Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 33

Sweet Desolation and Seduction
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face of the City. Fate is the supernatural truth that wears the transitory mask of
the City. Thus, the City acts much like a Greek or Roman god. Such gods took
on human forms and human natures: the propensities to love, hate, quarrel, and
selfishness. And, while they acted no differently than the humans they both
helped and destroyed, they were imbued with power to alter the courses of
human lives. By allowing the City to contrast with her characters, Morrison
establishes the primary plot of Jazz: Though supernatural forces compel us to
fulfill certain spiritual missions, humans have been given certain god-like
powers of their own; the greatest power being the ability to make choices for
ourselves. Thus the winds of the breath of the gods (or the City) can assume
some control of our futures. Cities seem to represent an inner need to transcend
self and community. They often call us to the center of life which is symbolic of
the impossibility to escape the universe of humans where one principle of
individuation cannot help thumping another.
Something transitory, by definition, is a changeling—a shape shifter. It
can be here today, gone tomorrow and appear differently to different people. Its
ephemeral mystery is so deceptive that even its integral truth—its very
essence—withdraws into subjectivity. A transitory being may be constructed,
eradicated, and then rebuilt. It can give assertions and then seem to contradict
them the next minute. But, in the space of apparent contradiction—constituting
the gray backdrop behind the black and white—novelist Toni Morrison reveals
spiritual truths in her literature. These truths can be easily overlooked by
readers, but reveal the original foundations to the impermanent realties we
acknowledge with our five senses. “Morrison’s fiction is populated with the
supernatural, the effect of which is to dislocate the reader into seeing reality in
new ways.. . . She points to the kind of knowledge that comes from the realm of
religion: myth, faith and spirit.. . . Toni Morrison gives us a new cosmology and
a new theology to interpret it and asserts once again that the dream is truth”
(Connor 182, 210-11).
University of Arizona, Tucson
Geta LeSeur
Works Cited
Connor, Kimberly Rae. Conversions and Visions in the Writings o f African-American
Women. Knoxville, TN: The University o f Tennessee Press, 1994.
Hodges, Graham Russell, ed. Studies in African American History and Culture. New
York: Routledge, 2001.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin Group, 1988. All citations are from this
edition.
Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Penguin Group, 1992. All citations are from this
edition.
Rodrigues, Eusebio L. “Experiencing Jazz.” Nancy J. Peterson, ed. Toni Morrison:
Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press, 1997.