Sorrowful Flow Of Music

As the first African-American Nobel Prize winner, Toni Morrison shows us a different black history with her pen. In her novel, there is no complete bloody struggle and protest or discrimination, no extreme nationalism, no absolute deny of or simple adherence to black tradition. On the contrary, she probes deeply into black people's inner world, ways to solve their problem and reconstruct their cultural identity.Morrison's sixth novel Jazz was initially set in Harlem of New York in the 1920s. It was a time of"great migration"and blossom of black art. In one of various art forms, music, an inseparable part of black tradition, exerts a great influence on African-American literature. Due to its unique features, jazz, as a fusion of both white and black cultures, has been used symbolically by many writers in their literary works.Likewise Toni Morrison successfully incorporates some distinct jazz features like improvisation, repetition, call-and-response and so on into her novel. Consequently the whole novel resembles a piece of flowing melancholy jazz music. On the other hand, since jazz appeared in a transitional era, it has become a representation of the life changes for African Americans in the"great migration"from the end of 19th century to the beginning of 20th century. The shift of jazz from folkloric tunes to city music parallels black's migration from southern rural regions to northern cities. What's more, jazz also shows blacks'nostalgic attachment to the American South. Most importantly, it was the very soothing power of jazz that finally helped perplexed blacks reconstruct their identity in the cities. In this thesis, I analyze the convergence of jazz spirit and Toni Morrison's novel Jazz, and investigate how black migrants like Joe and Violet adapt and integrate themselves into the"City"and finally reconstruct their identity in a white-dominant society.The whole thesis consists of four parts. Part One takes a brief look at Toni Morrison as an important American writer and her novel Jazz, and explains the purpose of this research.Part Two elaborates on the symbolic use of jazz in the novel, which focuses on the applications of jazz as an organizing principle and projection of emotions. Firstly, a close textual analysis is conducted to demonstrate how jazz features are employed to enhance the novel's structure, style and point of view. Next comes a discussion on Morrison's use of jazz as a projection of emotions, not only those of characters, i.e. trauma of unmothered children, but those of readers, i.e. confusion transformed into sympathy towards the protagonists.Part Three reveals the great impact of jazz, with all its transitional features, on black migrants and the important role it plays in the reshaping of their identity. This part is further divided into three subsections: (1) Expectation for the"City", (2) Aspiration and disillusion, and (3) Reconstruction.Part Four brings the entire thesis to a close. It points out that both black music and literature are witnesses to and carriers of their suffering-laden history, which records the path they have been treading from helpless victims to an important part of society actively building a happy new life.