Themes: Victimization and Survival

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Toni Morrison has stated that the overarching purpose of her novels is to show readers “how to survive in a world where we are all of us, in some measure, victims of something.” She begins Jazz with an anecdote in which Dorcas seems to be the clear victim of the actions of Joe and then Violet. By the end of the novel, however, Morrison has shown how all the characters are victims, for all are scarred by their pasts— often by the racism, dispossession, and violence that are the heritage of slavery. Most of the characters are thus preoccupied with a search for self that involves working out the complex family patterns that haunt them. Some characters, such as Joe and Golden Gray, conduct an actual search to find a parent. On a less conscious level, most of the characters—including Joe, Violet, Dorcas, Alice, and Felice—are searching for people who will fill the gaps left by the relatives they have, in one way or another, lost. For example, as a result of her mother’s suicide, Violet loses both her mother and her desire to become a mother; yet she comes to find in Alice and in Dorcas (and then Felice) both the mother and the daughter that she longs to have in her life.

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