ENGLISH PROSE
ANALYSIS OF “THE BLUEST EYE” NOVEL
BY
TONI MORRISON
To
fulfill the final assignment of English
prose
Lecturer :
Aang Fatihul Islam, M.Pd
By :
By :
Febriana
Lestari
NIM. 087108
ENGLISH
DEPARTMENT
2008 E
SEKOLAH TINGGI
KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN
PERSATUAN GURU
REPUBLIK INDONESIA
JOMBANG
2011
TABLE OF
CONTENT
TITLE ..................................................................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENT ....................................................................................... ii
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study ............................................................................ 1
B. Statement of the problem ............................................................................ 2
C. Purpose Of the study .................................................................................. 2
CHAPTER II. ............................... THEORITICAL
OF FRAMEWORK
A. Literature ................................................................................................... 4
B. Prose ................................................................................................... 5
C. Novel ................................................................................................... 6
D. Biography of Toni Morrison ................................................................ 7
E.
The Bluest Eye ............................................................................................ 7
CHAPTER III. ANALYSIS
A. The theme of the novel “The
Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison .............. ..... 12
B. The major of the novel “The
Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison...................... 13
C. The plot of the novel “The
Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison........................ 16
D. The point of view of the
novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison......... 18
E.
The moral value of the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni
Morrison............ 19
CHAPTER IV. CLOSING
A.
Conclusion ........................................................................................... ..... 21
B.
Suggestion ......... 22
REFERENCES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A.
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Literature is the art. It is the result of human
thinking that talks about something beautiful and crucial in human life.
Without literature, human life will never be wonderful.
Based on the textual meaning of literature that is
stated on the Oxford dictionary, literature is written artistic works, especially those with a high and lasting artistic
value. In many
essays of Hernady, 1978, he says that literature is to speak sweepingly one can
say, summerizing, that in antiquity and in the Rennaissance, literature or
letter was understood to include all writing quality with any pretence to
permanence ( Wellek, 1978 : 20 ).
It is a canon which consists of those works in
language by which community defines itself through the course of its history. A
literature includes works primarily artistic and also those whose aestheic
qualities are only secondary. The self defining activity of the community is
conducted in the late of works, as its members have come to read them (or
concreize them). (McFadden, 1978: 56).
To measure an understanding about the works of art, people deal with the
way to analyze or criticize the works, then we call it as literary
appreciation. Everybody understands that to do an appreciation of literary
works is not a simple thing, which we can do it in a short time. We have to
recognize well about the elements embedded in them, for doing an appreciation
of literary works is not a guess work
but we need the rules that support us to have a good appreciation.
It has been a chalenge so far ,because the way people interpret/ appreciate something that
in this case is literature and its works is different in some ways. People have
their own prototype or definition to make it easier to understand and analyze.
It is a kind of a hard work of rhethoric. There are many kinds of literary
works, such as novel, shot story, poems, lyrics of songs, and etc. In this
study, the researcher makes it spcified into one of them. It is novel.
Novel
is a form of prose that is longer than short story, yet its elements are the
same as the short story. We have a theme, setting, plot, characters,and
message. In this discussion, the writer
would like to conduct an analysis of prose in the form of novel entitled “ The
Bluest Eye ” by Toni Morrison.
The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by American
author Toni Morrison. It is Morrison's first
novel, written while Morrison was teaching at Howard University and was raising her two
sons on her own. The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl in
Lorain, Ohio,
named Pecola. It takes place against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years
following the Great Depression. The Bluest Eye is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer
as a child and an adult, as well as from a third-person, omniscient viewpoint. The novel
is quiet controversial. It deals with racism, incest, and child molestation (www.wikipedia.com).
For all the
reasons above, the researcher would like to construct a discussion entitled
“Analysis Of The Novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison”.
B.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Based on the background of the study above, the
researcher would like to formulate the problem as follows:
1.
What is the theme of novel “The
Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison?
2.
How is the major characters of the novel entitled “ The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison ?
3.
How is the plot of the novel entitled
“ The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison?
4.
