Reading Comprehension

PT136 · S1 · P3 · Q15 Toni Morrison’s Jazz

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Music and literature, rivals among the arts, have not coexisted without intruding on each other’s terrain.

Topic

The musical structure and narrative innovation of Toni Morrison's novel Jazz, especially how it draws from jazz music to shape its literary form.

Framework

Theme / Example

Main Point

Morrison’s Jazz stands out as the first African American novel to use a musical genre—jazz—as its structuring principle, not just thematically but in the very way the story is told, thus redefining what narrative point of view can do in literature. (Best encapsulated in the final paragraph and in the sentences: )

P1: Literature inspired by music—Morrison’s innovation

We’re told that music and literature have always influenced one another, especially in the African American tradition, but that Toni Morrison was the first to structure an entire novel based on a musical genre—jazz—with her 1992 novel Jazz.

P2: How Jazz mimics jazz music in its narrative

The passage explains that the novel doesn’t just reference music in its plot but replicates jazz’s structure in its narration. The storytelling shifts from a detached narrator to deeply personal voices of the characters, much like solos in a jazz band, with the narrator still controlling the overall “composition.”

P3: Comparison to Duke Ellington’s musical innovations

This paragraph brings in Duke Ellington’s composing style—writing pieces tailored to his musicians, encouraging individuality but always within the larger work. Morrison’s storytelling is compared to this, with her allowing character “solos” within her own carefully designed narrative frame.

15.

Which one of the following most accurately states the main point of the passage?

In Jazz, Morrison has realized
Wrong Emphasis: plot, themes, setting
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% picked this
Morrison's striking description of a
Wrong Emphasis: description of jazz
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% picked this
Although many African American writers
Wrong Emphasis: non-jazz vs. jazz
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% picked this
Building on the works of
Out of Scope
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% picked this
Correct
In Jazz, Morrison has succeeded
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% picked this

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