Toni Morrison's "Jazz"

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how Toni Morrison's novel, "Jazz," has an interesting and original narrative structure. The paper describes how the narrator first begins the story in a chatty, self-confident and omniscient voice, like that of the classic, realist novels, but gradually loses his or her independence to the characters in the text.

From the Paper:

"Toni Morrison's novel, Jazz, has an interesting and original narrative structure. First of all, the book is a postmodernist fiction that imitates the form of an improvisational piece of jazz music. The voices heard in the text seem to be those of the various instruments that play the music individually, by turns, and then join together in the general sound. As Morrison herself asserted in an interview, her design in Jazz was to give the impression that the book "was talking, writing itself in a sense."(Cutter) As such, although the story seems to be told from the point of view of several characters, such as Violet, Joe Trace, Alice Mansfield or Felice, that are guided by an omniscient narrator, the text speaks for itself as if it had no author whatsoever."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Cutter, Martha J. "The Story Must Go On and On: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz." www.luminarium.org
• Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Vintage, 2004.

More papers on Toni Morrison's "Jazz":

• Analytical Essay # 46215 : "Jazz" by Toni Morrison"
• Analytical Essay # 5059 : "Toni Morrison's "Jazz"
• Analytical Essay # 64179 : "Jazz"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: