After reading Toni Morison’s Jazz and watching Part I (“Gumbos’) of Ken Burns’ documentary, Jazz (available …) select one of the following prompts for your second essay.
1. Narrative Structure: Consider the question of whether Jazz narrated by a single narrator, or by several narrators from several different perspectives. Both classical music and jazz employ multiple voices (instruments as well as literally voices), themes, and tones. Could the narrative structure of Jazz also make use of multiple voices in order tell the stories it does? Do the narrative style and perspective of these different narrative voices stay the same, or do they change? Identify 2 or 3 of these different narrative voices and explain their “technique.” Do we learn about the same character from multiple narrators? How does this affect our interpretation of a particular character (if different narrators use different perspectives when telling the story of a character).
