Portrait of a Victim in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye :: Bluest Eye Essays

Portrait of a Victim Toni Morrisons The Bluest philia The Bluest Eye (1970) is the novel that launched Toni Morrison into the spotlight as a talented African-American writer and social critic. Morrison herself says It would be a mistake to assume that writers are disconnected from social issues (Leflore). Because Morrison is more willing than most authors to discuss signification in her books, a genetic approach is very relevant. To be sincerely effective, though, the genetic approach must be combined with a titular approach. The formal approach allows the unpacking of the rich language, imagery, and metaphors of Morrisons writing, and the genetic places it in the bigger context of her social consciousness. In The Bluest Eye, Morrisons uses her critical eye to recrudesce to the reader the evil that is caused by a society that is indoctrinated by the congenital goodness and beauty of whiteness and the ugliness of blackness. In an interview with Milwaukee journal staff writer Fannie Leflore, Morrison said that she confronted and critiqued the devastation of racial images in The Bluest Eye. The communicative structure of The Bluest Eye is important in revealing just how permeative and destructive the racialization (Morrisons term for the racism that is a part of both persons socialization) is (Leflore). Morrison is particularly concerned ab fall out the floor in her novels. She says, People crave narration . . . Thats the way they learn things (Bakerman 58). story in The Bluest Eye comes from several sources. Much of the narration comes from Claudia MacTeer as a nine year old child, but Morrison also gives the reader the advance of Claudia reflecting on the story as an adult, some first person narration from Pecolas mother, and narration by Morrison herself as an omniscient narrator. Morrison says, First I wrote it the section in The Bluest Eye about Pecolas mother out as an I story, but it didnt work . . . Then I wrote it out as a she story , and that didnt work . . . It was me, the author, sort of omnipotent, talking (Bakerman 59). Morrison measuredly kept Pecola from any first person narration of the story. Morrison wanted to gauge to show a little girl as a hail and complete victim of whatever was around her, and she needed the distance and purity of Claudias narration to do that (Stepto 479).