63 pages • 2 hours read
Toni MorrisonJazz
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Peppermint Candy
Joe Trace likes peppermint candy, preferring it to any other type. The narrator pokes fun at him for offering peppermint candy to children who would prefer chocolate or something better. Peppermints are considered a candy that older people enjoy, but Joe sees them as a symbol of his youth. The first time he sees Dorcas, he is at the candy shop, buying peppermints. In the novel, peppermint candy represents youthfulness and Joe’s desire to hold onto it. Both Joe and the narrator associate Dorcas’s skin with peppermints. Although she has acne, she continues to eat candy, a habit Joe encourages. This association emphasizes her young age and perceived innocence. The narrator uses this information to support the idea that Joe’s love for Dorcas is founded on his desire to recapture his own youth.
Birds and Birdcages
In the novel, Morrison adheres to the association of birds and liberation. In Chapter 1, the narrator describes the rooms of Joe and Violet Trace’s apartment as being like “empty birdcages wrapped in cloth” (11). Violet collects birds and carefully tends to them each day. After the funeral, she returns home and is overwhelmed by them. She releases the birds, including the parrot who repeatedly tells her he loves her. Because Violet feels trapped, she cannot stand keeping animals in cages in her home.
Joe, Violet, and Dorcas are imprisoned by their trauma, allowing it to inform their relationships and choices. In turn, they try to trap others and possess them. Violet attempts to hold on to Dorcas after she dies, conflating the young woman with children she lost in pregnancy. Joe tries to possess both Dorcas and his mother by killing them. Dorcas gives Acton gifts and changes her appearance and behavior to please him, hoping it will cause him to want to stay with her.
Wild and the red-winged blackbirds contrast Violet’s domesticated birds and the mental imprisonment of the characters. Like Wild, the blackbirds live freely in nature, uninhibited. Joe and Violet learn that they must liberate themselves and one another to fully engage in authentic love. This lesson is further expressed when Violet buys a new bird at the end of the novel. The bird is sick, and Violet tries everything to help it get well again. When she has the idea to take the bird to the roof to listen to music and enjoy fresh air, Joe helps her. The bird begins to get better. Similarly, Joe and Violet begin to heal from their trauma when they stop trying to hold on so tightly to the people they love. Joe turns to his wife in bed and sees her shoulders transform into the wings of a red-winged blackbird, indicating her newfound freedom.
The City
The city plays a key role in the lives of the characters in Morrison’s novel and, in many ways, functions as a character, influencing the character’s decisions and feelings. Morrison explores many aspects of Harlem and New York City in the 1920s, including the music, violence, and culture of the period. At times, the unnamed and ungendered narrator seems to speak as the voice of the city itself, describing the comings and goings of the characters with omniscient affection. The initial first-person reference by the narrator comes with a description of the city, and the narrator continues to describe the streets of Harlem throughout the text. The characters’ lives are intertwined with the seasonal shifts in music and air, and the narrator associates the mood of the seasons with the changes in the lives of the characters.
When Joe and Violet left Virginia for New York City, they were alive with excitement. Their migration was one story among many. The narrator suggests that the couple’s love for the city outweighs their love for one another. At the end of the novel, Violet tells Felice that she let the city change her and that she had to rediscover her authentic self. Felice does not understand because she still believes the city is a wonderful place. Dorcas also sees the city as a place of enticement and transformation, captivated by it from the age of nine. However, Violet understands that trauma is carried. Changing one’s location does not change the reality of one’s past. The city symbolizes a hollow promise of possibility.
Related Titles
By Toni Morrison
