African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison

7. Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination of the Òrìsà Ochossi in Jazz

7 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter An Examination of the Òrìsà Ochossi in Jazz Once when I was tree Flesh came and worshipped at my roots. My ancestors slept in my outstretched Limbs and listened to flesh Praying and entreating on his knees —Henry Dumas, “Root Song” Jazz (1992), Toni Morrison’s sixth novel, employs a set of distinctive epic characteristics and constructs the concept of spirituality as the matrix for text, context, and ritual performance.1 My analysis of this novel focuses on the heroic quest of Joe Trace, a character representing the Yoruba Òrìsà, Ochossi. Reading Jazz outside the frame of the migration novel, I focus, instead, on the transmigration of soul and spirit as I chronicle Joe Trace’s quest for fulfillment. Key to this observation is a consideration of rituals such as the sacrifice of Dorcas and other spiritual intercessions subsequent to her spiritual transition.2 These ritual performances, not only reintegrate Joe’s fragmented psyche, but also heal the community at large. Using syncopated, improvisational language, mimetic of jazz music, Morrison recodifies spiritual knowledge from various African traditions. These spiritual riffs allow characters and readers to gain meaning in their respective literary environments. My consideration of narrative modes includes a description of the Yoruba Òrìsà of the hunt, Ochossi, and the manner in which Morrison inscribes specific attributes to him. Moreover, an analysis of ceremonial acts of propitiation honoring the phenomenon of pursuit will serve as the basis for this interpretation. To facilitate this critical undertaking, I will consider Ochossi’s major attributes as well as Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 169 his connection with the Òrìsà Oshun and other spiritual ideas to advance Morrison’s thematic trajectory of memory. Jazz Impulses and Syncopated Rhythms of Time Of the many essential characteristics of Kongo culture that have survived among African Americans, the concept of time and the person’s relationship to it remains significant. For the Ba Kongo time is cyclical, which means it has no beginning or end. At the abstract level it is like a river, it flows. At the concrete level events or dunga give time its value of perception . Even at the concrete level, time is unending; it just keeps recycling (Adjaye 20). When a person’s energy diminishes, they perish and begin a new cycle of existence. Morrison inscribes this idea of time in her description of Rose Dear’s emotional state prior to her jumping into the well. She writes, “Rose Dear was free of time that no longer flowed, but stood stock-still when they tipped her from her kitchen chair” (102).3 After Rose Dear’s death, her mother, True Belle, arrives from Baltimore to take care of Violet and her four siblings. True Belle expresses the concept of life as an adjunct of time within the Kongo cosmological frame when she says, “Thank God for life . . . and thank God for death” (101). Her statement underscores the idea that just as life begins the journey, death, too, is part of that journey—the return of the soul to itself and to the beginning. When a person dies he or she undergoes change; life flows to create a new state of being. This change or invigoration of the spirit may also take place through interpersonal relationships, which refresh a person. After Dorcas’s death Joe Trace remarks, “With her I was fresh, new again. Before I met her, I’d changed into new seven times” (123). Fu-Kiau notes that seven concentric circles situate human beings in the center of the circle defining the universe , according to the Kongo (African Cosmology 41).4 When a person heads toward the seventh direction, he or she heads toward the self for soul-realization. Joe’s changes not only represent significant events, they “renew” time.5 His changes are as follows: When he names himself; When he is picked out and trained to be a hunter; When Vienna burns to the ground; In 1906 when he takes his wife to Rome; 170 k Chapter 7 When they leave the apartment on Mulberry Street and little Africa and move uptown; When the white men almost kill him in the white mob violence in the summer of 1917; In 1919 when he walks every step of the way with the three six nine. (Jazz...