In Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye, the author examines what society's degradation of people can lead to. It sets its story in Lorain, Ohio, in the 1940s, where a society with white ideals and common standards of beauty lives. Morrison demonstrates the effect that such racist ideas can have on people who do not respect them, through his authentic style, his precise language, his ability to interact with his readers and his specific structure which convincingly points out the fault not only about society in general, but the readers themselves. Using examples of characters who are victims of society and other characters who attempt to protest unjust ideals, Morrison creates a moving story about a vulnerable young girl's mental breakdown, as well as society and the world that affects her. allowed us to descend. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The honesty of Morrison's writing in The Bluest Eye, which is brutal and sometimes vulgar, is crucial to the development of the society in which the novel is set, as well as to the development of the characters and the descriptions of their actions. The blunt approach Morrison takes in his work generally results in sentences being direct and simple. However, there are also, in some places, detailed descriptions and complex ideas, but these things still tend to be written simply. Morrison writes touchingly in “the freshest, simplest, most striking prose” (Critical Perspectives 4). The author's careful attention to the connotations of words and cadences of language allows the despair and oppression of the characters to be evident through their thoughts, words, and behaviors (Critical Perspectives 60). Although Morrison admits to highlighting in his book "the codes embedded in black culture (Bloom 3), The Bluest Eye is written in an authentic voice that allows many identifiable themes and ideas to resonate with people of all races, genders and ages. The author expresses her understanding of a young girl's resentment towards a society that shuns her, by writing about girls like Claudia, who although capable of protesting the white world's emulation of the black world by dismembering their white dolls. They cannot “destroy the honeyed voices of parents and aunts, the obedience in the eyes of [their] peers, the slippery light in the eyes of [their] teachers as they encounter the Maureen chimes of the world (Baum 12 ). Although this simply means that people opposed to racism in their society cannot rid societies of their white ideals, Morrison describes this idea in a way that is "eerily familiar [but] strange" (Modern Critical Views 11). She does this by alluding to a specific person, whom any reader can recall, who is admired for things that are beyond their control, and therefore the control of anyone who does not possess or achieve them. Morrison writes on the assumption that almost everyone knew Maureen Peal. She cleverly criticizes society for the unfair advantage and treatment of Maureen's chimes, describing the "honey voices of parents" and the "slippery lights" in the eyes of teachers. Through her narration in The Bluest Eye, Morrison shows the insight of a naive young girl, Claudia, and most importantly, uses her insight to criticize society. Before the novel introduces Pecola's family, Claudia's family situation is revealed through her narration, which depicts her family as a stark contrast tothe main story of “Dick and Jane” which precedes it. Claudia's family is portrayed as cold and unloving until she says, "And in the night, when my cough was dry and hard, my feet would go into the room, my hands would iron the flannel, readjust the quilt and rested a while on my forehead”…”So when I think of fall, I think of someone with hands who doesn’t want me to die” (Morrison 12). At such a young age, Claudia can only describe love in these limited terms, but it nevertheless evokes a feeling of warmth and familial love. Morrison refers to Claudia's mother as "someone with hands who doesn't want [Claudia] to die" in order to deliberately describe love in an eloquent way, which ultimately describes the kind of love that Mrs. MacTeer gives to his daughter. The diction by which Morrison has Claudia narrate shows Morrison's understanding of the desires of a young girl in Claudia's situation. The specific words demonstrate Morrison's ability to identify similarities between his characters and his readers. When describing her resentment toward white dolls, Claudia shares, “If an adult had asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I didn't want to own anything or own any objects. I wanted to feel something on Christmas day instead. The real question would have been: “Dear Claudia, what experience would you like for Christmas?” "I could have said, 'I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my knees full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin all to myself'" (Morrison 21-22). Morrison, through Claudia's voice, writes about Claudia's desires and is particularly effective in eliciting feelings of childhood happiness. By appealing to the senses, Morrison appeals to the reader's memories, and the reader, in turn, linked to Claudia. Throughout the novel, Morrison writes using the voices of different narrators. However, many aspects