The re-formation of Joe’s masculinity is shown in jazzy musical structure, the AABA form, as Joe’s relationships with women, community, and the black culture are demonstrated with the sequence of AABA. As Jazz “[pays] attention on the racist and economic oppression that they confronted and that shaped their identities,” Joe creates new social identities several times, like “the American self-made and new man,” the
“new Negro” (Bouson 171-2). In his search for identity, race, and gender unavoidably traumatize and emasculate him. Only when women relieve Joe’s traumas in their cooperative relationship can he re-form his identity. In Joe’s re-formation of black masculinity, jazz music connects him to women who lead him home. For instance, as the musical digression leads him to his traumatized childhood with Violet, call and response in the digressive section of the novel also alludes to Joe’s mental connection with Violet. Arranged in the AABA form of jazz music, Jazz displays the
development of Joe’s relationships with women which is important for the 2 re-formation of his masculinity. As each section of Jazz resembles the musical AABA form of jazz music, Joe is healed by women, Violet, Dorcas and Felice in particular, and then able to re-form his black masculinity.
1. A.
In terms of musicality, the first section, chapter one, resembles the introductory A of the AABA form of jazz music because of onomatopoeia of the first word, “Sth,”
and the first chapter’s role as a brief introduction of the main theme. At first, the first word, “Sth,” according to Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu, is “the sound of sucking teeth, often made in judgment on some person or event in African-American communities”
(229). It announces its adoption of the tradition of jazz music, the chatting and gossip in the black community with a certain perspective. The following sentence, “I know that woman,” in addition to presenting the love tale, also proves that Jazz is
thematically parallel to the jazz music of love and sex (3). Additionally, “Sth” is also
“fanfare--the first sounds a musician makes to announce that he or she is to take over the next solo” and the “s” sound, particularly, “produced may resemble the sound of a cymbal” (Beaulieu 229). In addition to the “Sth” foretelling the musical resemblance to jazz music, the first paragraph in chapter one alludes to the “A” section of jazz music by introducing the whole story briefly. The first chapter shortly introduces the main theme of the triangulated love in Jazz, as the first paragraph summarizes the whole story. Moreover, it illustrates the background of the story, such as the
indifferent community, the hostile relationships between men and women. With the sound effect and the functional introduction, the first chapter, resembling the “A” of jazzy AABA form, draws readers’ attention to the themes of love and sex.
As the musical resemblance of jazz music of the first chapter of Jazz
demonstrates, Joe’s masculinity, without a cooperation of women and community, is traumatized and deformed in the City. It is depicted in the first chapter that the neighbors are unsupportive, gossipy and indifferent to each other. When Violet feels stressful in the community and experiences mental breakdown, she is considered mad in the community. Moreover, Violet is provoked by Joe’s betrayal while Joe, crying for the loss of Dorcas, is indifferent to Violet’s jealousy. Hence, Joe’s relationship with her deteriorates: when Violet brings a boyfriend home, Joe doesn’t even notice.
As it is illustrated, Violet uncages her bird which is able to say “I love you” in cold winter, which symbolizes Violet’s abandonment of their decayed love. Dorcas, on the other hand, used to console Joe by listening to him attentively. But her betrayal not merely destroys her relationship with Joe but also triggers his motive to shoot her.
After the death of Dorcas, Joe’s bereavement implies that the loss of Dorcas, who used to console him, nearly defeats him. Therefore, in the introductory chapter, Joe is considered violent when he kills Dorcas. Additionally, Violet’s lunacy and her
decayed relationship with Joe also make Joe unable to be have a consoling relationship with women.
2. A.
The second section, chapter 2 and 3, is the second A of the AABA form of jazz music, which serves as the development of the main theme. This section continues the main theme of the conflicting love triangle, just like the second A in jazz music developing the main melody. In addition to the thematic resemblance to jazz music, it demonstrates another jazzy feature, the unharmonious notes. Jazz music, unlike classical music searching for harmony, merely avoids disharmony by following the principles of chord-scale compatibility to compose the compatible discords. In Jazz, the musical discord is represented in two ways. The first discord is the love triangle as Staples states that the triangulated love, involved with jealousy and betrayal, can’t form a harmony (109-14). The second discord is reflected by the conflicts of the characters like Alice and Violet in Jazz, who dispute and paradoxically discuss with each other.
However, most of the time, men and women in the community are either indifferent or hostile to each other, which shows the alienated modern urban life. Implied by the musical structure, Joe’s relationships with women continue to conflict in this section and his masculinity is depicted as effeminate in the City: he cannot be with women around him, such as Violet, with harmony and he is associated with women due to his job as a cosmetic seller.
As the main theme is developed in the structural musicality of jazz, the indifference in the community is further elaborated by having an unsure attitude toward jazz which can embrace people’s pain. Joe, without the access to the jazz music, cultural bond, and ancestral culture, cannot develop an intimate relationship with the community and women. Music, as the singing-dancing scene on the train to
the City implies, represents the black culture connecting the South to the North.
