Joe Trace In Jazz Analysis

A person can be on the top of their game, feeling as if the world is their oyster, full of hope and possibilities. But those possibilities could have the likeness of a building block tower; take away one piece and it all comes falling down, leaving that person yearning for that life back. Similar attributes are mirrored in Joe Trace in Jazz by Toni Morrison. He dealt with pangs of longing for his previous life, before he married his wife, Violet, where he was a free and able-bodied young man with hopes and dreams for the future. Joe’s impulse for his youthful life echoes the popular theme of desire and the fallout it can reap such as adultery and death.
One of the central issues is Joe Trace indulging in adultery. He is a man in his fifties, conducting an affair with an eighteen-year-old girl named Dorcas who symbolizes his youthful life, which he misses. Referring to how Dorcas made him feel, Joe said, “you would have thought I was twenty, back in Palestine satisfying my appetite for the first time under a walnut tree” (Morrison 129). His time in Palestine, Virginia
was when he was in his prime. Joe was an able-bodied hunter and worked physically inducing jobs. Also, it was when he met Violet and embarked on a new life in the City, with hopes and dreams ahead of him (Morrison 30). Keeping this in mind, for Dorcas to be young with her whole life ahead of her, she essentially became his new Violet, renewing his connection to his glory days and distracting him from the fact that his life had been lived (Morrison 29). Joe hoped to hold on to her.
Joe’s longing for his youth, which he embodies in Dorcas, drives him to murder her when she tries to sever ties; his mindset being it was better than letting her (his youth) run away. Joe had pushed so hard to make their relationship work by giving her gifts to prove his affections, an act that exemplified his devotion to keeping his youth alive (SparkNotes). Back in Virginia, Joe was a trained hunter and used his skills frequently, making them second nature (SparkNotes). Dorcas’ blemished face had resembled a trail to him, which had sparked a connection to his life which bonded Joe to her even more (SparkNotes). With all these emotions that Joe felt for Dorcas, and all that he had seen in her, he wasn’t about to let it all go. Like a hunter catching his prey, Joe caught Dorcas. Unfortunately, he had tapped into his hunter side so heavily that he shot her like he would a normal prey.
Joe’s quest to regain his youth eventually leads him to satisfaction in his life pre-Dorcas.
Violet, Joe’s wife, got rid of Dorcas’s photo which had symbolized a fresh start (Morrison 197). Felice, a friend of Dorcas’, starts visiting Joe and brings a season of happiness with her, as her name implies, which allows renewal to come about for Joe (Morrison 215). Felice’s visits get Joe and Violet to talk, interact, and essentially jumpstart their previously crippling relationship. For example, Violet, Joe, and Felice get to talking about music during one conversation and Violet verbally indicates that she is going to rely on Joe more, to which Joe responds that he needs to pick himself up out of his rut and move on with his life and his wife (Morrison 214-215). So the tragedy that had overcome Joe opened his eyes to the problems in his life and brought him to acceptance and a desire to mend his
marriage.
Commonly, people go through a “midlife crisis,” where they long for the glory days of their youth. They typically take extreme measures to get those feelings back. Joe Trace in Toni Morrison’s Jazz gets wrapped up in a version of this situation. His solution was to engage in an affair with a younger woman, to use her youth and all its hopes as a symbol for his own fondly remembered youth. Typically, this desire breeds dangerous repercussions such as sinful adultery and the death of his mistress. Unexpectedly, on Joe’s road to finding his youth he starts view his life fondly again, fixing his marriage and accepting all his life had to offer.