How is the point of view on the novel entitled “ The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison ?
5.
What is the moral value of the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison ?
C.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This paper aims to :
1.
Understand the theme of the novel entitled “The Bluest Eye”
by Toni Morrison.
2.
Understand the major caharcters of the novel entitled “The
Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.
3.
Understand the plot of the novel entitled “The Bluest Eye” by
Toni Morrison.
4.
Understand the point of view of the novel entitled “The
Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.
5.
Understand the moral value of the novel entitled “The Bluest
Eye” by Toni Morrison.
CHAPTER II
THEORITICAL OF FRAMEWORK
A.
LITERATURE
Literature is the body of written works of language,
period, or culture such as poetry, novels, essays,etc, especially works of
imagination / creativity in a writing that is characterized by excellence of
style and expression and by themes / general enduring interest.
Many people have their own understandings of
literature itself, but we need to say it in one that those understandings have
their meaning which actually concerns on something the same, namely all about
art in a language.
According to Mc.Fadden (1978 : 56), literature is a
canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines
its self through the course of its history. It includes works primaly artistic
and also those whose aesthetic qualities are only secondary. The self defining
activity of community is conducted in the light of works as its members have
come to read them (concretize them).
It becomes quiet challenging to discuss the definition
and the meaning of literature. Definition based on criteria which all literary
works must meet. However, more current theories of meaning take the view that
definitions are based on prototypes. In short, the definitions below show what
literature is :
1.
written text
2.
marked by careful use of language,including features such as
creative metaphors, well turned phrases, elegant syntax, rhyme, alliteration,
meter
3.
in literary genre
(poetry, prose fiction, or drama)
4.
read aesthetically
5.
intended by the author to be read aesthetically
6.
Contains many weak inplicatures (are deliberately somewhat
open in an interpretation)(Jim Meyer, 1997 :04).
In one discussion of literature, we have to take the
clear cut of diffaerence among some
terms related to literature itself, like literary and literary appreciation
because in this study, the researcher conducts a literary appreciation that
absolutely deals with those terms and all elements beyond them.
Previously, we just discussed the definition and
understanding of literature, and concerning to teh next term, namely literary.
So, literary is the system of natures of literature and the methods for
analyzing literature. We know the characteristic of literary works which we
interpret whenever we study the system of the object. Then we need a way to
critisize or do appreciation on the works. We call it literary appreciation.
Literary appreciation is the evaluation of works of
imaginative literature as an intellectual or academic exercise. It is a process
by which a reader interprets, evaluates / classifies a literary work with a
view to determine the artistic /demerits of such a work. (Tayo Ogunlewe, 2006 :
88).
B.
PROSE
Prose is the ordinary form of spoken
and written language whose unit is the sentence, rather than the line as it is
in poetry. The term applies to all expressions in language that do not have a
regular rhythmic pattern.
The term is from the Latin prosa, meaning “in
phrase” which was derived from prosa
oratio, meaning "straight, direct, unadorned speech, which itself was derived from prorsus,
meaning “straightforward or direct” and
can be further traced to pro versum,
meaning “turned forward”.
Prose is considered one of the two
major literary structures, with the other being verse. Prose as one of the forms
of literary works is classified into some other kinds. Novels,
essays, short stories, and works of criticism are the examples
of it. And
novel is going to be elaborated more in this discussion for it is the subject
of the study.
To
get more understanding about prose, we have to learn to know the elements of
prose that will be used to have critical analysis of a literary work. The
elements are :
1.
Plot
It is the sequence or order
of events in a story. The plot includes:
Ø Exposition Statement - The
part of the plot that tells how the story begins.
Ø Rising Action - The action
in the story leading up to the climax.
Ø Conflict - Struggles or problems between
opposing forces.
Ø Climax - The point of crisis in the plot. It
may be the reader’s point of highest interest.
Ø Falling action - The action
in the story after the climax is revealed.
Ø Resolution - The part of the plot that reveals
the final outcome.
2.
Setting
It is the time and place in which a work of
literature happens.
3.
