Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 30

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Popular Culture Review
rhythm; it came from their own people. “Darkness dissolves as we listen to this
slow and soft music that, like Joe’s two-colored eyes . . . is both sad and happy”
(Rodrigues 263). But jazz, like the City, wholly righteous and pure, was refined
gold; the music has its impassioned slurs and deceptive promptings.
Jazz seemed to have a lulling effect on the dwellers, an effect which
induced them to drop their resignations and give into temptations. “Even the
grandmothers sweeping the stairs closed their eyes and held their heads back as
they celebrated their sweet desolation” (67, 68). It is Aunt Alice, surrogate
parent to Dorcas, who seems to be the only character who takes precautionary
measures against the intrigue of the City and its misleading rhythms. “Alice
Manfred wasn’t the kind to give herself reasons to be in the streets. She got
through them quick as she could to get back to her house” (72, 73). By avoiding
the streets, she sought to preserve herself and her niece; but the City has
complete authority to act intrusively and decisively with any individual who
exists within its zoning boundaries. Through Dorcas’ death, Alice learned that
she could not keep the City out, no matter how hard she tried. “Alice Manfred
had worked hard to privatize her niece, but she was no match for a City seeping
music that begged and challenged each and every day. ‘Come,’ it said. ‘Come
and do wrong’” (67). Alice believed jazz imbibed sin into her niece, leading
Dorcas into a rebellious mindset which in turn lead her to her violent death—a
tragic ultimatum. Eusebio Rodrigues writes, “The story of Dorcas reveals the
tremendous impact the City makes on the young and the defenseless. It deludes
them into believing that they are free to do what they want and get away with it.
They do not realize the insidious ‘plans’ of the well laid-out streets of the City
that makes people do what it wants” (Rodrigues 259).
Though the City has a will—and its motivations should be called into
question—the effects of its melodic coercion are not always negative. At the end
of the novel, it is jazz that reunites Joe and Violet, with a “community”—as seen
in their newfound relationships with Alice Manfred and Felice (Dorcas’ best
friend).
Violet begins visiting Alice and the two, through discussions, help each
other to heal. Violet learns from Alice the truth to which she had been numbed.
Though she is continually manacled by the City around her, she can still take
charge of her own life, making choices to once again be captain of her own fate.
Alice tells her, “You want a real thing? . . . I’ll tell you a real one. You got
anything left to you to love, anything at all, do it” (112).
Meanwhile, Alice—who has barricaded herself from the City and a
community—learns that she cannot keep the City outside; its dynamism is too
great. Though the death of her n iece and the odd, subsequent visits of a violent
stranger (Violet), Alice begins to soften, or accede, to the rhythms of the City
and regains a sense of communal support. Far beyond the “scandalizing
threesome” (6) that erupts both before and after young Dorcas’s death, the City
cries for more pain, more pain. But why do the people listen? Drown out the