List of Characters

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Narrator—unnamed. Moves in and out of the story.

Violet Trace—The main character, a hairdresser. She has been married to Joe Trace for 20 years. She has trouble holding on to her husband and her sanity. When her husband shoots his lover, Violet is thrown out of the funeral for trying to disfigure the corpse’s face.

Joe Trace—A main character, the husband of Violet, a cosmetics salesman. He has named himself Trace because he can find no trace of his mother.

Dorcas Manfred—The 18-year-old girl that Joe falls in love with. She is being raised by her aunt Alice Manfred because her parents were killed in racial incidents. Her only interest is to explore her sexuality.

Wild—Joe Trace’s mother. She could not speak and lived almost like an animal in the cane fields. Joe was hurt that she could never care for him or acknowledge him as a child.

Golden Gray—A white-skinned man whose blood is half black. He is named for the color of his eyes. As a child, he was cared for by Violet’s grandmother, True Belle. His mother is Vera Louise Gray and his father is Henry Lestory. When he finds out his father is black, he vows to kill him.

Rose Dear—Violet Trace’s mother. The pressures of trying to provide for her children lead her to commit suicide by throwing herself down a well.

True Belle—Violet’s grandmother, Rose Dear’s mother. She comes to the rescue of the family when they are penniless. She also raised Joe’s father, Golden Gray

Alice Manfred—Dorcas’ aunt who is eager to care for her sister’s child. She is considered well-to-do in Harlem society. She wants Dorcas to be above the average street people, so she raises her with an iron hand.

Malvonne—Joe and Violet’s upstairs neighbor. She has allowed Joe and Dorcas to meet secretly in her apartment and feels guilty about it.

Sweetness—Malvonne’s no good nephew. She has raised him as her own son. He is a very minor character who steals the neighborhood mail looking for money.

The Miller Sisters—Francis and Neola. They care for Dorcas as a child and preach about the sins of sex.

Violet’s father (unnamed)—Husband of Rose Dear. He is always away from home when the family needs him. When he returns he brings money and trinkets for everyone.

Stuck and Gistad—Joe’s two buddies. They don’t always tell him about Violet’s crazy behavior.

Hunter’s Hunter—(This is a name given periodically to a man who is a good woodsman.) A man who teaches Joe and Victory about the woods. Also the name used for Henry Lestory, Golden Gray’s black father.

Henry Lestory—An ex-slave who was Golden Gray’s father. He was also called Hunter’s Hunter.

Vera Louise Gray—Golden Gray’s mother. Her child was fathered by a black slave and as a result, she was banished from her home. Her father owned the plantation where True Belle was born. She took True Bell with her when she was sent away to Baltimore.

Colonel Wordsworth Gray—Vera Louise’s father, Golden Gray’s grandfather. He owned a plantation in the area. He disowned his daughter when he discovered a slave was the father of her child.

Honor—A local teen who helps Henry Lestory around the farm.

Victory Williams—Joe’s childhood friend. He always has the answers Joe needs.

Rhoda and Frank Williams—Victory’s parents. They raised Joe as if he were one of their own children.

Acton—Dorcas’ new, younger boyfriend.

Felice—Dorcas’ best friend, raised by her grandmother because her parents are live-in servants in
upstate New York. She becomes friends with Joe and Violet.

(This entire section contains 634 words.)

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The Characters

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Morrison chose to present the story of Joe, Violet, and the others through a narrator who is seemingly all-knowing though by no means objective. She is in everybody’s business not simply because she is nosy or wants to interfere but because she needs to understand people, their past, their circumstances, and their relationships. She tries to reveal the truth. She will also admit when she has had to imagine the truth, when she has fallen short in presenting it, and when she has failed. An individual’s truth is not easily discernible, and it is not apparent all at once. It also contradicts. Therefore, the narrator’s explanation of the events dominating the lives of a few people on Harlem’s Lenox Avenue during the first three months of 1926 requires an account of recent history, music, magazines, newspapers, and hairstyles.

