In her sixth novel Jazz, Toni Morrison "makes use of an unusual storytelling device: an unnamed, intrusive, and unreliable narrator" ("Toni Morrison" 13). From the onset of the novel, many readers question the reliability of the narrator due to the fact that this "person" seems to know too many intimate personal details, inner thoughts, and the history of so many characters. Although as readers we understand an omniscient narrator to be someone intimately close with the character(s), the narrator of Jazz is intrusive, moving in and out of far too many of the characters' lives to be reliable. No one person could possibly know and give as much information as this narrator does. But, as readers of Morrison novels, we must remember that Morrison is a gifted and talented writer whose style of writing, as Village Voice essayist Susan Lydon observes, "carries you like a river, sweeping doubt and disbelief away, and it is only gradually that one realizes her deadly serious intent" ("Toni Morrison" 6). Therefore, when we consider the narration of the novel, we must examine every possibility of Morrison's intent. One possibility appears with the novel's title-Jazz. The title, which encompasses the pervasive sound, its musical timbre of the decade in which the story is set, resonates throughout the novel as a character in its own right. Just as "New York is presented as the City throughout the novel to designate it as an active character" (Kubitschek 143), so is jazz. Like the improvisation of jazz, the storytelling technique of the narrator "improvises" as it moves in and out of the characters' lives where it would be least expected. Therefore, jazz must be considered an active participant, a character, w...
... middle of paper ...
...rison." Gale Literary Databases. Contemporary Authors. 28 November 2014. <http://www.galenet.com>.
Sources Consulted
Berret, Anthony J. "Toni Morrison's Literary Jazz." College Language Association Journal 32.3 (March 1989): 267-83.
Eckard Paula Gallant. "The Interplay of Music, Language and Narrative in Toni Morrison's Jazz." CLA Journal 38.1 (1994): 11-19.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad P, 1993.
Page, Philip. Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison's Novels. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1995.
Peach, Linden. Toni Morrison. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.
Rice, Alan J. "Jazzing It Up A Storm: The Execution and Meaning of Toni Morrison's Jazzy Prose Style." The Journal of American Studies 28 (1994): 423-32.
Morrison, Toni. Introduction. Birth of a Nation'hood. Ed. Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky Lacour. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997. 7-28.
The Hill. The Voices of Toni Morrison, Ohio State University Press: Columbus, 1991. Tate, C., ed., pp.
Davis, Cynthia A. "Self, Society, and Myth in Toni Morrison's Fiction." Contemporary Literature 23.3 (1982)
Rushdy, Ashraf H.A. "'Rememory': Primal Scenes and Constructions in Toni Morrison's Novels." Contemporary Literature 31.3 (1990): 300-323.
Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K. A. (eds.). Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York, Amistad, 1993.
Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.
Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998.
Many jazz artists as we know it are quite talented. Their talents are unique in that they can translate human emotion through singing or playing their instruments. Many have the ability to reach and touch people’s souls through their amazing gifts. Although this art of turning notes and lyrics into emotional imagery may somewhat come natural, the audience must wonder where their influence comes from. For Billie Holiday, her career was highly influenced by personal experience, the effects of the Great Depression, and the racial challenges of African Americans during her time.
Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is the author’s most celebrated work. The book conveys the story of Marlow, who is a sailor on the ship. Marlow narrates the story describing particularly what he came across during his journey and experienced. When we look at the events that take place in the book, it is unquestionable that Women do not occupy a significant portion of the story; the story is predominately male dominated. However, does women’s lack of appearance make them minor characters? Or do women have a minor effect in the story? Having analyzed the book under the scope of “Feminist View”, we can answer these questions and say that women play considerable roles even though they occupy a small portion in the story. In my essay I will
Toni Morrison does not use any words she doesn’t need to. She narrates the story plainly and simply, with just a touch of bleak sadness. Her language has an uncommon power because of this; her matter-of-factness makes her story seem more real. The shocking unexpectedness of the one-sentence anecdotes she includes makes the reader think about what she says. With this unusual style, Morrison’s novel has an enthralling intensity that is found in few other places
Even though jazz was associated with interracial sex and illegal drugs, jazz made a great influence on society, because it was the prayers and answer to the hard tim...
Mobley, Marilyn Sanders. “ Toni Morrison.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith, and Trudier Harris. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.508-510.
Jazz has been a genre we have been studying over these past couple of weeks. During these weeks I have acquired new knowledge that has interested me in this genre. I never viewed jazz as being a political style of music nor did I know that there were songs that contained political messages. Finding out about these different songs and jazz having some aspect of political style to it intrigued me to write about this genre.
The narrator not only tells the story-perform, but also encourages the reader- the listener, to participate in the “performance”: “Talking to you and hearing you answer—that’s the kick”(Jazz, 229). If he could speak aloud, the narrator would “Say make me, remake me”(Jazz, 229) demands from the reader to be active, in the same way as jazz music demands its listeners to be active. For Toni Morrison, the creation process seems to be more important than the final product, and the same is with the Jazz musician, the only thing that counts is “that swing” in the final version. All things considered, Morrison succeeds in making her novel “jazzy”, as Jazz “breathes the rhythms, sounds, and cadences of jazz music, radiating the music’s central ideas, emotions, aural idiosyncrasies perhaps as well as written prose can”(Pici). Morrison took on “new tasks and new risks” but it was worth doing so, as ”the result is a writing style that has a unique mix of the musical, the magical, and the historical.”(www.enotes.com/
In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, Morrison uses universal themes and characters that anyone can relate to today. Set in the 1800s, Beloved is about the destructive effects of American slavery. Most destructive in the novel, however, is the impact of slavery on the human soul. Morrison’s Beloved highlights how slavery contributes to the destruction of one’s identity by examining the importance of community solidarity, as well as the powers and limits of language during the 1860s.