How does the use of sound and music in Toni Morrison's novels, 'The Bluest Eye' and 'Jazz', enhance our understanding of her writing?

[I have provided an excerpt of an answer that might be expected of an English A Level student in a longer piece of written coursework. I have written an introductory paragraph, setting out my argument, and the second fine-tunes and develops this argument, supported by textual and critical evidence.] The needle on a record, the tapping of feet, the clicking of a handbag, the hollow foot of Pauline Breedlove hitting the kitchen floor, storytelling, the cries of laughter, the ‘singing pain’ of Golden Gray ‘shocking the bloodrun and disturbing the nerves’; sound and music underpins the much of Toni Morrison’s work and are the cogs which keep the lives of her characters turning. It is the fabric of a society emerging from a history of oppression and provides a voice for the voiceless. I would like to reconsider the role of jazz and blues music within Toni Morrison's oeuvre as a more nuanced preoccupation, which is often overlooked in the more superficial analyses of her novel, Jazz (1992), as critics often draw stylistic comparisons between the improvisatory nature of the genre and Morrison's prose style and structural techniques. It is unproductive to restrict one's exploration of music within her work to the literary representation of riffs, interrupted solos, and to the far-fetched suggestion that ‘the blank pages [between chapters] and the imagined soloist could be considered evidence of Morrison's literary improvisations.’ Through my examination of the innovative use of the sound in her work, I intend to challenge the conventional approaches to assessing the significance of music, just as Morrison sets no boundaries for her own musical experimentation; no sound she creates is flat or void of meaning or musicality and therefore it is problematic to consider ‘music’ and ‘sound’ as two separate entities. After initially examining the prevalence of musical tropes within her work, I intend to demonstrate that Morrison’s language is not a literary musical equivalent but that she is able to assert a new kind power over language by incorporating music, rhythm, sound, and thus engaging all the senses, creating a unique performative expression. She attempts to reassign the language of music to female African Americans, from alluding to powerful blues mother figures to creating a voice for women in the male-dominated world of jazz. However, Morrison’s polemics do not present a preoccupation with genre. She presents music as a unifying, restorative and cathartic force. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison seeks to create a new kind of unified literary expression that connects music to feelings such as intense pain or elation. She creates an equivalent to a soundscape by using colourful, lyrical language that plays with all the senses and the carefully crafted space that it inhabits. Anthony Berret has said that ‘music gathers the senses into a complete impression, links pleasure with pain so that the two become almost equally desirable, and either celebrates or longs for the presence of other people.’ Music is such an evocative form of expression in Morrison’s work that it is inextricably tied up with movement sensations of feeling and nature, love, longing for love and memory, personal experience and togetherness, and her language leaves its mark on the mind like an impressionist painting. As Cholly reminisces over his fondest childhood memory, remembers the sensations surrounding the heroic blues figure of Blue, in awe of his ‘arms higher than the pines.’ 'Far away someone was playing a mouth organ; the music slithered over the cane fields and into the pine grove; it spiralled around the tree trunks and mixed itself with the pine scent, so Cholly couldn't tell the difference between the sound and the odor that hung about the heads of people.' Morrison produces an incredible sense of depth in these passages as the sound ‘slithered’ and ‘spiralled’ until the pine scent and the mouth organ became a part of the same physical experience. In interview, the writer Fran Lebowitz commented that ‘Toni has a fantastic memory especially for childhood. She really remembers how a small thing can overwhelm a child […] and most adults lose this ability.’ Evidence of Lebowitz’s assertion can also be found Claudia’s perception of the sound of her mother’s voice, ‘punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like the throb of a heart made of jelly,’ a sound which saturates both Jazz and The Bluest Eye. Morrison’s described waking up to her mother’s singing voice every day and it was ‘a support system for us […] it was real information.’ Perhaps this is why we find it so upsetting to follow Pecola’s story, a victimised, introverted child who lacks the ‘information’ to express herself, whose only gesture is to ‘tuck her head in […] as though she wanted to cover her ears.’ Unlike the sensory depiction of the MacTeer’s home, seeping with ‘love, thick and dark as Alga syrup […] sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base—everywhere in that house‘ in the Breedlove’s home the sound of Pauline’s ‘one good foot made hard, bony sounds; the twisted one whispered on the linoleum. In the kitchen she made noises with doors, faucets, pans. The noises were hollow, but the threats implied were not.’ Pecola’s exposure to her parent’s abusive relationship leads her to believe that the ‘terrible’ sound coming from their bed, ‘was love. Choking sounds and silence.’ During horrific rape scene, the ‘only sound [Pecola] made—a hollow suck of air in the back of her throat.’ Pecola turns to the only characters who will accept her for who she is; the three prostitutes. A true embodiment of the blues. Marie’s laughter came like the sound of many rivers, freely, deeply, muddily…’– a ‘quintessential blues utterance’ of their earthliness and belonging. Pecola’s tragic situation and search for a role model further emphasises the need for young, female African Americans to have their own mode of expression.