Action
It is what a character does in a play, short story, or a
fiction prose. Please note that actions are different from acts which are any
of the main sections of a play or other dramatic performance.
4.
Point of view
It is the story teller from
whose point of view the story is being told, the narrator.
5.
Characterization
It is the description of the
personalities of the characters in the story and the way in which an author
reveals their personalities.
6.
Theme is the main idea of a literary work, usually expressed
as a generalization. A theme is
a broad idea, message, or moral of a story.
7.
Message is value that the writer wants to deliver to the
readers. It usually brings positive values.
C.
NOVEL
The
word “novel” was originated
in the early 18th century after the Italian word "novella" which was
used for stories in the Medieval period (1000-1500). The 18th-century rise of
the novel is a compound of several stories.
Novel is one of the literary
works that used by the authors to describe, express, and give social critics
that happen in the surrounding. The relationship among men and women in the
society is represented by the story through the characters inside it.
D.
BIOGRAPHY OF TONI MORRISON
Toni Morrison, the first black woman to receive Nobel Prize in Literature,
was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, U.S.A. She
was the second of four children of George Wofford, a shipyard welder and Ramah
Willis Wofford. Her parents moved to Ohio from the South to escape racism and
to find better opportunities in the North. Her father was a hardworking and
dignified man. While the children were growing up, he worked three jobs at the
same time for almost 17 years. He took a great deal of pride in the quality of
his work, so that each time he welded a perfect seam he'd also weld his name
onto the side of the ship. He also made sure to be well-dressed, even during
the Depression. Her mother was a church-going woman and she sang in the choir.
At home, Chloe heard many songs and tales of Southern black folklore. The
Woffords were proud of their heritage.
E.
THE BLUEST EYE
The Bluest Eye is
split into an untitled prelude and four large units, each named after a season.
The four larger units begin with "Autumn" and end in
"Summer," with each unit being split into smaller sections. The first
section of each season is narrated by Claudia
MacTeer, a woman whose memories frame the events of the novel. At
the time that the main events of the plot take place, Claudia is a
nine-year-old girl. This device allows Morrison to employ a reflective adult
narrator without losing the innocent perspective of a child. Claudia MacTeer
lives with her parents and her sister in the humble MacTeer family house in
Lorrain, Ohio. The year is 1939.
The novel's focus, however, is on a girl named Pecola
Breedlove. Pecola, we are told in the prelude, will be raped by her
father by novel's end. The prelude frames the story so that the reader knows
from the beginning that Pecola's story ends tragically. The Breedloves are
poor, unhappy, and troubled. Their story seems in many ways to be deterministic,
as they are often the victims of forces over which they have no control. Their
situation is a powerful contrast to the MacTeers, who are of slender means but
have a strong family unit. The MacTeers also seem to have much stronger agency,
and are never really passive victims in the way that the Breedloves are.
When Claudia is not narrating, a third-person narrator takes her place. The
narrative style, even in third person, is one of great psychological intimacy.
The third-person narrator of The Bluest Eye is no dispassionate observer, but
one who gives insights into the thoughts of characters and occasionally
interprets events in a very explicit manner. The sections narrated in the third
person are all focused on some aspect of Pecola's life‹the sections explore
either a family member or a specific significant event. These sections have
headings, taken from a reading primer's Dick and Jane story. The use of the
primer is a biting comment on the distance between Pecola's life and the
pink-skinned bourgeois world in the Dick and Jane story. Each heading is a
clean, straightforward match up: the section about Pecola's house is headed by
a Dick-and-Jane sentence about their house, the section about Pauline is
prefaced by a Dick-and-Jane sentence about their mother, etc.
