Themes: Impact of History on Black Families
Jazz serves as the focal point in Toni Morrison's examination of what critic Denise Heinze refers to as the "debilitating impact of history on black families" (Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 143, 1994). The novel explores the disintegration of a fabricated family and the emergence of a fragmented yet functional one through shared suffering. Violet, haunted by her mother's suicide—who threw herself into a well due to various injustices discussed in the "Social Concerns" section—decides never to have children. She and Joe live a childless life in New York, devoid of a future, which eventually takes its toll. Upon arriving in Harlem, the "promised land," Violet appears to reconsider, perhaps enticed by the illusion of fully embracing the American dream, but she suffers a series of miscarriages. Consequently, Violet becomes increasingly peculiar, directing her maternal and marital love toward the birds in her apartment (in a rare instance of overt symbolism, she even teaches a parrot to say "I love you"). Over time, she starts to imagine the children she could have had—the ones she lost through miscarriage. At one point, she acts on her maternal frustrations by taking a baby from a carriage when the caregiver steps into a store to purchase a jazz record. In a slight variation of the novel's main event, the Harlem community addresses Violet's attempted abduction internally, understanding that involving New York's white police would be unwise.
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