Although Joe Trace is a murderer, he is drawn sympathetically. The neighborhood women trust the door-to-door cosmetics salesman to come into their homes, to escort them home at night, and to warn the young ones of city dangers. He is their neighbor, their friend. Everyone knows that Joe killed Dorcas, but because no one saw him do it, because Dorcas’s aunt, Alice Manfred, knows the futility of calling white policemen to investigate a black girl’s murder, and because Joe has suffered so, he goes unprosecuted. Joe Trace does not conform to the violent urban stereotype. His strong back and keen knowledge of nature helped him survive in rural Virginia and gave him and his wife a poor but happy life. In coming to the City, Joe climbed the rungs of the ladder available to African American men. His desire to regain young loving and to fill the void left by his mother, who refused to touch his hand in the Vesper County woods, and by his silent wife, causes him to lose control of himself and his life.

Understanding Violet is just as difficult. The fifty-year-old woman readers see at the novel’s beginning, one who drinks malteds laced with Dr. Dee’s Nerve and Flesh Builder in an attempt to regain her long-lost hips and who is called “Violent” for having cut a dead girl’s face, is fragile, fragmented, and silent. She is a woman who wonders what exactly Joe found in Dorcas and hopes to discover it by studying the girl’s photograph, placed prominently on the apartment mantelpiece. The narrator observes that Violet was not always “cracked” or divided. “I call them cracks because that is what they were. Not openings or breaks, but dark fissures in the globe light of the day” that led her to almost steal a child, to sit down in the middle of the street for no reason, and to say totally inappropriate things. She had once been strong enough to drive a team of horses, strong enough to claim Joe Trace when he fell out of a walnut tree. After Dorcas’s death and Joe’s sorrow, after she released her parrot that said “I love you,” and after “that Violet” had cut Dorcas’s face, she demands from Alice Manfred, “Tell me something real. Don’t say I’m grown and ought to know. I don’t. I’m fifty and I don’t know nothing.” Morrison provides glimpses of that orphaned girl haunted by her suicidal mother. She leaves readers with a woman who finds comfort under the covers with her husband of all those years, delighting in her new parakeet and the regular visits of a young girl.

Dorcas, the murder victim, does not appear as victimized as one might expect. Although Violet wanted to love her, she proclaims her “ugly inside and out.” Felice denies that characterization but admits that “she used people. . . . Dorcas was cold.” Even the narrator, who can empathize with Dorcas’s need to explore, does not like her: “I always believed that girl was a pack of lies.” Dorcas loves an old man to appease her own sexual desires and leaves him for the same reason. She lets herself die with the feel of a young man’s arms around her, the taste of sweet liquor in her mouth, and the sound of jazz in her ears.

Morrison’s narrator does not know everything. What she has not observed, she invents: the thoughts and feelings of characters, and events and people from their past. She is also self-corrective at times. When she thinks she has not portrayed Golden Gray as justly as she should, she admits it: “What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly?” Taking a deep breath, she begins again. “Now I have to think this through, carefully, even though I may be doomed to another misunderstanding. I have to do it and not break down.” What she produces, for all her self-censure, is a comprehensive portrait of intriguing people who surprise even her: “It never occurred to me that they were thinking other thoughts, feeling other feelings, putting their lives together in ways I never dreamed of.” She gives the truth.

Characters and Culture

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Readers of Morrison's fiction often expect to encounter vivid and compelling portrayals of characters who carry psychological wounds, frequently resulting from experiences of racism. In Jazz, while the characterizations are less intense than those in Beloved or Song of Solomon, Morrison arguably excels in presenting ordinary characters who evoke our care and empathy, as their anguish and frustration resonate deeply. The two main characters, as previously discussed, are intricate and dynamic figures. Their complex journeys can be distilled into a basic pattern: they move from youthful enthusiasm and aspirations through adulthood and disillusionment. An uncharacteristic act of violence sets each on a path of grief and suffering, ultimately teaching them to love and care for one another. However, each character follows a distinct path toward liberation. Violet navigates her struggles through shared experiences with Alice, but she also must separate her true self from the person who, in a moment of madness, released her beloved caged birds on the day she attacked Dorcas. When Felice asks Violet why she did it, Violet's cryptic answer sheds light on her process of self-distancing: "Lost the lady... Put her down someplace and forgot where." Here, the theme of lost hopes is depicted as a transformation in self-perception, where the guilt-ridden individual creates an alter ego to shoulder the burden of incomprehensible or shameful actions. Through this transference, Violet essentially reclaims the person she was before Joe's involvement with Dorcas. This notion might seem psychologically improbable (how can one simply set aside such futile and malicious acts?) and inconsistent with Morrison's portrayal of Violet. What Violet likely means is that, while cultivating her friendship with Alice, she strives to understand her behavior by referring to the deviant emotions that drove her to violence in the third person. As she examines her motives, she thinks of the actor as "that Violet" who fought the ushers, stabbed the corpse, and released the parrot. This method of reconstituting her character is psychologically plausible. Unable to forgive her actions or reconcile them with her self-perception, Violet attributes these impulses to an alter ego, distancing them from her core identity. Thus, to manage these behaviors without entirely disowning responsibility, she attempts to assign them to someone other than herself, an alter ego she can reject to find peace. Her turning point, when she begins to recover her complex new identity, accepting responsibility for all her actions—both bizarre and rational—comes paradoxically when she acknowledges the artificiality of her self-construction: "NO! that Violet is not somebody walking around town, up and down, up and down the streets wearing my skin and using my name shit no that Violet is me!" By integrating her capacity for violence and strange behavior into her self-conception, Violet lays the groundwork for achieving inner peace.

