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Toni Morrison's Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby

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Toni Morrison's Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby On Questions of Travel: Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby Dr. Hanan Mahmoud Abdullatif * E.mail: [email protected] * Dep. of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Bahrain and University of Nizwa On Questions of Travel: Toni Morrison’s Jazz ... Dr. Hanan Mahmoud Abdullatif On Questions of Travel: Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby Dr. Hanan Mahmoud Abdullatif Abstrat: This article discusses themes of travel present in three of Morrison’s narratives, namely, Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby. In these novels, travel is posited as a displacing factor since physical moves significantly comprise a form of psychological dislocation which betides the experience of the traveler. Characteristic to these novels is the traveler’s anxiety of failing to adapt to the new place and the fear of losing their homeland forever. Morrison’s present novels draw on the psychological displacement effected by the physical move and epitomized by the traveler’s endeavor to fit in a new place. To overcome effects of the emotional displacement engendered by the physical move, these three novels suggest that migrants acknowledge candidly their respective origins and the valuable communal traditions related to one’s home. However, Morrison warns against the danger of the nostalgia that befalls the traveler who lives in constant and obsessive recollection of the old home and their past in it. Jazz brings up the example of Joe Trace as a reminder of how obsessive recollection of the past is likely to predispose migrants to conditions of melancholia. In Sula, Morrison simultaneously emphasizes the importance of traditions and warns us against the adoption of a ghetto mentality which confines people to one place. In Tar Baby, the narrative explores the displacement of Jadine who, by reason of her travels in Europe, has entirely separated herself from the values and traditions of the African-American community. Jadine is dislocated because she can not consider herself European, neither can she perceive her own people as integral part of herself. Embedded in the novels is the stress on communal traditions and home values as instrumental in resisting the emotional displacement accompanying the experience of travel. Key Words: Morrison’s, Jazz, Sula,Tar Baby, nostalgia, traveler, the narrative, traditions, African-American community, home values, experience of travel. 363 Issue No. 27 - Summer 2016 عن قضايا السفر في روايات توني موريسن‘‘اجلاز’’ ‘‘سوﻻ’’ و‘‘تار بايبي’’ د. حنان حممود عبد اللطيف �لـمـلخ�ص: يناق�ش هذا املقال مو�سوعة ال�سفر يف اأعمال توين موري�سن ال�سردية الثالثة: “اجلاز” “�سوال”, و“تار بايبي”. ففي هذه الروايات, يتم االنطالق من مو�سوعة ال�سفر باعتبارها عامل اإزاحة, وذلك الأن ال�سفر انتقال منطو على انزياح نف�سي ت�سي بالكثري فيما يتعلق بتجربة امل�سافر. وتت�سم هذه الروايات بقلق ملحوظ لدى امل�سافر من اأن يخفق يف التاأقلم مع املكان اجلديد وبخوفه من اأن يفقد موطنه االأ�سلي اإلى االأبد. وتعتمد هذه الروايات على تقدمي االنزياح النف�سي الذي يحدثه التنقل من مكان اإلى اآخر والذي يتمثل يف �سعي امل�سافر اإلى اأن يتواءم مع املكان اجلديد. ومن اأجل التغلب على االنزياح الوجداين النا�سئ عن التنقل, توحي هذه الروايات باأن على املهاجر اأن ال يتنكر اأبدا الأ�سوله اأو تقاليد وطنه. غري اأن موري�سن حتذر من خطورة احلنني الذي ي�سيب املهاجر الذي يعي�ش حالة دائمة من الهو�ش مبوطنه االأ�سلي وبذكرياته عنه. م�سطلحات �أ�سا�سية: توين موري�سن, ال�سردية, اجلاز, �سوال, تار بايبي, ال�سفر, االنزياح النف�سي, االنزياح الوجداين, املهاجر, احلنني, املوطن االأ�سلي, الذاكرة. 364 On Questions of Travel: Toni Morrison’s Jazz ... Dr. Hanan Mahmoud Abdullatif On Questions of Travel: Toni novels are particularly significant Morrison’s Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby for emphasizing the importance of migration in producing sites Think of the long trip home. for post-colonial resistance. The Should we have stayed at home and migration themes present in the three thought of here? narratives are also a commentary on Where should we be today? identity formation and resistance to Continent, city country, society: hegemonic discourses. the choice is never wide and never In Jazz, the narrative foregrounds free. the search of the post-colonial And here, or there ... No. Should subject for empowering historical we have stayed roots and longer lasting values at home, wherever that may be? against the alienating styles of big Elizabeth Bishop, Questions of cities. The quest for origins in Jazz is Travel exemplified by Joe Trace’s longing The tropes of migration present for rural living, the longing that in Toni Morrison’s novels relate follows the physical displacement to the mass migration of African- of leaving one’s place of origin Americans