Uncategorized – Page 5 – ENGL 25640 The Problem of Fictional Character

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Relative Desire and Character Relationships

While Bluest Eye is seriously concerned with how gender, race, and class can effect a the self-esteem of someone in Pecola’s situation, it also depicts a parallel process whereby she becomes a foil for other people’s self-esteem. Indeed, we can read self esteem as an interpretation of one’s own desirability (or ugliness as Pecola sees it) as mediated through their social, or in this case, narrative world. During one of the narrator’s few moments of earnest self-reflection she says, “We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength” (205). Morrison makes this interplay of desire among social relations a focus of her narrative but I think it’s fair to say that this matrix of status, desire, and esteem can be identified in most of the novels we have read. Even if characters do not expressly orient themselves towards one another as Claudia and Freda do, we can determine their politics of desire from how they are individually characterized and how they interact as and towards each other’s characters. In the afterward, Morrsion tells us her process began with Pecola and then she added friends to build the world around her and this shows in the novel’s relatively hands off (or outside in) perspective which simultaneously characterizes several narrators, their desires, and their relationships and develops Pecola’s through interplay and description mediated by these character’s relationships.

Pecola’s Interiority as an External Entity

February 14, 2018 / emusgrave / 2 Comments

Throughout this novel, Pecola has been described to us through the people around her. We know only a few things about her by her own telling; we know that she loves Shirley Temple, that she wants to disappear because her home life is pretty horrible, and that she wants blue eyes. In the last chapter section of the book, we see the closest thing that resembles Pecola’s inner monologue and thoughts: her conversation with an imaginary friend. This conversation is at times conflicting and at other times self-assuring. Her imaginary friend switches from telling Pecola how lovely her new blue eyes are to making her feel worried that someone else has bluer ones. First the imaginary friend says, “They are the prettiest I’ve ever seen” (201), but then a few lines later she says, “Well, I am sure. Unless… Oh nothing. I was just thinking about a lady I saw yesterday. Her eyes sure were blue” (202). She also repeatedly brings up what Cholly did to Pecola: “How could somebody make you do something like that?…He made you didn’t he?” (198-199). I think we can take this imaginary friend as a way for Pecola to maybe shed some of the conflicting thoughts she has about herself and about her father. By doing this, they are no longer her problematic thoughts but the teasings of a friend. It’s like she has split herself in two: herself and all the stuff she’d rather not think about. The end of this conversation, where Pecola’s imaginary friend says that she’s leaving for a while, is so sad to me, but I am not quite sure what to make of it. It’s so heartbreaking when Pecola keeps asking if the reason her friend is leaving is because her “eyes aren’t blue enough” (204). I am not quite sure why her imaginary friend decides to leave, and what this means concerning Pecola’s psyche. The title of this section implies that this is Pecola’s only friend, and now she doesn’t have anyone, not even really herself.

Charged descriptive language in The Bluest Eye

February 12, 2018 / elliotk / 0 Comments

On page 31, describing the Breedloves, Morrison writes”Although their poverty was traditional and stultifying, it was not unique. But their ugliness was unique”. Toni Morrison does two things in this section- she claims that the ugliness of the Breedloves is external to them and only exists from their conviction to it, and yet she writes that it is very much real, and lists physical, (seemingly) nonnegotiable characteristics with visible negative implications that construct something non-beautiful. She writes that they have “the eyes, the small eyes set closely together under narrow foreheads. The low, irregular hairlines… high cheekbones, and their ears turned forward.” Deconstruction of description lets us see that each of these says little about the Breedloves, and much about the function of comparative language in influencing perception. The “small eyes” and “narrow foreheads” only exist in contrast to a set regular size; “low, irregular hairlines” again sets a trait against a standard (and Morrison even throws in the word “regular” here); “high cheekbones, and their ears turned forward” are the most ridiculous – the function of the cheekbones are to be raised above the face and ears are meant to be turned forward.

The implications of charged descriptive language creating reality has not only racial implications, but ties into construction of character. If we accept language as a way to view the invisible, and we also believe language exists comparatively, can we ever construct character without reflecting on a normal, and if we do, can we ever correctly construct a minority character when the normal is defined by one in the majority? She writes, “Mrs. Breedlove, Sammy Breedlove, and Pecola Breedlove – wore their ugliness, put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to them” – the perception is created external to the character itself.

Self-Awareness and Self Worth in The Bluest Eye

February 12, 2018 / aattie / 0 Comments

In the opening chapters of The Bluest Eye, I was struck by the way the characters’ self-awareness and senses of self worth are dominated by guilt surrounding race, gender, and appearance. From the first moment of Claudia’s narration, the italicized section of the prologue, we get a sense of her mind as one that seems to default towards guilt. She describes the fall of 1941, when she and her sister were unable to grow marigolds, writing “for years I thought my sister was right: it was my fault. I had planted them too far down in the earth. It never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding.” This tendency to blame herself and put herself down appears throughout the section we read today, and it is a quality that Pecola seems to share, particularly with regard to her appearance. Both characters project their feelings towards white girls onto inanimate objects that are supposed to represent beauty. Claudia takes her anger (and perhaps jealousy) of white girls out on the dolls she destroys, and Pecola projects her longing to achieve white standards of beauty by compulsively drinking milk out of the Shirley Temple mug. Pecola’s self-awareness is inhibited by this longing—she upsets Claudia and Frieda’s mother by inadvertently drinking three entire quarts of milk just to “handle and see sweet Shirley’s face” (23). Later, the three girls feel so guilty and afraid of Mama’s anger that when Pecola gets her period, their first instinct is to hide it from their mother.

