About Author:
Toni Morrison has been one of the most important African American novelists of the 20th century. While Morrison’s work has been deemed controversial, it has received a variety of prestigious awards, including the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize. What makes Morrison’s writing "authentic" is that it draws upon her experience growing up in a black, working class family in the Midwest during the 1930s. The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature points to the fact that Morrison’s work “blends the realistic detail of black families and neighborhoods in an Ohio town that resembles her birthplace” as a way to convey her encounters with racism, white oppression, “violence within the black community” and “exploitation of blacks by other blacks.”
Theme Of Novel:
1).Whiteness as the Standard of Beauty
2).Seeing versus Being Seen
3)The Power of Stories
About Novel:
The events in The Bluest Eye are not
presented chronologically; instead, they are linked by the voices and
memories of two narrators. In the sections labeled with the name of a
season, Claudia MacTeer's. retrospective narration as an adult contains
her childhood memories about what happened to Pecola. The other
narrator, the omniscient narrator, then braids her stories into
Claudia's season sections, introducing influential characters and events
that shape Pecola's life.
Claudia MacTeer is now a grown woman, telling
us about certain events that happened during the fall of 1941. She was
only a child then, but she remembers that no marigolds bloomed that
fall, and she and her friends thought it was probably because their
friend and playmate, Pecola, was having her father's baby. She tells us
that Pecola's father, Cholly Breedlove, is now dead, the baby is dead,
and the innocence of the young girls also died that fall.
We then segue into a lengthy flashback, to Autumn
1940, a year before the fall when no marigolds bloomed. Claudia and her
older sister, Frieda, have just started school. That autumn, the
MacTeers accept Mr. Henry as a roomer because his rent money will help
pay bills. The family soon has another roomer — Pecola Breedlove, a
young black girl whom county officials place in the MacTeer home after
Pecola's father burns the family house down.
Pecola and the MacTeer girls share childhood
adventures, and what Claudia remembers in particular is the startling
onset of Pecola's puberty when the eleven-year-old girl unexpectedly has
her first menstrual period.
The second narrator offers us her memories about
Pecola's family. She describes the house where the Breedloves lived
(before Cholly burned it down), and she points out the antagonistic
relationship between Pecola's parents. We see Pecola and her brother,
Sammy, bracing themselves for the ordeal of listening to their mother
quarreling violently with their drunken father, Cholly, as he tries to
sleep off the effects of the previous night's whiskey.
Against a backdrop of grinding poverty, with her
parents locked in an ugly cycle of hostility and violence, Pecola seeks
hope in her prayers for beauty, which she feels will lead to her being
loved. Each night Pecola fervently prays for blue eyes, sky-blue eyes,
thinking that if she looked different — pretty — perhaps everything
would be better. Maybe everything would be beautiful.
Claudia's narrative returns with Winter.
She remembers the arrival of Maureen Peal, a new girl in school, whom
Claudia calls "the disrupter." Despite Maureen's protruding dog-tooth
and the fact that she was born with an extra finger on each hand
(removed at birth), Maureen seems to embody everything perfect; she has
long, beautiful hair, light skin, green eyes, and bright, clean, pretty
clothes. She is enchanting and popular with both the black and white
children.
Pecola is not popular. On the playground, Frieda
rescues her from a vicious group of boys who are harassing her. Maureen
moves quickly and stands beside Pecola, and the boys leave. Maureen then
links arms with Pecola and buys her some ice cream. The world seems
wonderful until Maureen begins to talk about Pecola's father's
nakedness. Claudia and Frieda quarrel with her, and during the squabble,
Claudia swings at Maureen but hits Pecola instead. Maureen runs across
the street and screams back at the three girls, "I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly . . ." Deeply hurt, Pecola curls her shoulders forward in misery.
The omniscient narrator now describes Geraldine,
her son Junior, and her much-loved blue-eyed black cat. Neglected by his
aloof and status-conscious mother, Junior wickedly lures an
unsuspecting Pecola into his house under the pretense of showing her
some kittens. Once inside, Junior hurls his mother's big black cat in
her face. Scratched and terrified, Pecola moves toward the door, but
Junior blocks her way. She is momentarily distracted by the black cat
rubbing against her. The blue eyes in the cat's black face mesmerize
her.
Junior grabs the cat and begins swinging it in
circles. Trying to save the cat, Pecola grabs Junior, who falls and
releases the cat, letting it fly full force against the window.
Geraldine suddenly arrives home, and Junior immediately blames the cat's
death on Pecola.
Claudia's narrative resumes with Spring,
and she tells us about painful whippings and about her father beating
Mr. Henry for touching Frieda's tiny breasts. The sisters go to visit
Pecola, who now lives in a drab downstairs apartment; the top floor is
home to three prostitutes — Marie ("Miss Maginot Line"), China, and
Poland.
The omniscient narrator then tells us about
Pauline Breedlove's early life, her marriage to Cholly, the births of
Pecola and Sammy, and her job as a servant for a well-to-do white
family.
Pauline's story is followed by a recounting of
Cholly's traumatic childhood and adolescence. Abandoned by his mother
and father, Cholly is raised by a beloved great aunt, Jimmy, who dies
when Cholly is a teenager. During Cholly's first sexual experience, he
and the girl, Darlene, are discovered by two white men, who mock and
humiliate them. Afterward, the pain of humiliation, coupled with the
fear that Darlene might be pregnant, prompt Cholly to leave town and
head toward Macon, where he hopes to locate his father, Samson Fuller.
He finds a belligerent wreck of a man who wants nothing to do with his
son. Cholly eventually shakes off the crushing encounter. One day while
he is in Kentucky, he meets Pauline Williams, marries her, and fathers
two children, Sammy and Pecola.
Years later, on a Saturday afternoon in spring,
Cholly staggers home. In a drunken, confused state of love and lust, he
rapes eleven-year-old Pecola and leaves her dazed and motionless on the
kitchen floor.
The omniscient narrator continues, introducing
the character of Elihue Micah Whitcomb, a self-proclaimed psychic and
faith healer known as Soaphead Church. He is visited by what he calls a
pitifully unattractive black girl of about twelve or so, with a
protruding pot belly, who asks him for blue eyes. He tricks her into
poisoning a sickly old dog, proclaiming the dog's sudden death as a sign
from God that her wish will be granted.
Claudia's narrative returns with Summer,
and she tells us that she and Frieda learned from gossip that Pecola was
pregnant by her father. She remembers the mix of emotions she felt for
Pecola — shame, embarrassment, and finally sorrow.
Alone and pregnant, Pecola talks to her only
companion — a hallucination. She can no longer go to school, so she
wraps herself in a cloak of madness that comforts her into believing
that everyone is jealous of her miraculous, new blue eyes.
In this final section, Claudia says that she
remembers seeing Pecola after the baby was born prematurely and died.
Pecola's brother, Sammy, left town, and Cholly died in a workhouse.
Pauline is still doing housework for white folks, and she and Pecola
live in a little brown house on the edge of town.
Cited:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-bluest-eye/book-summary
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