dark and wearing dark clothing creates a tense mood. Morrison also uses imagery in the first paragraph when describing Alice’s ironing. She writes “Years and years and years ago she had guided the tip of the iron into the seam of a man’s white shirt.”(2-3) implying that Alice had served men for a very long time. In the same paragraph the author also describes, in detail, how “Now her own shirtwaists got her elegant attentive handcare.”(8-9). This shows the development of a conflict between Alice and men and how she now refuses to serve them. This creates the themes of identity and gender roles because not only is Alice being independent of men but she is also creating her own