Themes

Jazz is thus the pivotal novel in Morrison's fictional exploration of what critic Denise Heinze has called the "debilitating impact of history on black families" (Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 143, 1994).

It is simultaneously, however, about the breakdown of a spurious family and the reestablishment through the suffering of a fractured but functional family unit. Scarred by her memory of her mother's suicide (she threw herself down a well in response to several injustices described in the "Social Concerns" section), Violet decides never to have children. She and Joe live a childless, and therefore essentially futureless, existence in New York, one that catches up with them as the years go by. After they reach the "promised country" in Harlem, she apparently reconsiders, perhaps encouraged by the illusory promise of full participation in the American dream, but she has a series of miscarriages. As a result, Violet becomes increasingly eccentric...