Nevertheless, in the City, people have conflicting attitudes toward the meanings of
“the music,” jazz: Dorcas and Alice have conflicting attitudes toward music: Alice despises music while Dorcas finds her soul in it (56). Without music as the shared and ancestral culture of black people, black people fail to have harmonious relationships with others. In the indifferent City, black men and women’s relationship is tense.
Women in the community, out of fear of men, armed to protect them from men’s attack as it is depicted that “[. . . ] unarmed black woman in 1926 was silent or crazy or dead” (78). Hostile though men and women are, Joe develops a healing relationship with Dorcas. In spite of the fact that Joe can tell Dorcas his childhood trauma of motherlessness, Joe’s relationship with Violet becomes worse and they don’t communicate as it is illustrated that
twenty years after Joe and Violet train-danced on into the City, they were still a couple but barely speaking to each other, let alone laughing together or acting like the ground was a dance-hall floor. (36)
Although Joe’s attempt to communicate with Violet is frustrated, he desires a bond with Violet: Joe is “convinced that he alone remembers those days, and wants them back” (36). However, the neighbors’ gossips about Violet’s insanity further damage her mental well-being. Conventionally, the community in Morrison’s novels plays a significant role in healing people’s pain with racial bond. As Schreiber indicates, “[i]n Morrison’s novels community, family, and other connections create the psychic
support or home that can allow characters to safely relive trauma and survive it” (11).
The bond to the family and community has the power to relieve the racial traumas.
Morrison also affirms the community’s function to help each other in an interview with Childress (Childress 11). Even in the City with the atmosphere of suspicion, there is still communal bond growing in the dysfunction of the community—the
healing power of the sisterhood between Violet and Alice. In spite of Alice’s dislike of music, Alice is linked to the sisterhood as she does needle work with other women.
Being accustomed to the sister bond makes her able to have a way to communicate with Violet. When Violet talks to Alice, Alice represents the power of the community which develops into a sisterhood healing Violet’s pain. Despite the quarrels at the beginning, Violet feels comfortable and gradually shares her emotions with Alice so that she is consoled in their sisterhood. This section, therefore, continues the main theme of the triangulated love and the indifference in the community. However, the sisterhood between Violet and Alice is also a prelude to the possible remedy for Violet, which further heals Joe in this section.
Without cooperation with women, Joe’s masculinity is effeminate for two
reasons: his job as a cosmetics seller and his childlessness. Joe sells women’s products to the rich women who “laughed, tapped the tablecloth with their fingers and began to tease, berate and adore him all at once” (70). Being with women who “thought men were ridiculous and delicious and terrible, taking every opportunity to let them know that they were,” Joe makes them “feel like women” (70-1, 76). Joe, knowing how to satisfy every man and woman, behaves in the ways they expect. However, his masculinity is effeminate due to his occupation as a cosmetics seller which is
regarded as women’s job. Moreover, his childlessness marks him unmanly. As Collins argues in Sexual Politics
the Black buddy template often draws upon the family as a frame for
explaining appropriate social relationships. [. . .] Having a wife and children at home takes on special for the character of the Black buddy, for his ability to commit to one heterosexual relationship within a family unit is a sign of his ability to assimilate. (170)
The passage shows that possessing a child is a token of being an “assimilated man.”
Although childlessness does not trouble Joe, it appears as a mark of unmanliness.
Thus, when Violet sleeps with a doll in her arms, Joe feels emasculated not merely by the society but by his wife. Therefore, due to Joe’s lack of cooperative relationship with women, this section shows the need for Joe’s masculinity to be re-formed.
3. B
The B in the AABA form of a jazz music, the digression, is the most intriguing part of jazz music because it, with wordless communication, is composed of
improvised call and response. In Jazz, chapter 4 to 9 serve as the digressive B since it deviates from the main theme of the triangulated love to talk about Joe’s and Violet’s childhood in the South. Joe and Violet, wordless though they are, embark on a kind of
“textual communication.” The account about the traumas in their childhood forms a
“call and response” which in jazz music, contains not verbal words but a real
understanding as the soloist expresses his or her feeling responded by another player tacitly. In chapter 4 to 9, Joe and Violet trace back to their childhood separately and the flashbacks become interwoven. In chapter 4, Violet reveals her childhood and the romantic story between her and Joe from her own perspective. Violet’s story is followed by a chapter of Joe’s monologue on his childhood story and his romantic story with Dorcas. Chapter 6 and 7 illustrate the story of Golden Gray, who is associated with Joe’s mother and Violet’s grandmother, to connect Violet’s story to Joe’s childhood. These four chapters resemble jazz call and response because chapter four is Violet’s call of her childhood, chapter five is Joe’s response of his childhood, and chapter 6 and 7 are the chord showing the interaction of their childhoods. The connection of their childhood functions to be a way for their communication—
whenever Joe’s childhood is revealed, it is followed by that of Violet’s and vice versa.
Despite the wordlessness, it is a means of communication in a traditional jazz form.
