The Bluest Eye:
-The story takes place in Lorain, Ohio in the fall of 1941, the same place where Tony Morrison(the author) was born.
-The book was published in 1971
-Power is seen through beauty, and white is “beautiful”
Dick and Jane primers:
http://faculty.valpo.edu/bflak/dickjane/
Shirley Temple dances with Mr. Bojangles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjCFYpWDmfM
AUTUMN
Things that happen in autumn:
Season between summer and winter (transitional season). From September to December
A period of late maturity, esp. one followed by decline
-September: beginning of the school year, Claudia is narrating.
-Old things die but you get new things because of school,
-Autumn: nostalgia,
Being able to look back and rationalize, see the good in the past.
Mr. Henry moves in with the MacTeers
Shows how the children are almost part of décor.
He smells wonderful, he makes a good impression on the girls. He talks to them, compares them to idols of beauty
He is a dual character: nice, smooth but is a pervert. Like autumn, he is deceiving: pretty but rotting, and its followed by winter.
The MacTeers have more and more responsibility
Pecola briefly stays with the MacTeers; has her first period
-Autumn is a period of transition for Pecola: she has her period, becomes woman. Possible decline: her period makes her able to have children.
Dick and Jane:
Jane’s red dress Pecola’s dress stained “brownish red stain” 27
We go from spring, purity, freshness = Pecola’s innocence to “brownish red”= her innocence crumples up
Green house: “our house is old, cold and green”
Storefront where the Breedloves live “theyareveryh” cut off
History of the building: nostalgia past,
The description of the storefront’s furniture is like Pecola’s childhood: no memories to cherish.
Then you are outdoors. (17)
Theme of deceit: Claudia is telling Pecola’s story, Mr. Henry, hiding Pecola’s period, etc.
The whores don’t see the ugliness
SPRING
To start anew, purity, happiness. IRONY: the spring vs. what happens during the season
Mr. Henry is greatly chastised for touching her; it is the end of Frieda’s innocence/childhood? (Not so much because of how she acts, Maginot line’s story…
Three children violators: Mr Henry, Soap Head Church, Cholly. The adults are violators in this book, in different states.
Frieda can continue being a child but Pecola can’t.
110
Pauline Breedlove at the white house; hits Pecola
123: she needs to get tout of her life. The picture shows transport her but make her return to reality hard.
The loss of her tooth is like the sofa in the storefront: it creates apathy. She settles on “being ugly.” Her limp was cute but now her being toothless makes her hate herself=> self-loathing. Then everything goes bad (p116)
The brown spec is a phenomenon common to all Breedloves: Pecola, Cholly and Pauline
It grows, eating away unnoticed and then makes everything fall out.
The brown spec: like the color of their skin
There is one thing that each character hates about themselves: Pecola with her eyes, Pauline with her tooth, Cholly with sex => nothing can grow in these conditions of self-loathing.
Cholly and Pauline can’t separate: they need each other (first love, then violence)
Cholly: yellow eyes. Something sickly about them, he is at the opposite of the ideal.
To have the bluest eye is to have that best gaze, to see the best. Cholly’s gaze is a different gaze.
Pauline, unlike Cholly gets to tell her story in her own words.
Page 115: no self-loathing, the colors conjure up all the happy memories from before, the tooth is gone, before the yellow eyes, before her martyrdom. There is passion, simplicity.
Cholly’s eyes are yellow, but she doesn’t see them like that.
Page 125:
Pauline wants to love her baby no matter what: ironic. She does love Pecola even though she is ugly. She actually wanted the baby, was proud of her.
Pauline has no power, and like Pecola can project and go to another place to feel better.
“just because we don’t have a voice doesn’t mean that we don’t feel”
Ironic that Pauline cherishes her baby and it turns out ugly.
Fisher house:
Pauline treats the Fisher girl like her daughter, and her daughter like a stranger.
p.108
Pauline had gotten her bluest eye: the perfect house, respect, etc. then Pecola comes and brings chaos. (like everywhere she goes.)