of his writing style, such as his directness and tendency toward simpler sentences, are consistent throughout. An important feature, which can be attributed to much of the novel, is also the raw and bold manner in which Morrison writes. In the section where Pauline Breedlove recounts her past and describes the beginning of her unhappiness, she states: “I don't think I've ever gotten over it. There I was, five months pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth was missing. Everything happened then. Seems like I didn’t care anymore after that” (Morrison 123). Morrison is direct in her choice of speech for Pauline, and she is bold in the extremes that Pauline uses to talk about the effect of losing her tooth on her life. The audacity of Morrison's style also appears in his choice to make Pauline's loss of teeth the beginning of her misfortune (Critical Interpretation 91). But for Pauline, “the simplest thing would be to build a file from your foot. That's what she did. But to discover the truth about how dreams die, you should never take the dreamer's word for it. The end of his lovely beginning was probably decay in one of his front teeth. However, she always preferred to think about her foot (Morrison 110). The honesty with which Morrison writes eliminates any form of discretion. Morrison writes, perhaps most directly in the entire novel, about Cholly's rape of Pecola. Morrison does this by denying the reader "the cover of metaphor and confronting the reader directly with Cholly's violation of Pecola." She uses precise language when describing the beginning of the rape, saying: "The confused mixture of his memories of Pauline and the practice of something wild and forbidden excited him, and a flash of desire ran through his genitals, himgiving length” (Modern Critical Views 7). Morrison's writing in The Bluest Eye demonstrates his fearlessness as a writer and, as evidenced in his style, his honest and fearless manner of writing gives his work an authentic voice, which is of major importance in The Bluest Eye. The structure of The Bluest Eye, which Morrison executed uniquely, contributes enormously to the novel as a whole. Not only is it highly fragmented with many juxtapositions between adjacent sections, but it also features "looping narrative lines, flashbacks, and anticipatory predictions [that] similarly veil and qualify meaning" (Bloom 69). . The Bluest Eye follows an ironic counterpoint structure. The novel begins with a children's story "Dick and Jane" which mainly serves its contradiction with the daily lives of the MacTeers and especially the Breedloves (Bloom 22). The story begins with “This is the house. It's green and white. This is the family. Mother, Father, Dick and Jane live in the green and white house. They are very happy” (Morrison 1). Sections of this story serve as titles that introduce their counterparts in the racist setting of Lorain, Ohio, in the 1940s. Dick and Jane's green and white house features Breedlove's "irritating and melancholy" apartment, and the family in this apartment could not be different from the family in the story. While the father in the story is strong and smiling, Cholly Breedlove is a bitter alcoholic. The happy family contrasts with the poor and miserable Breedloves (Bloom 22). The introduction to "Dick and Jane" is important not only because it provides "a particular set of expectations for patterns of behavior, but also because it locates those expectations and behaviors within a realm of archetypes immutable – equivalent to the Platonic idea of ​​“reality””. (Critical Perspectives 62). Therefore, since no family or household can exist, Morrison repeats the same text two more times, first eliminating punctuation and capital letters, then eliminating all spaces as well. Morrison does this to “break and confuse” history (Bloom 50). The introductory story that Morrison uses as the first part of the text in The Bluest Eye effectively serves to juxtapose the real lives of the residents of Lorain, Ohio, as it directly precedes a short italicized passage in which Claudia narrates, in retrospect, recalling to memorize the events of the novel. In this section, Claudia recalls "but we were so deeply concerned about the health and safe delivery of Pecola's baby that we could think of nothing but our magic: if we planted the seeds and said the right words about them, they would flower, and everything would be fine... It never occurred to us that the Earth itself could have been inflexible. Although Claudia, in this section, reveals to the reader the fate of Pecola and her baby, Morrison's goal in the novel is to focus on questions of process, not final causes (Peterson 53). Morrison proves this motive by writing: “There is really nothing more to say except why. But since the why is difficult to manage, we must take refuge in the how. Thus, Morrison sets the stage for structure throughout the remainder of the novel. Morrison is effective in dealing with the “how” by dividing the novel into sections, both fragmented by seasons and by the narration of a young Claudia. A structure such as the one she uses allows the novel to delve deeper into the minds of the characters and allows the reader to understand the psyche of even the most antagonistic characters. The novel has this structure