The basic plot is very simple: when Cholly
Breedlove, Pecola's father, attempts to burn their house down,
Pecola is sent by social workers to stay temporarily with the MacTeers. Claudia
and Frieda befriend the girl, who is lonely, abused, and neglected. While
staying with the MacTeers, she menstruates for the first time. Her first
period, as the reader must consider it, becomes an upsetting event‹it makes it
possible for her to be impregnated later by her own father. Pecola Breedlove
goes back to live with her family, and we see aspects of her life depicted one
section at a time. The Breedlove home is a converted storefront, cold and in
disrepair. Pauline and Cholly Breedlove fight incessantly and with terrifying
ferocity‹their battles always end up being physical‹and her brother Sammy runs
away from home constantly. The Breedloves' name is suggestive and ironic:
"love" is exactly what the family lacks, and certainly they are unable
to generate more of it, as suggested by the word "breed." Instead,
"breed" becomes an ominous reference to what Cholly ends up doing
with his own daughter.
Pauline is an unhappy woman who takes refuge in the wrathful and
unforgiving aspects of Christianity. She lavishes her love on the white family
for whom she works, while her own family lives in squalor. Cholly is an angry
and irresponsible man, violent, cruel, and uncontrollable. All of the
Breedloves are considered ugly, although part of the novel's work is to
question and deconstruct what that ugliness really means. To get away from her
parents and to pass the hours, Pecola spends a great deal of time with the
whores who live upstairs. China, Poland, and Marie tolerate her presence
without providing any deep love for the girl.
Pecola is obsessed, we learn, with blue eyes. She prays for them
constantly, and is convinced that by making her beautiful the blue eyes would
change her life. From Pecola's wish and from many other events in the novel, it
becomes clear that most of the people in Lorrain's black community consider
whiteness beautiful and blackness ugly. The novel has many character who long
to look white, and also has several characters of mixed ancestry who emulate
whites and try to suppress all things in themselves that might be African.
Soaphead Church's Anglophile family and Geraldine
are examples of this kind of black person.
The MacTeer family goes through their own small dramas, as Frieda and
Claudia deal with stuck-up schoolmates and a lecherous boarder. Consistently,
the MacTeer family is able to insulate the girls from harm. When their boarder,
a man named Mr. Henry,
makes an indecent pass at eleven-year-old Frieda, Mr. and Mrs. MacTeer
react with force, protecting their daughter violently and without any doubt of
her innocence. In contrast, in the Breedlove family the sexual threat comes not
from outside the family unit but from within. One Saturday in spring, Cholly
rapes Pecola. He rapes her a second time soon afterward. Pecola then becomes
pregnant with her father's child.
Miserable and desperate, Pecola believes more than ever that blue eyes
would change her life. She goes to a pedophilic fortune-teller named Soaphead
Church to ask for blue eyes. Soaphead Church decides that he can use her for a
small task, and so he uses an unwitting Pecola to kill a dog that he hates. She
completes the task, which she believes will be like a transformative spell. The
dog dies in a gruesome manner, and Pecola runs away in terror. The next time we
see Pecola, she's lost her mind. She spends all of her time talking to a new
"friend"; he/she is an imaginary friend who is now the only person
with whom Pecola speaks. The topic of conversation is most frequently the
blueness of Pecola's eyes. Pecola spends the rest of her life as a madwoman.
The title of the novel provides some interesting insights about standards
of beauty. Morrison is interested in showing the illusory nature of the social
construction of beauty, which is created in part by the imaginary world of
advertising billboards and movie stars. The title uses the superlative of blue
because at the end of the novel, when Pecola has gone mad, she is obsessed with
having the bluest eyes of anyone living. But the title also has "eye"
in the singular‹by disembodying the eye, Morrison subverts the idea of beauty
or standards of beauty, tearing the idealized part away from the whole,
creating a beauty icon that is not even human. Reinforcing this non-human
aspect of the ideal eye, Pecola's new blue eyes at the novel's end are not
described with colors in the human range‹her eyes are blue like streaks of
cobalt, or more blue than the sky itself.
At key points in the novel, important plot information is revealed through
gossip. Morrison writes long stretches of beautiful and uninterrupted dialogue,
with great sensitivity to oral language. Pauline
Breedlove gets a chance to speak in the first person near the middle
of the novel; in a section divided between third-person narrator and Pauline,
she gets to address the reader directly and in dialect. Morrison's interest in
carving a place for oral language in literary art is readily apparent in this
novel.
