Toni Morrison’s Jazz

Answer choices

1. A

   Wrong Emphasis: plot, themes, setting13% picked this

   In Jazz, Morrison has realized a significant artistic achievement in creating the first African American work of fiction whose plot, themes, and setting are

   This answer would be great if we replaced "plot / themes / setting" with "structuring principle". As the author says at the end of the first paragraph, "many other African American artists had used musicians and music as theme and metaphor in their writing", so Toni wasn't the first to do that.

   13%
2. B

   Wrong Emphasis: description of jazz4% picked this

   Morrison's striking description of a musical ensemble performance containing solo improvisations constitutes an important artistic innovation and makes Jazz an

   Just like (A), this is making it sound like Morrison's innovation was to write a book about jazz. It's claiming that her artistic innovation was to describe a musical ensemble performance containing solo improvisations. The main point of the passage was that Morrison's innovation was that she wrote a book that felt like a musical ensemble performance containing solo improvisations. Although this book happens to also be about the world of jazz, the "structuring principle" has nothing to do with the content of the book. It's all about the way the story was told .. a narrator (i.e. bandleader) creating the overall structure with sectioned-off quotations from difference characters (i.e. individual members of the ensemble getting their turn to take a solo). The book could have been about the stock market and still had this jazz-like structuring principle that made it feel like an ensemble performance with solo improvs.

   4%
3. C

   Wrong Emphasis: non-jazz vs. jazz15% picked this

   Although many African American writers have used music as a central metaphor in their works, Morrison's 1992 novel is unique and innovative for

   This goes back to the last sentence of the first paragraph again. Other in the past had used musicians and music as theme and metaphor in their writing. But no one had ever made music the structuring principle of the novel. The distinction wasn't, "other people had previously written non-jazz music books, but this was the first jazz music book". The distinction was, "other people had previously written books that dealt with music, but this was the first book that used a musical genre as its stylistic form."

   15%
4. D

   Out of Scope9% picked this

   Building on the works of many African American writers and musical composers, Morrison has over the years developed an innovative jazzlike style of narration,

   Out of Scope: over the years Wrong Emphasis: not about Jazz This answer relegates Jazz to the periphery. It shows up as an add-on modifier, but it's not discussed in the main clause. The main clause is that, "Over the years, Morrison developed an innovative jazzlike style of narration". We have no idea if she used this jazzlike style of narration in any other books besides this one, so we can't support the idea that this "jazzlike style of narration" is her typical, signature style that permeates many years of writing. This passage was about one specific book, Jazz, which was the first time that a book was based on a jazzlike style of storytelling: bandleader's 3rd person narration + key characters' 1st person quotation 'solos".

   9%
5. E

   Correct60% picked this

   In Jazz, Morrison has succeeded in creating an original and effective narrative strategy that is a literary analogue of Duke

   Why this is right

   This answer gives perhaps a surprising amount of spotlight to Duke Ellington, but saying that Jazz is a success because it employs "an original and effective narrative strategy" is the best match we got from any answer choices for the fact that Morrison's book was original because it used jazz as a structuring principle for the novel. What this narrative strategy a literary analogue of Ellington's musical style? Yes! The end of the 3rd paragraph says that "It is this same effect [of Ellington's musical style] that Toni Morrison has achieved in Jazz, a literary rendering of an art of composition that Duke perfected."

   Skill tested: Main Point · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   60%