defensively preempt any possible accusation or attack, he aggressively lashes out at

anyone that even slightly reminds him of his painful past or his helplessness. He thus

clearly shows a poor tolerance for stress and arousal, which many clinical studies identify

as one of the behavioral characteristics of traumatized people.127

 Cholly's life-narrative is a completely broken one without any sequence or

thematic thrust running throughout the various stages of his life. Morrison compares his

fragmented and incoherent life, lived in a fury of aggression and lawless "freedom," to

bits and pieces of jazz music.


 The pieces of Cholly's life could become coherent only in the head of a musician. .
 Only a musician would sense, know, without even knowing that he knew, that
 Cholly was free. Dangerously free. Free to feel whatever he felt fear, guilt, shame,
 love, grief, pity. Free to be tender or violent, to whistle or weep. ... He could go to
 jail and not feel imprisoned, for he had already seen the furtiveness in the eyes of
 his jailer, free to say, "No suh," and smile, for he had already killed three white
 men. Free to take a woman's insults, for his body had already conquered hers. Free
 even to know her in the head, for he had already cradled that head in his arms. Free
 to be gentle when she was sick, or mop her floor, for she knew what and where his
 maleness was. He was free to live his fantasies, and free even to die, the how
 and the when of which held no interest for him. In those days, Cholly was truly
 free. Abandoned in a junk heap by his mother, rejected for a crap game by his
 father, there was nothing more to lose. He was alone with his own perceptions and
 appetites. And they alone interested him. (159-160)


 Cholly's life demonstrates the cumulative effects of insidious trauma caused by

constant devaluation by the world, which breaks up Cholly's self narrative and makes it

highly fragmented and incoherent. As the psychoanalyst Donald P. Spence argues in his

discussion of the central role of the self, "the core of our identity is ... a narrative thread

that gives meaning to our life, provided and this is the big if that it is never broken."128

According to Spence, the central mission of the self is turning happenings into meaning

and bringing meaning out of confusion.129