63 pages • 2 hours read
Toni MorrisonJazz
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The first paragraph reveals major plot points that will be examined in detail throughout the work. Joe Trace, a Black cosmetics salesperson living in Harlem with his wife, falls in love with an 18-year-old girl named Dorcas and shoots her. He is never prosecuted for the murder, and he mourns the loss of Dorcas every day. Joe’s wife Violet, a hairdresser, visits the funeral to look at Dorcas and tries to cut her face from her skull. When she is stopped, she runs home and releases all her birds from her cages. Doomsayers in the community see Violet’s act, just three days into the new year of 1926, as a sign of destruction to come.
After the funeral, Violet attempts to gain control once more. She has an affair to punish her husband, but Joe takes no notice. She then tries to fall in love with her husband again, but the memory of Dorcas haunts them both. Violet tries to learn as much as she can about Dorcas, even finding out what type of lipstick Dorcas wore. Violet obtains a picture of Dorcas from Dorcas’s aunt Alice Manfred and puts it on the fireplace mantel. At night, both Violet and Joe sneak downstairs at separate times to look at the picture. Joe sees a young girl who is calm, sweet, and forgiving. Violet sees a greedy and lazy girl who stole her husband away. Violet’s obsession with Dorcas causes her to lose clients, and she begins to wonder if she is falling in love with the dead girl. When another young girl shows up on their doorstep, Violet invites her in, foreshadowing the end of the novel: “Violet invited her in to examine the record and that's how that scandalizing threesome on Lenox Avenue began. What turned out different was who shot whom” (6).
The unnamed narrator describes New York City and Harlem in 1926. Everyone is excited and feels as though life is finally moving forward. The narrator takes on a confiding tone, explaining that it is important to know as much as one can about the city to protect oneself. The narrator explains that Violet’s episode at the funeral is not the first of its kind. Once, before she met Joe, Violet sat down in the middle of the street and would not budge or talk. Another time she was accused of stealing a baby that she had been asked to watch. When Violet was found and heard the accusations, she believed she was innocent, forgetting her plan to take the baby home. Her marriage to her husband is marked by silence. The less Joe listens to her, the more silent she becomes. She speaks mostly to her birds and the parrot which tells her it loves her.
Chapter 2 Summary
Because Violet has released her birds, she no longer has their companionship or the nightly routine of covering their cages. This routine helped Violet sleep at night, but now her nights are occupied by the image of the girl on her mantelpiece. Joe also cannot sleep, and his mind, too, turns toward the young girl in the picture. Dorcas had been his comfort during the long nights. When she was alive, he spent the first part of the night with her, which made it easier to return home to the cold bed he shared with his wife. He tries to lull himself to sleep by remembering the details of his first meeting with Dorcas. Joe can remember how he felt with Dorcas more clearly than his early memories with his wife, but he worries that he is beginning to forget details about Dorcas too. Joe recalls seeing Dorcas buying candy in a drugstore which he attributes to her bad skin and later meeting her while selling cosmetics at a neighbor’s house.
When Joe tries to remember the early years of his marriage to Violet, he conjures the details but cannot recall how he felt. He and Violet were a “country couple” from Vesper County, Virginia. In 1906, they left for New York City, excited about the new life that awaited them. Joe and Violet fell deeply in love with their new life: “When they fall in love with a city, it is for forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it” (33). The city made them feel stronger and more alive. Twenty years after they first arrived, he and his wife barely spoke to each other. Joe began to rent a room from his neighbor for a few hours each night so he could see Dorcas.
With his young lover, Joe felt he could tell her things he could not tell Violet. He shared about hiding in a bush at the age of 14 and speaking to a woman he believed to be his mother who had run away when he was a baby. Joe asked the woman to put her hand in the bush as a sign that she was his mother, but it was so dark he was unsure whether she ever slipped her fingers through the leaves. Dorcas returned Joe’s intimacy, describing her own mother’s abuse and the loss of her family home to a fire. Dorcas told Joe she wanted him to run away to Mexico with her.
The apartment they occupied in the early hours of the night belonged to a woman named Malvonne who did not return home from work until midnight. Malvonne was a shrewd woman who was reluctant at first to rent her apartment to Joe. She told him that he could rent a sex worker for cheaper than it would cost to rent her apartment each day, but Joe responded that he was interested in something more with Dorcas. He wanted more than the silence his wife offered.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The first chapter famously outlines the plot of the book and foreshadows the ending by explaining that Joe and Violet will one day re-enact their relationship with Dorcas on another young girl. Morrison conceals nothing from the reader at the start. She makes it clear that the events that take place are not the point. The meaning of the book is found in the histories and emotions of the characters and how they make sense of their trauma. The opening paragraph of the novel releases major plot details in quick succession, as though they are tumbling from the narrator’s mouth. The first word, “sth,” is intimate and conversational, an involuntary release that introduces rapid-fire gossip.
This opening sets the tone for the unique style of the novel. The language of text is improvisational and stream-of-consciousness, mirroring the musical genre it is named after. Another essential element to these chapters is the introduction of the unnamed narrator. The disembodied and ungendered narrator offers no details about their life or personal experience. Instead, they speak omnisciently about the characters’ experiences, casting judgments and making observations. At times, the narrator seems to speak as though representing the city itself, aware of the unseen elements of the characters’ lives and unwilling to intervene. However, the narrator also admits to their own limitations and unreliability, explaining that their interest in the lives of others is a form of personal protection:
I haven’t got any muscles, so I can’t really be expected to defend myself. But I do know how to take precaution. Mostly it’s making sure no one knows all there is to know about me. Second, I watch everything and everyone and try to figure out their plans, their reasonings, long before they do (8).
The narrator’s connection to the city is substantial, and the city plays a key role in the text. The city functions as a separate character, pervading every element of the plot. The characters are influenced by, drawn to, and delighted by the city. They are also enticed by its many sins and focus on the flesh. In Chapter 2, both Joe and Violet are excited at the prospect of moving to the city and escaping the oppressive South. Their love for the city and the new lives it promises outweighs their love for each other.
Over the years, Joe and Violet grow further apart. Violet recedes into silence, and Joe looks elsewhere for affection. For both Joe and Violet, Dorcas becomes the focus of Desire and Possession. She represents youthfulness, the thing they felt so keenly when they first arrived in Harlem. Dorcas is imperfect, flighty, and sensual. Joe and Violet, who have grown apart over the years and directed their desire away from one another, see Dorcas as the manifestation of their lost dreams. Joe sees Dorcas as a source of intimacy and young love, while Violet’s confused feelings about Dorcas mix hatred with longing. Violet cannot help but connect Dorcas to the child she never had, and her obsession with Dorcas after the girl’s death further binds her to this idea. The narrator reveals that Violet has a history of mental illness and was once accused of stealing a neighbor’s baby. Both Joe and Violet try to capture what they feel they have lost, and Dorcas becomes the canvas upon which they paint their broken dreams.
Related Titles
By Toni Morrison
