Self-reinvention Out Of Trauma

Jazz is Toni Morrison’s redemptive novel telling a pathetic love story which occurs in theGreat Migration in1920s in the United States. This thesis focuses on the individual traumaand collective trauma experienced by the main characters Joe and Violet in Jazz. Theirindividual traumas make them unable to find a proper position in their city life, and they cannot balance their traumatic memories of their childhood with the challenges in whitedominated American society. And at the same time inter-racial violence, intra-racial violenceto the black cause the collective trauma of this African American ethnic group in which Joeand Violet are inevitably involved. With the help of black community as well as theirintrospection and self-redemption, Joe and Violet ultimately abandon their personal traumasand achieve their self-reinvention.