Joe's crime is more severe, if less peculiar, than Violet's, and his journey to reconciliation is markedly different. While Violet could rely on Alice's hesitant friendship to aid her in understanding herself, Joe faces the solitary task of coming to terms with taking a life, with minimal support from friends or the community. Morrison addresses this challenge by allowing Joe to narrate his own story—a tale of frustration and disappointment that leads to him becoming what the narrator describes as a "Thursday man," a married man who meets his mistress only on Thursdays, and a "Black and blues man,... a Blackthereforeblue man." Morrison thus connects the older, searching Joe with the essence of one of America's unique art forms, the blues, where minority artists convey their pain, anger, joy, and triumph through music. However, Joe, despite being surrounded by Harlem's music, is not a musician himself. He must discover the roots of his violence and find ways to cope with the act of killing someone he loved. Consequently, Morrison grants Joe his own voice for a significant portion of the book, allowing him to directly share the disappointment, pain, and fear that marked the six major changes in his life. Each of these events, often marked by attempted genocide by the white majority or the threat thereof, could have broken anyone's spirit. Yet Joe, despite being needy and hurting, has managed to survive them all, including the maternal rejection discussed in the "Themes" section. Narrating his story is Joe's first step toward self-acceptance and healing. However, to Morrison's credit, Joe does not undergo a sudden or melodramatic transformation. He acknowledges his crime and its gravity while trying to keep his love for Dorcas alive by loving Violet and Felice better. When Felice asks Joe why he committed the act, he replies, "Scared. Didn't know how to love anybody." Like Violet's response, this is only a partial truth. Both the narrator and Felice recognize the depth and sincerity of Joe's love; Felice senses that this older man's affection is neither predatory nor selfish. Yet, when he finds Dorcas dancing energetically with her young lover Acton, he loses control. Morrison wisely leaves it to the reader to decide what in this moment disrupts a life of discipline and self-restraint. Jealousy? Perhaps, but this seems inconsistent with her overall depiction of Trace. It is more likely that this moment represents Joe's realization of the inevitable transience of all emotions, relationships, and even life itself. Moreover, he directs his fury at the messenger, not the message's source. After all, how can anyone attack the universal enemy, "the way things are"?

While numerous other characters warrant discussion, such as Alice Manfred's efforts to eliminate temptation, Golden Gray's search for his father, and Miss Vera Louise's twisted racist sexuality that entangles True Belle, Violet's grandmother, in her adoration of Golden Gray until he becomes another "bluest eye" similar to Pecola's false aspirations in the novel of that name, we must limit our remaining analysis of characterization to the one figure who is simultaneously most present and absent throughout the plot of this paradox-rich novel. It is well-known that one of Morrison's inspirations was a photograph from James Van DerZee's Harlem Book of the Dead. In this image, a young woman lies in a casket, but it is her legend that sparked the novel. Shot at a party, she died refusing to name her assailant. The name Morrison chose for her character is particularly intriguing. Most of the "contemporary" characters in Jazz have European-American names like Alice or Joe, while most of the "Reconstruction era" characters possess names reminiscent of slave times, like True Belle, or are named as categories of being, such as "Wild" or "Hunter's Hunter" (there is some speculation that the man's name is Henry Lestory "but who cares what the nigger's name is," according to his son Golden Gray). However, the central character bears a rare name that dates back at least to the New Testament. Dorcas was a somewhat popular name in the pastoral conventions of the English Renaissance, with perhaps the most famous instance appearing in Act 4 of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale as a shepherdess and rival for the affections of the foolish son of the sheepfold owner, who becomes the heroine Perdita's surrogate father. Morrison more directly references a figure named both Dorcas and Tabitha in Acts 9:36-43, a devout woman whom St. Peter raised from the dead. Although Morrison's Dorcas is neither resurrected nor particularly devout, she serves as the catalyst for the psychological and spiritual rebirth of both central characters and her best friend Felice.

