Jazz

In all three books in Morrison’s trilogy, violence is explored as an act of love. Morrison’s characters believe that they must enact violence to prove or exhibit their love for others. In other instances, their love confuses their feelings and makes them dangerous. In Beloved, a mother tries to protect her child from slavery by killing her. In Jazz, Joe attempts to possess Dorcas forever by shooting her. Morrison shows that the line between love and violence is paper thin and that extreme emotions can easily waver into dangerous territory.

In Chapter 3, Violet and Alice discuss what happened at the funeral. Alice tells Violet that she does not understand women with knives, recalling her earlier thoughts on armed versus unarmed women. Violet says that she was not born with a knife but that she picked one up to fight for her marriage, and she asks Alice whether she would have fought for hers. Alice is taken aback by the question. Her life had been dominated by fear, and her husband had left her. Alice was suspicious of her own violence and anger, particularly toward the woman her husband Louis had an affair with. Violet believes that she attacked Dorcas’s body at the funeral out of love, but she later recognizes that her obsession was only harming herself.