Morrison occasionally switches tense, moving fluidly to present tense when
it serves her. The move has different effects: for some scenes, it provides a
sense of great immediacy. In one sequence narrated by Claudia, it creates the
feel that Claudia is reliving the experience. In other scenes, it creates the
feel of a pattern. When Pecola tries to by candy at a local grocer's, we read
about the moment in present tense. In this case, Morrison's use of the present
tense suggests that the unpleasant interaction between Pecola and the
shopkeeper forms a template for all of her interactions with other human
beings.
Morrison, by employing multiple narrators, is trying to make sure that no
single voice becomes authoritative. The gossiping women become narrators in
their own right, relaying critical information and advancing the story at key
points. Claudia's perspective is balanced by the third person narrator, and
Pauline Breedlove narrates for parts of one of the middle sections of the
novel. This method of multiplying narrative perspectives also demands more
active participation on the part of the reader, who must reassemble the parts
in order to see the whole. Morrison is still working somewhat clumsily with
this type of narrative in The Bluest Eye. In later novels, she has a chance to
experiment and refine her forms further.
CHAPTER III
ANALYSIS
A.
THE THEME OF “THE BLUEST
EYE” BY TONI MORRISON
Theme
is the major idea of a story. It is the important part of prose element that
can not be separated from a story because without a theme, a story can not be formed. It controls the atmosphere
and crucial over all idea of what is the story all about.
The theme of
Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eye” is about racism or capitalism, especifically
from the perspective of the black people experience in the United States. In
general, the view of the characters in the novel is that the world is run by
and for white people,
especially white people with power and property, and that black people,
particularly poor black
people, are hurt in many ways by this racist, capitalist
system.
One of the
most destructive results of this racist, capitalist system is that black people
come to feel so negatively about themselves and their race that they long to be
white. The character of Pecola portrays this self-hatred and its destructive
effects.
Toni Morrison
clearly believes that every aspect of racism to be destructive to the victim of
racism, but she does not argue that everything about capitalism is destructive.
What is destructive is the difficulty faced by blacks who want to share in any
meaningful way in that capitalist system that “Being a minority in both caste
and class, we moved about”.
The Bluest
Eye is a kind novel that describes a strangeness and violence to the black girl
named Pecola that happened in America. She was mocked and discriminated because
her appearance was not the same as the beauty concept that was assumed in
America. The discrimination that Toni Morrison delivers through this novel
seems very real. According to United Nations Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women /CEDAW, a discrimination is any distinction, exclusion or restriction made
on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying
the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by
women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and
women, of human rights and fundamental fredoms in the political, economics,
social, cultural, civil or any other field (http:
//www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text).
The discrimination
and the strangeness that is described by this novel was not only done by the
white people but also the blacks that had a high social class. Their attitude
done by them made Pecolla felt strange in her surrounding even from her family.
B.
THE MAJOR CHARACTERS OF “THE
BLUEST EYE” BY TONI MORRISON
1. Pecola Breedlove
Pecola is twelve years old. Her family lives in a
converted storefront. She is considered ugly, and is emotionally and socially
awkward. She prays for blue eyes, because she knows from images in movies and
on candy wrappers that to have blue eyes is to be loved. She is raped by her
father, Cholly, in the spring, and becomes pregnant. Her baby comes too early
and dies. Terrified of her parents, she is not free (due to gender and age) to
run away from home as Sammy does. Either during the pregnancy or after the
miscarriage, Pecola goes mad, manufacturing an imaginary friend who becomes her
only conversation partner.
2.
Claudia MacTeer
The first-person narrator of the first section in each
of the four units. Claudia is nine years old, extremely bright, and comes from
a loving family that owns their own house. She is warm-hearted and sensitive,
but she is also angered by injustice and instinctively feels threatened by the
standards of beauty that glorify Shirley Temple while ignoring black children.
As a narrator, she fluctuates between an adult voice and a child's‹without
problems.
3.
