Racism

The story covers the lives of African Americans over a period of more than fifty years, some of those
years being in the South. Thus, it is not surprising that racism is present as an underlying theme throughout.
Racism in part causes Colonel Wordsworth Gray to disown his daughter when she becomes pregnant by a
black man. Racism in the form of unequal economic resources is responsible for the fact that Rose Dear and
her family are thrown out of their house. Violent racism forms the background of Rose Dear’s despair. Joe
saw racism firsthand as a boy in the South when two of his step brothers were hurt badly because they were
black. In 1906, Joe and Violet set off north in a train that is racially segregated until they get out of
Delaware, where the dining car becomes open to everyone.

There is racism in the form of the riots in East St. Louis in 1917, in which Dorcas’s parents are
killed. There is racism in Harlem in the same year, when Joe is almost killed by a white man in a riot. Race
is at the heart of how white people think at the time, and they are disturbed by the mass movement of black
people from the south to the north, which is known as the Great Migration. Alice Manfred regularly
experiences a kind of casual racism on Fifth Avenue in New York City, where white people move away
from her if she sits next to them on the trolley, and in other situations she hears people say things like
“Don’t sit there, honey, you never know what they have”. Black people take menial jobs and have to be
subservient to white people; they must make sure they smile so as to get tips and not appear sullen or
threatening. Racism extends even further, poisoning Golden Gray, who acquired racism by being raised
white, even though his father is black. Even the thought that he has a black father fills him with anger.
Racism in various forms thus pervades the novel, and the characters have to learn to deal with it since they
have few ways to combat it, other than to retain their dignity when slighted.

Broken Families and Absent Fathers

There are few intact families presented in the novel. Each is fractured in its own way, and people still
have in later life the wounds they incurred from their childhoods. As the narrator puts it about Violet: “the
children of suicides are hard to please and quick to believe no one loves them”.

A recurring theme is absent fathers. Violet Trace’s father abandoned the family when Violet was young; he
returned occasionally with gifts, only to disappear again soon after. Joe Trace never knew his father or
mother and was raised by foster parents. Dorcas lost both her parents to a race riot when she was a young
child and was raised by her aunt. Her choice of a much older man, Joe, to have an affair with, is proof
enough of her childhood deprivation. Vera Louise Gray’s father, Colonel Wordsworth Gray becomes in
effect an absent father when he disowns his daughter because she is pregnant by a black man. Vera Louise
makes a life for herself without family other than her son, Golden Gray. Golden Gray grows up with no
knowledge of his father, and only learns of his father’s identity when he is eighteen. He immediately goes in
search of him. Felice, although both of her parents remain in her life, is mostly raised by her grandmother.
The young woman Wild has no family at all and lives entirely outside any social structure.

In all these cases, the children in these broken families are left to get on in life as best they can. In the
case of the two main characters, Violet and Joe, they are in a sense always searching for and trying to feel
the presence of their mothers. Violet’s mother, Rose Dear, committed suicide by jumping into a well, and
Violet’s decision never to have children herself is testament to the pain she endured and observed in her

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family in childhood. She never forgets her mother or what happened to her, and eventually her memory is
rewarded. Many years later, when she and Joe have repaired their relationship and found love together
again, as she lies in bed with him her hand rests on his chest, “as though it were the sunlit rim of a well
and down there somebody is gathering gifts . . . to distribute to them all”. The image is of her mother,
presented in a way that suggests Violet has rediscovered her connection with her late mother as a result of
repairing her relationship with her husband. The same applies to Joe, because in that same embrace with
Violet, he looks through the window and sees the “darkness taking the shape of a shoulder with a thin line of
blood. Slowly, slowly it forms itself into a bird with a blade of red on the wing” . The image of the red-winged
bird is a reference to Joe’s mother, Wild. In Virginia, the legend was that when a group of red-winged birds
were seen, Wild was nearby. Violet and Joe thus find in their embrace the reassuring presence of their
mothers, an image of healing that offsets the damage done by the broken homes of their childhood.

Violence
Jazz begins with a recap of Dorcas's murder and Violet's attack on her corpse. The couple that kills
and then defaces the young girl seem immediately to be evil and immoral characters but surprisingly
Morrison goes on to flesh them out and to explain, in part, that their violent acts stem from suppressed
anguish and disrupted childhoods. Morrison traces the violence of the City characters back to Virginia,
where generations of enslavement and poverty tore families apart. Subtly, Morrison suggests that the black
on black violence of the City carries over from the physical and psychic violence committed against the race
as a whole. She interweaves allusions to racial violence into her story with a neutral tone that lets the
historical facts speak for themselves. Further, her descriptions of scenes are often filled with violence, as she
discusses buildings which are cut but a razorlike line of sunlight. Even her narrative is violently constructed
with stories wrenched apart, fragmented, and retold in a way that mirrors the splintered identities of the
novel's principal characters. …….( see more from racism)

Motherhood
Mothers are almost always absent from the lives of Morrison's characters, having abandoned their
children, died, or simply disappeared. The absence of mothers also reflects the absence of a "motherland," as
the African-American community searches for a way to make America its home, despite the horrors of
dislocation and slavery. The mother also signifies a common cultural and racial heritage that that eludes the
characters as they struggle to define themselves. The word "mama" rests on the tip of the characters' tongue
and is an unconscious lament for a lost home or feeling of security. During one of Violet's visits, Alice
Manfred blurts out "Oh, Mama," and then covers her mouth, shocked at her own vulnerability. Dorcas also
refers to her mother out of nowhere as she lies on her death bed, thinking, "I know his name but Mama won't
tell." Morrison's narrator, ever-present in the lives and histories of her characters, doubles as a kind of
mother for the text, tending to the community of black Harlem…. (see more from broken families)

Memory
Memory is mostly developed through the presence of several orphans in the novel and while Dorcas
is the only young orphan in the story, most of the development of this theme actually comes through Joe
Trace. Golden Gray and Violet have each lost a parent, while Joe and Dorcas have lost both parents in fires
and riots. In Joe's case, he never knew his parents and his "orphanhood" is defined by his "trace" of a
memory. Joe is an orphan who never knew his true parents and continues to struggle with his memory after

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he leaves Virginia and comes to Harlem; similarly, Dorcas' memory as a child in East St. Louis IL, is built
around a solitary photograph and is fading fast in Harlem.. In the same way that Joe and Golden Gray and
Dorcas have lost their parents, Morrison makes the argument that the African-American community as a
whole experienced a sort of "orphanhood" during this turbulent period. After slavery separated families, the
"Great Migration" displaced millions of bodies‹ further separating them from their collective and cultural
memories. Memory is definitely the most important team in the novel. All of the major characters, Violet,
Joe, Dorcas -- even Alice Manfred, all of them suffer the consequences of living a life that is dissociated
from the memories of the past.

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