As noted in the "Social Concerns" section, Dorcas suffers from both racial violence and oppression. Her parents perished in the 1917 riots, and her Aunt Alice, despite her own past resentments, has tried to shield Dorcas from Harlem's allure. Consequently, Dorcas is depicted as a rebellious teenager, chafing against the constraints of the past and eagerly anticipating a future with fewer restrictions. Her relationship with Joe remains enigmatic throughout the novel, but Morrison suggests that her interest is both exploitative and something deeper. Dorcas clearly uses Joe to obtain cosmetics and to visit clubs (while Joe, a "Thursday man," prefers more private encounters); she even pesters him about "Mexico," not the country, but a forbidden club the narrator indirectly links to the jazz music infiltrating Harlem. In death, Dorcas becomes a symbol for many characters. Alice sees in her niece her own failure as a surrogate parent and evidence of Harlem's dangerous allure. Violet initially demonizes Dorcas to justify attacking her but later comes to love her posthumously, figuratively adopting her as one of the children she never had. Joe must grapple with the guilt of having taken her life, but he also challenges the public's perception of Dorcas as merely crass and exploitative, adding depth to her memory: "Never saw a needier creature in my life." Felice, on the other hand, struggles with her own view of Dorcas as cold, calculating, and defiant. Part of what drives Felice to Joe and Violet's home is her inability to forgive Dorcas for dying, seemingly when she had a choice. As her confidante, Felice cannot comprehend or forgive Dorcas's refusal to seek medical help. In Felice's eyes, the wound was not fatal; Joe shot Dorcas in the shoulder, and her death resulted from blood loss while she refused treatment: "Dorcas let herself die," Felice asserts. "Said she'd go to the hospital in the morning." Thus, Felice harbors a survivor's grudge against Dorcas, feeling abandoned by someone who appeared to have a choice.

While this analysis does not aim to solve the mystery of Dorcas's refusal to seek hospitalization, two points are evident: Her silence has become part of the community folklore surrounding her; and more importantly, in the racially charged New York culture described by Morrison, it may not have mattered whether Dorcas agreed to hospitalization. Despite Dorcas's wishes, Felice did call an ambulance, but it took several hours for the medics to arrive. By the time they came, Dorcas was already dead, and they blamed the delay on icy roads. Felice, however, sees it differently: "really because it was colored people calling."

Another aspect of Dorcas's death warrants discussion. As a teenager, she sought happiness, linking it to glamour, youth, and excitement. At a dance with peers she wishes to impress, she is described as "Happier than she has ever been anytime." However, this happiness, unlike the contentment she felt with Joe, relies on the superficial elements of her experience—the dancing, the alcohol, the "beautiful people" around her, and the envy she anticipates from other young women because her youthful lover is handsome, lithe, flashy, "and a little cruel." Acton, the young man, serves as both the source of Dorcas's liberation and Morrison's subtle indication of the new urban environment's indifference. To Dorcas, Joe Acton is a "rooster," a disdainful term for a clever but shallow young man. Dorcas also recognizes Acton's indifference, while Felice questions why Dorcas allowed Acton to take material possessions from her, unlike Joe, who always gave. Joe bolstered Dorcas's sense of worth and potential, whereas Acton diminishes her; Joe's love for her was so intense that he stalked her across the city and killed her, while Acton abandons her in her final moments. It is suggested that through Dorcas's choice of a lover closer to her age and social aspirations, Morrison validates the older characters' fears about the emerging disintegration facing Harlem as new trends arise.

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