Jazz (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Toni Morrison
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: 1926, with flashbacks to before the Civil War
- Setting: Harlem, New York, and Virginia
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: African Americans, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Blacks, Murder or homicide, South or Southerners, New York City, Harlem Renaissance, 1920’s, Adultery
- Locales: Virginia, Harlem, NY
Characters Discussed
The narrator, never identified by name. Her voice and vision are always unmistakable. Like the neighborhood gossip, she sees, hears, and knows everything. What she does not know, she imagines, chastising herself when she is not as accurate or as reliable as she should be. She is the storyteller who must get the whole story right.
Violet Trace, born in rural Virginia, the third of five children whose insane mother drowned herself in a well. Her father visited his family occasionally as he worked underground for a political party “that favored nigger...
[The entire page is 1367 words long]
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