Frieda MacTeer
Claudia's sister, age 11. Frieda makes important
decisions at several places in the novel, and she is the clear leader of the
MacTeer sisters. Like her sister, she is sensitive and concerned about Pecola,
and is willing to stand up for herself and others. She is the more fearless of
the two girls.
4.
Pauline
Breedlove
Mother of Sammy and Pecola, wife to Cholly. She has a
lame foot and a missing front tooth. She is harsh and abusive to her children.
She lavishes her love on the Fishers, her generous white employers, while her
own family falls apart. She and Cholly battle constantly. Although once she
longed to have nicer things and romantic love, she settles into surviving
through her work and being a martyr by staying with Cholly. She is religious in
a vindictive and vengeful way, hoping that the Lord will help her in her war
against Cholly.
5.
Cholly Breedlove
A violent drunk, an unfaithful husband, an abusive
father. Cholly was humiliated by white hunters when a young boy, and the shame
stuck with him. Abandoned by both of his parents, he has no concept of
parenting. He rapes Pecola, skipping town when she becomes pregnant.
6.
Mrs. MacTeer
Mother to Frieda and Claudia. She is not an indulgent
mother, but she is fiercely protective and loving. Her word is law with the two
girls‹at several points the girls attempt to decide what to do based on literal
interpretations of things Mrs. MacTeer has said.
7.
Mr. MacTeer
Father to Frieda and Claudia. Like his wife, he is a
harsh but loving parent.
8.
Sammy Breedlove
An unhappy and young teenage boy, constantly in
trouble, constantly running away from home for months at a time. Unlike Pecola,
he has freedom, as a male, to escape the Breedloves' miserable home life.
9.
Soaphead Church
(aka Elihu Whitcomb)
A man of mixed white and black ancestry from the
Caribbean. He is the town fortuneteller, in addition to being megalomaniacal pedophile
who plays God. His "magic" is the final snap that breaks Pecola's
sanity.
10. Bertha Reese
An old, religious woman from whom Soaphead Church
rents his room. She is the owner of Bob, the dog that Soaphead Church loathes.
11. Mr. Henry
The middle-aged boarder taken in by the MacTeers near
the beginning of the novel. Mr. Henry is charming but is somewhat lecherous‹he
invites prostitutes under the MacTeer roof when the MacTeers are gone, and
later he makes sexual advances at eleven-year-old Frieda.
12. China, Poland, and Marie (aka the Maginot
Line)
The three prostitutes who live upstairs from Pecola.
Pecola seeks refuge in their company when her family is too unbearable. All
three women are long past their prime, but fat Marie is the most despised by
Mrs. MacTeer and the most feared by Frieda and Claudia. Their names are heavily
symbolic, as all three refer to countries where are occupied or facing invasion
by fascist armies in 1939.
13. Geraldine
A well-off black woman with a husband, one son, and a
cat. Geraldine is concerned with being respectable, and despises poor blacks.
When her son, Louis, Jr., lies to her and tells her that Pecola killed
Geraldine's beloved cat, her treatment of Pecola is brutal.
14. Louis, Jr.
a little boy, son of Geraldine. He tricks Pecola into
coming into his house, where he throws a cat in her face, kills the cat, and
then blames her for it.
15. Maureen Peal
The new girl at school. She is mulatto and very
well-off. Walking home with the MacTeer sisters and Pecola one day, she starts
out being civil but very quickly becomes haughty. She is the darling of
teachers, and Claudia sees in her all of the social forces that she fears and
despises. Claudia insists that the societal forces are more to be feared and
hated than Maureen herself.
16. Mr. Yacobowski
A store owner who sells Pecola nine pieces of Mary
Jane candy. Pecola can read in his eyes the impatience and disdain that he
feels for her, and she internalizes all of it.
17. Rosemary
A girl who lives next door. A tattletale. Claudia and
Frieda dislike her immensely.
18. Miss Dunion
A nosy neighbor who lives next door. When she
insinuates that Mr. Henry might have "ruined" Frieda, she incites the
wrath of Mrs. MacTeer.
- Great Aunt Jimmy
The woman who raised Cholly. She was already ancient
when she took him in, right after he had been abandoned by his own mother. She
dies when Cholly is a young teenage boy.