for a very particular reason; Morrison aims to “exploresocial and domestic aggression that could literally cause a child to collapse" by confronting Pecola with a series of rejections (some of a routine nature and others exceptional), while trying to "avoid any complicity in demonization ". process to which Pecola was subjected” (Morrison xii). Morrison's structure achieves this. In describing the early lives of Pecola's parents (those who contributed to Pecola's collapse) and all of the demoralizing and dehumanizing experiences that Pecola's parents faced, Morrison partly dismisses them. Likewise, she details Junior's mother's lack of attention towards him and explains that she had more affection for the cat as Junior grew up. Although she in no way attempts to justify Pecola's mistreatment, Morrison makes it clear to the reader that each of Pecola's parents was "no less a victim" than Pecola (Bloom 78). Pecola was doomed to this kind of fate, just as her parents were also doomed. Since PecolaFather had never known, and therefore never understood, the love of a parent, especially that of a father, he had no way of knowing how to treat his daughter. Cholly loved his daughter, but he was a dangerously free man: “Free to feel whatever he felt: fear, guilt, shame, sorrow, loving pity” (Morrison 159). Cholly was “alone in his own perceptions and appetites and they alone interested him” (Morrison 160). Just before Cholly rapes his daughter, he asks himself, "What could he do for her?" What gives him? What to tell him? What could an exhausted black man say to the hunchback of his eleven-year-old daughter? (Morrison 161). The description of Cholly's life and how he became who he currently is in the novel leads up to the moment where he questions these things. The years of degradation, abandonment and humiliation make Cholly wonder how to treat his own daughter and what he could do for her. Cholly's breakdown by society, demonstrated before the rape, takes its toll at the end of the section, when he desperately questions how he, as a father, should treat his daughter (Peterson 32). Morrison places the blame on the people and society that "trashed" Cholly, as he ends up becoming a character for whom, ultimately, "no glory is possible" (Critical Perspectives 2). By structuring the novel in such a way that the reader gets first glimpses into the lives of characters who later appear villainous and antagonistic, such as Junior, Pauline, and Cholly, glimpses that demonstrate the racial self-contempt they suffered, or self-contempt and general anger, Morrison effectively points a critical finger at the society that “made the fuss”. Another important element of the structure of The Bluest Eye are the fragments narrated by Claudia MacTeer. These fragments serve two purposes; they provide a timeline of the seasons of the year, paralleling the collapse of Pecola, and they also provide a more solid foundation and an interesting view of the events happening to Pecola. The narrative begins in the fall, when only small fragments of Pecola's racial self-contempt can be detected. At this early point in the novel, this is not even considered self-contempt; we simply see the desire to have blue eyes and the admiration of Shirley Temple. However, Pecola is always aware of her apparent "ugliness". She sees support for this project coming from “every billboard, every film, every look.” Pecola later realizes that it is his darkness “that explains, that creates the emptiness rimmed with disgust in the white eyes” (Critical Perspective 28). Pecola's inherent belief in this idea throughout the novel breaks her frommore and more. The distribution of seasons is not only about movement and the passage of time. The seasons provide sarcastic and brutal commentary on Pecola's descent into madness (Critical Perspectives 61). Her breakdown is not only the result of her rape and the death of her baby, but also of small, mundane circumstances that crop up along the way, like the way the shopkeeper looks at her when she buys the Mary Jane candy , the way students in the school always target. she, by tormenting and intimidating her, and by the way her mother mistreats her, yet shows affection towards a young white girl. As the seasons go by, Pecola's discouragement becomes more evident. Evidence of her coming breakdown could be seen even before she is raped by her father when she stands "with her back bent over the sink" and "her head to the side as if she were crouching under a permanent and unrelieved blow” (Morrison 161). . Claudia is a necessary and powerful element of the novel, because of the perspective she provides. Although it seems like Pecola's story takes a back seat to Claudia's for most of the novel, Claudia's contribution and narration is necessary and effective. Centering the weight of the novel on a character as delicate and sensitive as Pecola would not have been an effective way of structuring the story, because the reader would be persuaded to pity Pecola, rather than examine himself. for committing the “fracas” (Morrison xii). Therefore, Morrison invented the character Claudia, to serve as someone who observed Pecola's change throughout and whose perspective is important in Pecola's final analysis. “The use of Claudia as the childlike narrator of