Main Characteristics of the novel [609199]

TONI MORRISON
THE BLUEST EYE
Main Characteristics of the novel
Student: [anonimizat]: III

About Toni Morrison is, in my point of view, very important to mention the fact
she was the fi rst black writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Her writings
explored the black experience in America, especially the experience of black
women, her writings becoming so unique, resemble with no other writer in Englis h
Born Chole Ardelia Woffrod, in Lorain, Ohio, on February 1931 she marries the
architect Harold Morrison, with whom had two sons; after the divorce between the
two, Toni moved to New York City, where she
worked as an Editor for Random House .
In 1970 will appear her first novel “The Blu est Eye” revealing the desire of a
young black girl who wants to become white. She had other important writings,
such as :
-Belove d
-Sula
-Song of Solomo n
-Tar Bab y
-Jazz
-Paradis e, all of them treating themes that have as central characters black people,
or black couples .
In The Bluest Ey e, we can see the drama Pecola is facing just due to the fact she is
black and also due to society’s judgment at that moment, more than that, exce pting
the white people inside the novel, it can be also observed the fact that neither in her
community Pecola is very privileged: The Bluest Eye, with its focus on Pecola's
tragic outsider status in her own community .
As Marc C. Conor says: “It is similar ly indisputable that the classical aesthetic
tradition played a powerful part in the formation of her mind and her imagination,
and any attempt to omit this influence leads to a partial and weakened
understanding of her writings. But curiously, few critics have paid attention to
Morrison's training in the aesthetic tradition, and the effect of this tradition upon
her writing”, having that in mind, then the understanding of her writings and
characters will become by far easier. Moving forward, in The Bluest Eye, Toni
Morrison chose to aestheticize the rape; the rape a father has done to his daughter.
When it comes about the way characters talk is revealed the fact that Morisson, in
The Bluest Eye captures the inflection, tone, and non -verbal gestures of the o ral
tradition when the women's "conversation is like a wicked dance: sound meets
sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires" and when it comes about grammar or
pronunciation or vocabulary it belongs to Black English, especially when it comes
about those three whores .
I have to admit that the next quote from Marc C. Conner’s Aesthetics of Toni
Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable: Thus The Bluest Eye can be read as a
cautionary tale because, like Beloved, it is a story that should not be repeate d has

the very trut h it because inside the entire novel is revealed the truth that,
unfortunately, happens even in upper -class families and the fact that Morrison put
the action on a black family reality, make it look even sadder .

A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see
the world with blue eyes.
The novel focuses more on the Pecola’s dream to be white and beautiful because
she believed that so, people will look nice to her and she will see the life brighter,
also the Bluest Eye pre sents the fundamental pattern of Morrison's early novels: an
isolated figure, cut off from the community, must undergo a harrowing experience,
an ontologically threatening encounter with what is variously described as the
unspeakable, the otherworldy, the demonic—that is, the sublim e
As I said, the novel is focused on Pecola’s destiny and condition, but more than
that, even if they do not admit it as she, the rest of the black characters have the
same problem as she has .
Inside the family, Pecola has no aff ection from her parents, what she can see inside
of it are only the fights between her parents: a father who drinks too much, and a
mother who really enjoys and feel better when is fighting with her husband .
After her father tried to burn out their house, Pecola can be found inside the
MacTeer family, but after that, she has to turn back in the same family to her old
and difficult existence: parents who frequently beat each other and brother who
runs away every time this things happen, so Pecola only wanted to disappear:
“Please, God,” she whispe red into the palm of her hand.
Please make me disappear.
But the author gives us some piece of information about her parents as well, so we
know that her father has been abandoned since he was only 4 days and raised by
his aunt, or the fact that her mothe r has a problem with one foot: a rusty nail was
met when it punched clear through her foot during her second year of life saved
Pauline Williams from total anonymity .
One day when Cholly returns home he finds Pecola washing the dishes, with a
mixture of feelings he rapes her. After she wakes -up she trie to tell the story to her
mother, but in vain, because she does not believe her, more than that, she beats her .
After Frieda and Claudia find out about the fact that Pecola was raped by her own
father, and more than that the fact she was pregnant now, they try to h elp her, but
unfortunately the kid will not survive .
The novel reveals also the fact that Pecola was raped by her father not once, but
twice.
The end of the novel brings Pecola, who now has blue eyes and an imaginary
friend. Looking at her, most of the p eople started to be happy with what they had,
considering now themselves as being lucky .

All of us—all who knew her —felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on
her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity
decorated us, h er guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her
awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness
made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her
waking dreams we used —to silence our own nightma res. And she let us, and
thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our
characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strengt h

As a conclusion, beauty is one of the most destructive ideas in the history of human
thoug ht and this thought has destroyed Pecola and created an ugly society, looking
for external beauty, instead of looking for the beauty of souls .

Bibliography:
1.Morrsion, Toni; The bluest eye
https://memberfiles.freewebs.com/36/26/43092636/documents/Bluest%20Eye,%20
The%20 -%20Toni%20Morrison.pdf
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni -morrison -dead.html
3. https://classroom.google.com/u/2/c/NjIzNzY0MjgwODha
4. https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/boo ks/a26536741/best -toni-morrison –
books/
5. The Aestetics of Toni Morrison: Speakin g the unspeakable., edited by Marc C.
Conner, University press of Mississippi
file:///C:/Users/catal/Downloads/The%20Aesthetics%20of%20Toni%2 0Morrison_
%20Speaking%20the%20Unspeakable%20(%20PDFDrive.com%20).pdf