20. M'Dear
An old wise woman who comes to give Aunt Jimmy medical
advice. She is a tall woman, and her authority is considered infallible. Sure
enough, when Aunt Jimmy violates one of M'Dear's prescriptions, she dies.
21. Samson Fuller
Possibly Cholly's father. When Cholly is a young man,
he tracks Samson down. Samson humiliates him and tells him to go away.
22. Blue Jack
The closest thing to a father figure in Cholly's early
life. He shares a watermelon heart with Cholly and it's one of the happiest
moments Cholly ever knows.
C.
THE PLOT OF “THE BLUEST EYE”
NOVEL BY TONI MORRISON
Here is the plot of “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison,
that we can understand this novel has progressive and flashback plot (mixed).
1. Initial Situation
Pecola's home environment is abusive and tumultuous.
As the novel begins, we see that Pecola's family life
is violent and lacking in structure, love, and support. When Cholly hits
Pauline and nearly burns their house down, Mrs. Breedlove moves in with her
employer, leaving her children to fend for themselves. Pecola gets sent to stay
with the MacTeers while she waits for her parents to handle their problems.
- Conflict
Pecola
believes that blue eyes will change her life.
Pecola begins to believe that if she only had blue
eyes, her family life would be completely different and people would love her.
This erroneous belief – that by changing your physical appearance you could
change your familial, psychological, and social situation in life – consumes
Pecola throughout the novel
- Complication
Pecola is repeatedly teased and abused. It's going to
take far more than blue eyes to change this girl's life. She is teased at
school, gets punched in the face, Junior attacks her with a cat, and she ruins
her mom's berry cobbler. Pecola's victimization is building here.Cholly rapes
Pecola.As if things couldn't get any worse for Pecola, when she is raped by her
own father, all hope that she might actually develop self-esteem or
self-sufficiency flies out the window.
4. Suspense
Pauline and Pecola move to the edge of town.
Pecola spends her days talking to herself in the mirror, flailing her arms like a bird and sifting through garbage. It's unclear whether or not she is crazy, and how much she actually remembers of being raped by her father. It's also unclear how many times he raped her.
5. Conclusion
Claudia and Frieda ignore Pecola.
At the novel's end, Claudia acknowledges that she and all of
the townspeople of Lorain are partially to blame for what happened to Pecola.
They do not ignore her out of fear or disgust, but because they feel
responsible for what she has become. They have failed her.
D.
POINT OF VIEW IN THE NOVEL
“THE BLUEST EYE” BY TONI MORRISON
This novel has first person and third person point of
view. The first person point of view is called central narrator, while the
third person is called omniscient. Below are the explanation of it :
First Person (Central
Narrator)
Claudia provides the bulk of the narration in the book. This is convenient because she actually
witnessed what happened to Pecola as well as the way the town spoke about her,
and she makes sure to include snatches of these conversations in her narration.
Claudia narrates her story from two different perspectives. In the Prologue
and final chapter, the adult Claudia uses the past tense to describe events
that happened back in 1941 in Lorain. But for the bulk of her narration,
Claudia uses the present tense to describe these events, which has the effect
of showing us things through her 9-year-old eyes.
Occasionally Claudia will move between the two modes, allowing us to see
how she is reflecting on her own experience and highlighting the act of
narration. Claudia is a highly empathetic narrator, and while she doesn't have
access to the minds of the people she describes, she does her best to try to
understand them, especially Pecola.
Third Person (Omniscient)
In the chapters that deal with the Breedloves and the one featuring
Soaphead Church, the narrator isn't Claudia, but rather a third-person
omniscient narrator. This speaker is capable of moving through extreme
distances of space and time. This is the voice that tells us the long history
of the Breedloves' storefront, details Cholly's early sexual humiliation, and
recounts Soaphead's journey from the West Indies to America.
The third-person style is useful in a book with so many complex characters.
It allows us to watch their lives unfold over time, in ways we could never do
if Claudia were the sole narrator.
E.