Here in the house, Pauline can have everything she wants. Compared to her real life that becomes an after thought
p. 127-128
She has power, praise, luxury, and honor. RESPECT. She has moved into the Dick and Jane house.
Cholly’s Story
Abandonment, death, and grief: these are his foundations.
His name is that of his Great Aunt’s brother. He is brought up in a strange environment, unnatural: his g-aunt. He doesn’t know how a family should be, he was rejected by his family. He does have a sense of love
The most attention he gets is when Aunt Jimmy dies.
Good childhood memories: with Blue, the watermelon. Colors: blue, red.
The colors that are so tightly knit with happiness during childhood disappear, as the characters grow older. In adulthood, all that is left if black, absence of all colors, and they hate it. They hate the black; they hate themselves. No more colors, no more happiness.
147:
Why would the white guy do it? Arousement, sexual thrill, power (telling him what to do). They see Cholly as an animal.
Cholly cannot hate the white man because it would make him even more powerless. Plus, Darlene saw his failure: sexually, he couldn’t protect her.
Shame
“Lonely better than alone?”
159:
Musician: rules that give his life sense; can only make sense in music.
Sentence has a syncopated rhythm.
Cholly has accumulated experience and is free. Too free. He is too used to living the way he wants: family life is unnatural to him.
CHOLLY:
159
Animal-like, he reacts
Dangerously free: independence without care for others, rules
He has nothing to loose: dangerous; you detach from morls, structures and values.
There is a dichotomy in him: soft then hard. He disconnects from emotions, hardened. Pauline fences him in.
Cholly is in constantly in conflict with himself and doesn’t know what to do with himself. Fight between his emotions and preconceptions.
His morality exists but is deep down.
BUT all of theses things are going on inside of Cholly without his knowledge. Which is maybe also why his narrative is told from an outsider’s perspective. There are some things he wouldn’t say.
Cholly can be “all urge” if he wants to: he is somewhat childlike. (He didn’t really have a childhood)
There is no one there to tell him he is wrong.
Rape scene: page 161
Reality is mixed up with the newness of emotion.
He is asking himself “what is he to her?” “what can I do?”
The only thing he can give is sex: it is the only love he knows, he is powerless.
He is primal: crawling towards her. He is reverting to a world of nature.
The only time Pecola is shown love, attention and care is now: before and during the rape.
Cholly not pedophile?
He doesn’t understand why Pecola is unhappy when she has more than he ever had.
“How dare she love him?” He hates the part of Pecola that loves him; he is filled with self-hatred that he cannot face.
He enjoys the power he has over the stunned body that cannot fight back.
Soaphead Church: 164
He is another one caught up with self-justification, problems with sex, perversion, self-loathing.
Light-skinned, interprets dreams, misanthrope, etc.
Grants Pecola her blue eyes, but uses Pecola like everyone else. He is really cruel in his misanthrope, cynical. He abuses Pecola, he is fake, hypocrite: he uses her to get back at God and kill the dog.
Appearance vs. reality
The blue eyes are given for him not for her. He is doing all of this at Pecola’s expense.
181
The only happiness Pecola can have is in a fantasy.
Even if Pecola is on the bottom of the food chain, she has the highest aspirations.
Blog post: Humbert
And offenders
+ FRANKY
SUMMER
Supposed to be the happiest season but is not. “Season of storms”
In Ohio, summer is tornado season.
Pecola’s pregnancy: 189
We hear about it through women gossiping, they say that Pecola has some of the blame.
The only people who feel pity are Frieda and Claudia: but they don’t do anything.
Everyone in the book is throwing out “the nasty little black bitch.”
Frieda and Claudia want Pecola’s baby to be okay, plant the marigold seeds. Marigolds=metaphor for the baby. The soil is a metaphor for Pecola ad also the surroundings of Pecola that are poisoned. The planting of the seeds is somewhat like lighting a “cierge.”
Claudia wants people to want the baby to live, to love blackness. The greatest act that
Pecola’s Madness (p. 193)
She constantly looks in the mirror: first time we see something from Pecola’s eyes
Pecola goes from having no voice to two voices.
One is bossy (Pecola), her friend.
