Depicting of Realities in the 1920s

"Depicting of Realities in the 1920s"

“Sth, I know that woman,” says the narrator in the novel Jazz by Toni Morrison (1). From this opening line, the novel begins to set up a vague atmosphere with the information that the narrator knows “that woman,” whoever she is. The narrator continues on to talk about the life and people in the “City,” which is in New York during the years from 1919 to 1926. And as the plot revolves around the various events that are associated with certain residents, the narrator never reveals who s/he is to the readers. However, based on the way the narrator talks and conveys his/her attitudes toward the functionality of the city and its people, one may carefully make some assumptions about the narrator.

Even though never mentioned, the narrator seems to be a woman who lives in the city.

The narrator includes explicit details while she unravels the events associated with Violet, Dorcas, Joe Trace, and Alice. As the narrator shares stories about different residents, the narrator slips that she hang around the beauty salons, overhears the gossip of other women in town, and participated in a local women’s organization when they were deciding on a case regarding Violet. Considering these small hints, one may speculate that the narrator is a woman as she dwelled in places—beauty salons and women’s organization—that men in 1920s would not have usually hung around. Another evidence that support the assumption that the narrator is a local resident of the city is based on her description of Violet. When she first introduces Violet—Joe Trace’s wife who slashed a face of a dead girl Dorcas at her funeral—she describes her as “awfully skinny, … fifty … [who] is mean enough and good looking enough to think that even without hips or youth she could punish Joe by getting herself a boyfriend (Morrison 4). As one may notice, the narrator describes Violet’s body size and age, which hints that the narrator has at least seen Violet or had some kind of association with her, whether that may have been directly or indirectly. And the narrator talks about Violet’s character as if she knows her well. As a matter of fact, the narrator shares that people in town knew Violet well, just “like [her]” (Morrison 4). In addition to the narrator’s claim of knowing Violet well, she tells the story in third person’s point of view which helps in defining her attitudes toward the city and its people.

            As certain stories and events of the city’s people gets told, the narrator slips out details about herself that help readers to make assumptions about her attitudes. For instance, speaker claims that she does not want people to know about her and that she “watches everything and everyone and try to figure out their plans, reasonings” (Morrison 8). From this claim, the narrator does not seem so positive about being recognized as one of the residents of the city. However, she still wants to be aware of other people’s business and comment on them. Moreover, she provides a reason that make her want to be unnoticed; she states that the city makes her be “exposed to all sorts of ignorance and criminality” (Morrison 8). In this claim, the narrator evidently does not view the city or its people in a good way; she considers that people in the city lack awareness and morals. And because the people lack a sense of judgement in what is right or wrong, criminal activities are prevalent in the city, which narrator does not seem to accept unlike the rest of the city. Combining the narrator’s contrasting desires (not wanting to be a part of the city but knowing city people’s businesses) and her claim about the ignorance in people that further leads to criminality, the narrator perceives the city and its people to be corrupted and feels bitter in sharing stories about the city’s people.

            One of the stories that the narrator portrays her bitterness in is about Joe, Violet, and Dorcas. To briefly summarize, Joe Trace and Violet are a married couple, and their relationship is not a positive one as Joe portrays no affection toward Violet and she uses other men to punish him in return. In simple, there seems to be no honesty, respect, and love in their marriage. Joe Trace falls in love with an 18-year-old girl named Dorcas, who was raised as a niece to a woman named Alice. Joe Trace’s love for Dorcas suddenly takes a weird turn in that he shoots her which made Alice to host a funeral for her. At the funeral, Violet causes a scene by slashing dead Dorcas’s face with a knife. As the narrator tells this tragic story, she adds that “there was never anyone to prosecute him because nobody actually saw him do it, and the dead girl’s aunt didn’t want to throw money to helpless lawyers and laughing cops” (Morrison 4). As a reader, I felt resentful when I read about this tragic event. And just like how the event provoked feelings in me as a reader, the narrator—who actually lives in that world—seems to convey her own feeling of bitterness in how Joe Trace got away with a murder and how oblivious the aunt’s (Alice) decision is. The narrator’s attitudes, at least in the first section of the novel, is composed of bitterness and negativity toward the story’s events. 

            And the narrator’s attitude toward the events that happened in the city and how people react to them influences us as readers to view this novel in certain ways, depending on how individuals perceives the story. As for myself, the narrator’s attitudes guided me to see how she was depicting realities of New York in the 1920s. The decade, as we commonly refer to as the “Roaring 20s,” was the time when not only economic prosperity was present, but also when racial discrimination was severe. And among the many inequalities caused by racial discrimination, justice for colored people were often underserved or neglected. And the inequality and ineffectiveness of enforcing laws to protect victims regardless of color may have led colored population in the New York to be oblivious to crimes when present. By oblivious, I’m not saying that people did not care but that they were oblivious to acknowledge the flaw in their mindsets and their societies and make efforts to change or improve them.