Additionally, musical call and response has a healing power by creating a
communal bond and identity. Mori argues that “[c]ommunal racial music, jazz, plays a significant role in healing the wounded and restoring the communication which has been lost between them” (327). In Jazz, Joe and Violet’s childhood traumas are healed in this communication: Joe’s story responded by Violet’s builds a bridge for them to console each other. Violet, who has been healed in her sisterhood with Alice in the development, has her childhood trauma revealed and healed in the digression. Joe, who has told his trauma of motherlessness to Dorcas in development, reveals his story of being abandoned by Wild in the digression. By revealing his trauma, Joe is able to cooperate with Violet to form a family. Therefore, both Joe and Violet are healed in the jazzy call and response in the digression.
Joe traces back to his childhood, which helps him cooperate with Violet in this section, while his relationships with male friends and other women are revealed in various forms. His relationship with his male friends appears to be intimate as he plays cards with them. However, male friendship in a form of playing and working together doesn’t help him to face his pain (Gurian 53). Joe confesses that he will be teased by his male friends for taking his affairs with Dorcas seriously. Women, on the other hand, heal Joe in various ways: Dorcas heals Joe’s motherless trauma in the past; Felice consoles his pain of losing his lover in the present and Violet supports him with a family in the future. First, Dorcas heals Joe’s motherless trauma by
listening to him carefully. Second, after her death, Felice tells Joe Dorcas’s last words, which make Joe move on. Most important of all, Violet is healed in a sisterhood and her childhood is interwoven with Joe’s childhood. Their interwoven childhood links them together which supports each other and to face their pain together. With the mental support of women, hence, Joe is able to heal his pains and to form a family.
Joe used to be educated to emphasize the physical strength of his masculinity
while he learns from his relationship with Violet that mental strength is essential for the re-formation of black masculinity. In the South, Hunter’s Hunter distinguishes the black man from the white man by defining black masculinity as being strong enough to live in the countryside. When Joe is chosen to be “a man,” and a hunter, Hunter’s Hunter teaches Joe to be “smart” to know “way before what the prey would do” (125).
Hunter’s Hunter warns Joe “never kill the tender and nothing female if you could help it” when he hints Wild is Joe’s mother (175). However, Hunter’s Hunter doesn’t teach Joe how to face Wild and his motherless trauma. Not until Joe reveals his childhood trauma and communicates with Violet is he healed. When Joe’s childhood trauma is healed, he is able to live with his family in the City and re-form his masculinity. Being consoled by women, thus, is irreplaceable for the re-formation of Joe’s masculinity.
4. A
As Joe is healed by his relationship with Violet, he is able to re-form his black masculinity with his family. Chapter 10, the conclusive chapter of Jazz, is parallel to the last A of musical AABA form for it provides a repetition of the main theme and an inviting end to imply that family is the solution to the triangulated love among Violet, Joe, and Dorcas. In jazz music, the conclusion is usually a short repetition of the main theme. Jazz resembles jazzy structural musicality since in the conclusive chapter, the triangulated love is re-formed as a family. Surprising though it seems to be, the dancing scene of Joe, Violet, and Felice represents the family which is the solution of both the music and novel. The dancing scene, showing the three people supporting each other, represents a family unit in which Felice consoles Joe’s pain of losing Dorcas, Violet and Joe cooperate to form a family and Joe financially supports the family. Besides, jazz music usually ends with a musical repetition to play the tune again. In Jazz, there is also a musical repetition as the narrator invites the readers to
re-read the book by saying that “say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now” (229). This ending, drawing readers’ attention to reread and redefine the novel, resembles musical repetition of jazz music. With the thematic solution, the structural repetition and the invitation, Joe’s relationship with women is amended and his masculinity is associated with his family.
After Joe and Violet trace back their South origins, the communal bond, black culture and relationship between men and women are repaired. Felice comes from the community to the family of Joe and Violet and she plays the role of their daughter as she dances with them. Joe and Violet’s desire for a child, with the emblematic
daughter from the community, is fulfilled. The music in this chapter is the remedy and soul for black people again. As Joe and Violet agree that music is the best remedy for the dying bird, they say that “nothing was left to love or need but music” (224). With the help of the community and culture, Joe’s relationship with women is re-formed.
He works and he cherishes the moment to chat about the past with Violet. Violet repurchases a bird and she makes effort with Joe to save the dying bird in the end, which implies that their love wins. The community, culture, and women function to lead Joe home. Joe, in the end, redefines his black masculinity with the association of familial-bond. As Joe’s and Violet’s childhoods are represented in a form of call and response, Joe can face his trauma and sustain the family with Violet and Felice.
As Jazz is structurally parallel to jazz music, it is shown that Joe’s black masculinity is re-formed in the sequence of structural jazz. The conversational techniques of jazz music, such as call and response, alludes to Joe’s interaction with women. The last A of the AABA form implies that despite Joe’s loss of masculinity in the City, he regains and re-formed his masculinity.
IV. Conclusion
The word “jazz” seems to be absent in the whole book, but it is represented in various forms. Among these jazzy elements represented in Jazz, the AABA form of jazz formulates the structure of Jazz. This form implies the interactions among the characters in Jazz. It is the black culture which links Joe with women and the
community. It helps to form a consoling relationship between men and women which
community. It helps to form a consoling relationship between men and women which