Character Gender And Identity In Jackie Kay S Trumpet
Trumpet is a novel which explores the nuances of identity and love. The characters are effected by the death of Joss Moody and subsequent revelation that he was born a girl, this forces them to examine their own sense of self. Kay’s reflection on the construction of individual, cultural and social selves and the impact of being a person drifting in the boundary spaces is a complex examination of the sum of a person’s parts, how they are defined and effected by changes in the way they are perceived by others and the way they perceive themselves. Kay composed the structure of Trumpet to be ‘very close to Jazz’ using two central melodies surrounded by syncopating rhythms and harmonies. Millie and Colman are two counterpointing voices telling the same story of grief but with different emotional rhythms.1 Kay’s poetic background radiates through her figurative language which serves to intensify the emotional impact of the novel. Kay alters between first and third person narrative voice giving the reader a multidimensional perspective of the Moodys and enabling her to build complex characters.
Kay presents Colman Moody as the figure of a man torn by the conflict between his grief at the loss of his father, the distortion of his memories of his past, and his anger at his parents and himself. Colman’s notion of his father suffers a disconnect after Joss dies, he tells the funeral director ‘I won’t believe he’s dead you know, until I see him in the flesh’ (p. 114).2 The body that Colman is presented with, however, is not that of his father but instead it is Joss and Josephine in the same flesh. With Colman unable to reconcile the body on the table with that of his dead father, his grieving process is arrested. Colman is a character who has built his sense of self around the image of his father this is evident when he says; ‘I fucking worshipped him’ (p. 49), both he and Joss inhabit the boundary spaces between the concepts of ethnicity and nationality as they are both
Kay presents Colman Moody as the figure of a man torn by the conflict between his grief at the loss of his father, the distortion of his memories of his past, and his anger at his parents and himself. Colman’s notion of his father suffers a disconnect after Joss dies, he tells the funeral director ‘I won’t believe he’s dead you know, until I see him in the flesh’ (p. 114).2 The body that Colman is presented with, however, is not that of his father but instead it is Joss and Josephine in the same flesh. With Colman unable to reconcile the body on the table with that of his dead father, his grieving process is arrested. Colman is a character who has built his sense of self around the image of his father this is evident when he says; ‘I fucking worshipped him’ (p. 49), both he and Joss inhabit the boundary spaces between the concepts of ethnicity and nationality as they are both
Bibliography: Kay, Jackie, Trumpet (London: Picador, 1998) Randomhouse.com, 'Bold Type: Interview With Jackie Kay ', 1999 <http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0499/kay/interview.html> [accessed 4 December 2014]