Pecola's Descent into Madness seems to be one of Morrison's most brilliant traits. Clearly, Pecola doesn't have the distance, space, or time to know what's happening to her. She can’t look at her own story in hindsight, because she’s going crazy” (Critical Perspectives 62). Following Claudia's story, Claudia becomes, in a way, a "voice distressed by the gravity of Pecola's situation" (Critical Perspectives 64). The breakdown of the novel's structure into seasons and Claudia's narration are essential to the progression of the novel. Many elements of Morrison's technique in The Bluest Eye serve to enrich and enhance the novel. An important technique in The Bluest Eye is Morrison's use of children's point of view. In several situations, she portrays the children as naive and unaware, but their comments and questions always have a certain depth in their essence. For example: “Like many children, Pecola asks questions that are disconcerting both in their naivety and their insight. She asks one of these questions at the age of eleven: "How" she asks Frieda and Claudia: "Do you get someone to love you?" » » (Peterson 22). Although this question seems naive, by its nature it demonstrates an irony because it is actually a vital question faced by many of the characters in the novel. Even if the children do not find an answer, they do not realize that the novel provides a certain number of exemplary answers, through "the caustic camaraderie of the neighborhood whores, the desperate struggles of its parents, the sterile "nesting" of bourgeois black women and, more destructively, the rape of Pecola by her father” (Peterson 22). Thanks to Morrison's technique, she also incorporates small comments from the main characters that are scattered throughout the story in a deliberately brief manner, but which give much importance tothe reader's understanding of the character's perception of certain things, and also causes the reader to think more about what was said. An example of such a comment is when Pecola decides, "Maybe it was love." Choking noises and silence” (Morrison 44). The fact that Pecola perceives love in this way reveals that she has been exposed to circumstances in which love has been tainted or corrupted. After all, Pecola was exposed primarily to the love of her parents, and "love is never better than the lover." The wicked love wickedly, the violent love violently, the weak love weakly, the stupid love stupidly” (Bloom 72). Therefore, it is likely that Pecola's view of love is biased, because her only exposure to adult love has been biased. The naivety of the young characters in the novel, which is prominent throughout the novel, can also be observed. in the decision Frieda and Claudia make about how to help Pecola. When their seeds don't grow, they simply can't understand that "the Earth itself could have been inflexible." [They] had dropped [their] seeds in [their] own little patch of black earth, just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds in his own little patch of black earth. [Their] innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair” (Morrison 1-2). The idea that the Earth may have been inflexible is a more radical interpretation than the idea that it was simply chance. The darkness coupled with Earth being unyielding towards certain types of seeds, further entrenches the novel's loss of innocence and the darkness the world can harbor. Morrison uses a technique where young people lose their innocence due to tragic and traumatic events. With the use of this technique, she is able to point the finger at society, for destroying the innocence of children, through its contempt and racial prejudice. Morrison has “an ideological design on us, his guilty readers, white and black, male and female” (Bloom 48). The technique of emphasizing the children's innocence and naivety is also effective because it is juxtaposed with the terrible things that end up happening. Claudia and Frieda's confrontation with the darkness they encounter is a symbol of their despair. “The Bluest Eye launches a critique of perceived standards of beauty and morality” (Peterson 56). The standards of beauty and morality and the ideals that society projects onto its victims are what lead to the novel's tragic ending, Pecola Breedlove's eventual descent into madness. The novel is primarily about how people can be affected by racial contempt and the feelings of inferiority that result from such contempt. Morrison develops this theme by examining the effects that racial contempt (and society's rigid ideals of beauty and worth) have on the most vulnerable character possible, young Pecola. To emphasize societal discrimination, Morrison incorporates Maureen Peal, a "bright yellow dream child" who "enchanted the whole school", to serve as a means of juxtaposition against Pecola. Maureen is beloved by teachers and adults, unlike Pecola, and she is well-liked by all of her classmates. These things are true, simply because Maureen looks like she comes from a rich, close-knit family, and because she has expensive clothes and lighter skin. The extent to which Morrison describes Maureen's admiration truly describes the society of Lorain, Ohio, in the 1940s. Society adores people like Maureen Peal, who have money and beauty (according to their ideals), and.