from the South to the for another geographical North. Especially after the Civil location. In the North, Joe Trace, War, the search for economic Violet Trace and Alice Manfred advancement and the need to escape become displaced victims; albeit racial oppression were among the their attempts to integrate into driving forces behind the move of the new place, they suffer from African-Americans to industrial being members of a minority Northern cities. This migration has group. Migration is also associated had its significance in post-colonial with psychological displacement discourse, and the uprooting of engendered by the migrants’ post-colonial populations has struggle to plant themselves in generated forms of resistance the new environment and by their especially against the tangible fear of having forever lost their racism of big cities. The following homeland. Especially with Joe will analyze the themes of migration Trace, psychological displacement in three of Morrison’s novels, manifests itself in his attempts to Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby. These substitute one form of behavior for 365 Issue No. 27 - Summer 2016 another, trying to shed attributes sitting on. In retrospect, Violet is of his former self as hunter in mostly disconcerted by her Rose the woods and adopt instead the Dear’s passive attitude towards her borrowed conduct of an urban vicious aggressors. Violet ponders solicitor. the event, In Jazz, migrant characters like “When they got to the Joe Trace, Violet Trace and Alice table where our mother sat Manfred are voluntary economic nursing an empty cup, they migrants. Joe and Violet’s choice took the table out to leave the rural South for an urban from under her and then, industrial North came out of the need while she sat there alone, to improve their living conditions. and all by herself In addition to their aspiration for like, cup in hand, they came economic and social advancement, back and tipped the chair the Traces’ move was motivated she sat in. She didn’t jump by the need to escape from an jump up right away, so they shook oppressive South. Importantly, it a bit and since she still the narrative depicts the disabling stayed seated- looking influence of racial violence on ahead at nobody- they just both Violet and her mother Rose tipped her out of it like the Dear. While in the South, Violet way you get the cat off the was haunted by the fear lest she seat if you don’t want to would follow the same path of her touch it or pick it up in your mother’s profound distress and arms. (98)” end up committing suicide. Rose Dear suffered separation from Soon after this incident of racial a nomadic spouse who traveled violence, Rose Dear committed around the country, pursuing the suicide by jumping down a well. cause of liberation for Southern Although the narrative doesn’t black Americans. While waiting openly maintain the connection for her husband, Rose Dear was between the two incidents, the surprised by some white assailants narrative covertly hints at the who inserted themselves into her possibility that Rose Dear’s distress home, destroyed items of furniture, was likely to have been aggravated even breaking the chair she was by the aforementioned assault. 366 On Questions of Travel: Toni Morrison’s Jazz ... Dr. Hanan Mahmoud Abdullatif After her mother’s suicide, Violet space. The well thereby becomes is troubled by the image of a well a symbol of Violet’s psychological and the threat of being devoured by instability: while she is haunted by it. She hence struggles “against the the “pull of a narrow well” (104), pull of the well” (104), the same she still ponders over the purity of well that “sucked her sleep” (102). its narrowness. Violet’s determination never to Likewise, Violet’s sense of home have children relates to her mother’s is dual: “As she grew older, Violet suicide, to her fear lest she will do could neither stay where she was to her children what Rose Dear has nor go away” (102). In the South done to her when she “dropped Violet has suffered from feelings herself down the well and missed of dislocation and separation, that all the fun” (102). The possibility is, wherever home is she doesn’t of Violet’s repeating her mother’s experience its genuine feel since she suicide lies in the continuation of is emotionally separated from home the same conditions which brought by circumstances of oppression. In about Rose Dear’s death. Like the case of Violet, dislocation is not Rose Dear, Violet internalizes the result of the traveler’s attempt the racial violence perpetrated by to acclimate to a new place. Rather, white Southerners against blacks. dislocation happens as a result What might have pushed her of Violet’s failure to adapt to the mother to committing suicide could restraining conditions of home. Thus therefore be reason enough for Jazz conceptualizes dislocation Violet to repeat that act.
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