On Questions of Travel: Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby

Abstract

This article discusses themes of travel present in three of Morrison’s narratives, namely, Jazz, Sula and Tar Baby. In these novels, travel is posited as a displacing factor since physical moves significantly comprise a form of psychological dislocation which betides the experience of the traveler. Characteristic to these novels is the traveler’s anxiety of failing to adapt to the new place and the fear of losing their homeland forever. Morrison’s present novels draw on the psychological displacement effected by the physical move and epitomized by the traveler’s endeavor to fit in a new place. To overcome effects of the emotional displacement engendered by the physical move, these three novels suggest that migrants acknowledge candidly their respective origins and the valuable communal traditions related to one’s home. However, Morrison warns against the danger of the nostalgia that befalls the traveler who lives in constant and obsessive recollection of the old home and their past in it. Jazz brings up the example of Joe Trace as a reminder of how obsessive recollection of the past is likely to predispose migrants to conditions of melancholia. In Sula, Morrison simultaneously emphasizes the importance of traditions and warns us against the adoption of a ghetto mentality which confines people to one place. In Tar Baby, the narrative explores the displacement of Jadine who, by reason of her travels in Europe, has entirely separated herself from the values and traditions of the African-American community. Jadine is dislocated because she can not consider herself European, neither can she perceive her own people as integral part of herself. Embedded in the novels is the stress on communal traditions and home values as instrumental in resisting the emotional displacement accompanying the experience of travel.