THE MORAL VALUE OF THE NOVEL “THE BLUEST EYE” BY TONI
MORRISON
The Bluest eye tells the story
of a group of Americans, men and women and children who are descendants of
slaves, and live in a society where, even though many people deny it, the color
of your skin determines who you are and what privileges you are entitled to. I
think that Morrison does a wonderful job of telling a story that is real, that
makes the reader feel something, and that makes the reader relate, regardless
of your skin
color.
I cannot say that I can relate
to what it must have felt like for Pecola to be called a "a nasty little
black bitch" and accused of killing a cat when she did nothing. But, I can
say that I know what it is like to feel ugly and scared. Pecola is an extreme example of
a person who is treated horribly by everyone she encounters, whether it is
because she is black or ugly or both. Her mother ignores her, her father rapes
her, her friends betray her, little boys and girls and adults call her names,
and even a cat and a dog are killed in her presence. All of these things are
experienced by people all of the time, however, it might not be as extreme or
it might just be one or two of the things. Something that seems as trivial as
name calling is something that happens to all Americans.
In this
novel, Morrison takes American experiences and characteristics, such as
violence, growing up, love, family, hatred, race, beauty and ugliness, and
illustrates them in a way that is so clear, yet so painful. These American
experiences are not covered up or toned down to seem less serious; they are
real and they are heart-breaking. Every one of Morrison's characters can be
related to in one way or another because they are Americans and they are human.
I think that Morrison sums up how The Bluest Eye
impacted me in the following quote:
"So it was with confidence, strengthened by pity and pride, that
we decided to change the course of events and alter a human life" (191).
That is what Morrison did to me as I read this novel. Through her writing I was
changed, and this, I believe, was Morrison's purpose. "Being a writer she
thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one
has control, but mostly as agency as an act with consequences"
CHAPTER IV
CLOSING
A.
CONCLUSION
- The theme of Toni Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye”, is about racism or capitalism. It is shown from the perspective of the black people experience in the United States, that in this novel described by the main character, “Pecola” who has different appearance from others (white people).
2. Based on the analysis of major characters in the novel of “The Bluest Eye”, we find there are twenty two characters with their own chracteristics that support the atmosphere of the story. They are : Pecola Breedlove, Claudia MacTeer, Frieda MacTeer, Pauline Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Mrs. MacTeer, Mr. MacTeer, Sammy Breedlove, Soaphead Church (aka Elihu Whitcomb), Bertha Reese, Mr. Henry, China, Poland, and Marie (aka the Maginot Line), Geraldine, Louis, Jr.Maureen Peal, Mr. Yacobowski, Rosemary,Miss Dunion, Great Aunt Jimmy, M'Dear, Blue Jack.
- The plot of this novel is a mixed one ( progressive and flashback ). We can summarize the story that a black girl named Pecolla wanted to be treated well by the people surrounding. Her different pshycical appearance was such a burden for her then she wished to have the blue eyes, like the white people who as if they were everything in this world and they could do anything they want. The flashback is shown by the story that pecolla was rapped by her father until she had a child with him. Yet the next part of the story tells about Pecolla’s childhood. That’s why the kind of plot in this novel is mixed between progressive and flashback.
- This novel has first person (central narrator) and third person point of view (omniscient).
- The moral value of the novel “The Bluest Eye” concerns on social life. The novel inspires us not to differ one person and the others because of their psychical appearance only. Every man has the human right , and need to be admitted in the society. We must not discriminate people because of the difference.
B. SUGGESTION
1.
We must not discriminate people from their race or ethnic,
because people have human right as human beings.
2.
We should grow tollerate each other because to be
appreciated, we need to appreciate others.
3.
As a social beings, we have the norms, customs, and culture
that those are all good. We must not see something from one side, but we have to see everything in a ositive
way that we can have a good social life.
REFERENCE
Morrison,
Toni.1970. The Bluest Eye. England : A plume book.
Luxemburg, Jan Van. 1991.Over Literature.
Muiderberg : Dick Coutinho.
accessed on July 09,2011 at 16.00
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//www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text
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