"I been worried sick about you, too, Macon": Toni Morrison, the South, and the oral tradition

Studies in the Literary Imagination, Fall 1998 by Atkinson, Yvonne, Page, Philip

Paul D and Sethe fought hard to survive, to escape the South and slavery, but in the process they relinquished their heritage, their oral tradition. As a result, they are locked in silence, imprisoned in repression, and therefore cut off from the oral community around them. They have inadvertently left their community, their language, their stories at Sweet Home. Their task is to re-member, to re-call, to re-tell, to re-hear, but also to re-constitute their pasts and therefore themselves.

Beloved becomes the conduit that allows Paul D and Sethe to access their past, to return metaphorically to the South and relearn "the values and beliefs of the[ir] people, the things they hold to be true, and lessons about life and how to live it" (Smitherman, Black 29-30). The process of "remembering something [they] had forgotten [they] knew" is painful but necessary for wholeness (Beloved 61). Eventually, Paul D does open his tin box of repressed memories, and Sethe realizes that she is her own "best thing" (273). Only then can Sethe and Paul D compare their stories; only then can they regain the cultural heritage they left behind in the South to become healed within the African American, oral-based community and culture.

The process of their relearning allows the next generation-represented by Denver-to access memories and to remember how to speak and listen. She learns that the word-nommo-makes the reality; she learns to "step into the told story" (29). When Denver recreates the myth of her birth, Beloved's active listening enables the two of them to bring the story to life: "The monologue became, in fact, a duet as they lay down together" (78). Just as Sethe begins to recapture her oral tradition, so does Denver: Now, watching Beloved's alert and hungry face, how she took in every word, asking questions about the color of things and their size, her downright craving to know, Denver began to see what she was saying and not just to hear it. (77)

Because Denver learns the discourse of her Southern heritage, she "step[s] out the door, ask[s] for the help she need[s]" (256). At the end of the book, Denver has completely returned to her oral tradition: when "Paul D saw her the next morning. . . she was the first to smile. `Good morning, Mr. D"' (266). In Jazz, the reader is a witness for Violet, Joe, and the narrator. The reader is also a witness to the story that is being told, and through discussion of the story the reader testifies. The narrator of Jazz is participating in the act of call and response because she is a reminder, a call to remember, all those people, both in fiction and in life, who have sat on front porches, on stoops, at windows, and witnessed the world pass by. This narrator follows a tradition of sentries who witness and tell. The watchers on the porch in Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Mrs. Hedges in Ann Petry's The Street piece together their worlds from the scraps of information they glean from the lives of people around them. Morrison witnessed these sentries in Hurston's and Petry's stories and she in turn was called to respond through testimonyretelling, rewriting them, bringing them to life in her work. In Jazz, as in all of her novels, Morrison is mirroring the oral tradition of passing on history, stories, and cultural mores through call and response and witnessing and testifying.