Pecola’s imaginary friend, could be her second person
199: she gets mad when her friend speaks of Cholly. She finally stands up for herself. Speaking of two rapes: the second one is only mentioned here.
Is she in denial? For Cholly to leave maybe he could have raped her twice?
She builds a fantasy world in which people’s behavior towards her is explained by jealously.
There is a back and forth between lucidity and confusion
Madness: inability to reason, to be grounded in reality
Having an imaginary friend is something children have. It’s ironic that she have the imaginary friend after she lost all of the innocence.
No one believes her, no one wants to look at her: she has no support, no outlet except for the imaginary friend that needles into her lucid, painful corners.
Even in the self-support, safe place, she hurts herself.
She is taking the blame and almost allowing herself to say that there was some enjoyment.
196: “you didn’t need me before”
ironic. The happiness is craze.
Pecola gets angry when her friend speaks of Cholly because she feels powerful. For her, because she didn’t fight back it means she liked it.
195: Her eyes are blue and she can now look straight at the sun: she can stare happiness in the face but will eventually blind herself and have to look away:
• Pattern: this conversation goes on all day long.
The bluer the eyes the stronger the atonement, justification: “worth it.”
Her eyes aren’t blue enough, life isn’t at its best.
Her goal in life is to have blue eyes and so she only lives for the bopping back and forth: maybe she has them
“Before your very eyes” We end on sadness again
She is destroyed physically and mentally: “the damage was total”(204)
Claudia’s guilt:
The guilt comes when she is adult: tirade against the whole town. Says that the town felts strong because Pecola was weak.
She is able to see that everybody was to blame, turning Pecola into the other, the scapegoat. Their otherness was transferred onto Pecola.
Claudia is angry: she wants others to realize. She doesn’t want all the tendrils of the girls like Pecola to end up like her.
WINTER
Theme:
False hope, disappointment,
Page 61, description of the father (imagery) associated with winter. He may not be a warm father, but he is a sturdy father. (Opposed to coal stove image for Cholly). His presence is a strong one, he has a mission.
Since Fall is the beginning of things, it’s ironic (Morrison uses a lot of irony, in structure), it’s an anticipation of the end.
Imagery and irony used to get her point across.
Relations with father:
Frieda is defended by her father, Pecola is abused by her father
Starts with Maureen Peal. Page 62.
She is illusion vs. reality. She is nice but has hurtful words, is somewhat perverted. Pecola wants perfectness but perfection isn’t perfect.
She is making herself feel good, she loathes that black part of herself.
Lynch braids: her beauty is lynching of other people. Interesting ironic image because it conjures up the image of the south, mob, murder.
Teasing: they feel superior to her because she is darker than them.
They are bullying her, objectifying/simplifying her: she is only defined by her blackness and her daddy.
Theme with the nasty: black people play nasty
73
Mr. Henry with the whores
He abuses the hospitality.
He takes away some innocence. It just keeps getting worse. At first he is nice, then he is with the whores, and then touches Frieda.
He is at the other end of specter: more present, more warm than the father but violates them. His niceness is a trick.
They know he is lying.
Junior Episode
Junior hates his mother and directs this hatred toward the cat.
It is ironic that the cat is black with blue eyes. She takes care of it; the cat doesn’t think that she is repulsive. The cat is the fantasy
For one minute, Pecola is in a safe environment and it is perverted.
Junior kills the cat (flown full force on the window), and blames it on Pecola
“you nasty little black bitch”(92) Geraldine has worked hard to keep bad elements out of her house, + she has a strange relationship with her cat.
91-91
The black people are hated for something “Out of their CONTROL”
Geraldine doesn’t want “funk,” she rejects the black part of herself.
She hates sex with her husband Pauline who likes it
She is very neat, perfectionist doilies Pauline no doilies
Geraldine wants control
Everyone in the book one way or another is involved with “nastiness”: it is natural but becomes vice when you reject it, when it becomes out of control => takes over unnatural channel
When you negate that natural in you, your choice has tremendous repercussions.
In the beginning, control (Geraldine => short sentences, control) and then later it is out of control (when we talk about the “niggers” => long run-on sentences, chaos)
