Lit. Anal. The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)

1)The novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is split into four sections: Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer. The novel is about a nine year old girl named Claudia and her ten year old sister, Frieda. These girls live in Ohio with their parents. The novel takes place in the end of the Great Depression. The MacTeers family take in a man named Henry and a young girl named Pecola. Throughout the novel we see that Pecola is an interesting girl. She is obsessed with having blue eyes and blonde hair like “Sherley Temple.” Pecola is a troubled character because of the people around her and her inner conflicts. She is constantly being told that she is ugly and black. The novel describes the childhood of both Claudia’s parents. It was rough and both were mistreated. One day Pecola is raped by Cholly (the father) and becomes pregnant. Of course Pecola is the one who is beaten because they blame her for the incident. Unlike the rest of the neighborhood, Claudia and Frieda want Pecola’s baby to live. They sacrifice the money they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe that if the flowers live, so will Pecola’s baby. The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecola’s baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.
2)The theme of this novel is universal. It is seen versus being seen. Pecola dreams of having blue eyes and she believes that the reason for experiencing cruelty is because of how she is seen. In her mind, if she weren’t ugly, then people wouldn’t be doing ugly things to her or around her. The connection between how one is seen and what one sees has a uniquely tragic outcome for her.
3)Toni Morrison takes in interesting approach on this novel. She uses first person point-of-view in order to create a personal connection for the readers while they read. Morrison’s tone is melancholy. Throughout the novel we see nothing good coming out of every incidents, but yet all the characters cope with the misfortunes one way or another.
•“I don’t know why she would. All he did was get drunk and beat her.”
•“Although his income was small, he had no taste for luxury.”
• “Finally rigid with constipation, he boarded the bus to Macon.”
4)Toni Morrison used several literary elements in order to convey a specific theme and tone. Some of the literary techniques which I observed that strengthened my understanding of the theme and my sense of the tone were: foreshadowing, verbatim, diction, imagery, and dialect. These techniques helped create this powerful, unforgettable novel. For example the foreshadowing lets us know of terrible things to come and the dialect helps the reader connect with the wide variety of characters.
•“I reckon I knows a lying nigger when I sees one, but jest in case one of them mammies is really dyin’ and wants to see her little old smoke before she meets her maker, I gone do it.”---Dialect
•“It was such a small and simple gesture, but it filled him then with a wondering softness.”---Foreshadowing
•“She can rub the smooth fur and feel the unresisting flesh underneath.”---Imagery