earticle

영어

This paper analyzes the narrative strategies with the complicated process for the characters to extricate themselves from the track of traumatic past in Toni Morrison’s Jazz. In the novel, Morrison shows the dispossessed characters’ intense confrontation with the oppressed past traces and celebrates their survival in the mystery of human love. By exploring the characters’ intricate stories, she emphasizes the necessity to find and reestablish the useful history for the African-American to live meaningful lives. To meet her aim of fictional reestablishment of the past, the unique narrative strategies are employed, such as creating a self-reflexive narrator, giving the text the oral and musical quality, and blurring the traditional boundaries of narrator, character, and reader. All the narrative strategies contribute to making the text sound like a great Jazz performance. Through the unconventional and experimental narrative, Morrison accomplishes her goal of writing the history of the future and possibility.