Jazz Themes & Symbolism

Jazz Significant Topics

Mothers Joe, Violet, and Dorcas are all motherless, and the loss affects them profoundly. Violet's mother, Rose Dear, committed suicide when Violet was just sixteen, by throwing herself down a dark, narrow well. Violet discovered the body the next morning.

Rose Dear's own mother, True Belle, abandoned her at the age of eight when True Belle moved to Baltimore to care for Vera Louise's baby. True Belle was still a slave at the time, so the move may have been involuntary. However, the betrayal was complete. True Belle remained for twenty-two years after she was freed, and devoted all of her attention and affection to Golden Gray. Even when caring for her own grandchildren, True Belle cannot stop bragging about the wonderful golden boy.

Both of Dorcas's parents were killed in the race riots in East St. Louis. Her father was pulled off a streetcar and stomped to death by a white crowd. When the family home caught fire with her mother inside, the fire engine failed to respond to a call from a black neighborhood. Dorcas's mother died, but she is unable to process the enormous loss. All she...
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