Personalization of the Different Narrative Point Of Views

February 12, 2018 / alozieada / 0 Comments

Pecola seems to be the central character, yet Claudia’s narration is the only narration done through the first-person. The novel changes from Claudia’s first person perspective to what seems to be an omniscient third-person. The ways in which the shifts in narration allows for a rendering of Pecola that is both intimate yet impersonal. Meaning that the third-person narratives of Pecola seem to prescribe a systemic disorder to her. Without Pecola’s interiority, the narration’s telling of her ugliness- “it was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had accepted it without question (39)” seems so pervasive. Her ugliness seems to be a root of and consequence for her unstable family and a rotting home. The third-person perspective seems so cynical. And things seem to happen to her and people say things to her, but she’s not a very present force in her life. In fact, she often pretends to disappear (45).

However, the Claudia’s first person perspective feels like a more intimate relationship (or character construction) of Pecola. We find out she loves Shirley Temple, she gets her period, we see Maureen link arms with her while going to the ice cream place. We get instances of people engaging with her as a person instead of as a vessel of ugliness at which people want to prod. Though Claudia’s perspective seems to be tinged with pitiless, it still feels as though Pecola is human. Her moments of belonging seem to be emphasized more through Claudia’s perspective whereas her moments of difference/isolation seem to be highlighted more in the third-person perspective.

Relating to Others: A Form of Self-Expression

February 12, 2018 / Hana / 0 Comments

A main technique used by the narrator, Claudia, in telling her own story and establishing her identity is the relation to and contrast with other characters. She makes herself singular by contrasting her ideas on beauty, race, and self-worth with the adults and children around her, and establishes a perspective of alienated and disdainful observations from the beginning. At times her tone borders on contempt, at others simply observational- throughout it all however, it is interesting to see how she categorizes her own feelings based on the reactions that those around her have. Her articulations of this very human and relatable process are more stylized, and result in an inner world of complex turmoil that do not reflect outwardly. Her solitude is reflected in her observation of others, as she focuses on points others may not: “Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness… collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.” (34) While this is reminiscent of Allison’s musings in Fun Home, this quote holds a longing tone that shows a mindset that is attempting to assimilate rather than begrudge. Overall, the structure in which these thoughts are set up allow room for drastic development.

Shaped by appearance

February 12, 2018 / Ashley / 1 Comment

A vicious cycle began when Pecola, as a member of the ugly Breedloves family, was convinced by others’ judgement of her as ugly, but then the ugliness lied not in her appearance but rather in her lack of confidence, or rather, realization of her beauty, so that her internal conception of self was projected to her exterior, confirming people’s view. Her obsession of blue eyes — “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (p.46) — showed how she accepted people’s impression of her and even managed to justify their accounts by attributing her ugliness to her eyes. Curiously, while taking others’ impression as a starting point to shape her personalities to others’ expectation, she was convinced that by having blue eyes, she could in some way flip the situation and start to influence others, for example, stopping her parents’ fights. She was aware that there was something missing in her and knew what caused her ugliness was the hindrance to actively participating in human interactions, but she identified the key to the problem as her eyes, a thing that she learned from those who first put the label of ugliness in her. Yet so far the book had not put forward a particular character or a certain group of characters who “taught” Pecola about her ugliness, while people could easily recognize it and Pecola herself treating it as if it was natural.

Pecola and incorporation of the dominant aesthetic

February 12, 2018 / hyunahn / 0 Comments

In Frow’s Interest, Frow explains that identification is done through an incorporation of an objectexternal to oneself, and that selfhood is remnants of what one had liked before. While having this notion in mind, it was interesting to read the part in which Pecola literally eats Mary Jane candies: “Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. (…) She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good. To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane. (…) nine lovely orgasms with Mary Jane. Lovely Mary Jane, for whom a candy is named” (50).

There are multiple layers of identity construction done in this short excerpt. Pecola identifies the stereotypical white beauty as “the” ideal beauty named as Mary Jane, decides to eat and swallow the candy, perceive sweetness in its taste, and proclaims that she not only wants to be like Mary Jane but loves it. The last part in loving Mary Jane seems to bear much meaning than simple admiration, since Pecola expresses eating the candies as “nine lovely orgasms.” Considering that Pecola was subjected to hostile white phallocentric gaze from the candy shop owner, it might be possible to infer that Pecola, by “eat[ing] the eyes” of Mary Jane, acquires her beauty, which is equivalent to neutralizing the hostile white phallocentric gaze. There is metonymical equivalence between avoiding this gaze and experiencing orgasm, being not only unrejected but actively wanted sexually and respected as a part of the society. This orgasm seems to line up with the sweetness aforementioned earlier in the passage, considering that Maureen is evidently more respected and sexually desired, which is emphasized by her capability of eating ice cream (a higher-quality sweet) while Pecola cannot.

Linking back to the Frow text, it seems that Pecola is socially molded into a self-abhorring subject that is induced to dislike others and look up to whites and colored people that resemble whites. It seems like Freud’s explanation of melancholia fits into this part of the book since Pecola is not what she desires to be. As this desire is essentially impossible to be fulfilled, it seems Pecola’s identity will most likely include self-hatred.

Abstraction as a Character Identity

February 12, 2018 / ingoldjr / 0 Comments

During my reading of The Bluest Eye, I was struck by a particular observation made by Claudia. In describing the situation of Pecola, her newly acquainted foster sister, Claudia mentions that she moves about “on the hem of life”, attempting to “creep singly up into the major folds of the garment” (17). She references this state as a peripheral existence, and one that is best dealt with in the abstract. I found this particular passage quite interesting, as much of the novel seems interested with the abstract as it relates to both the literary form and the character’s existence. The beginning of the novel, for example, presents a picturesque view of family life, detailing a house that’s filled with a happy, complete family. This presentation, however, becomes increasingly disjointed, eventually transforming into a mass of words that lacks any sense of logic or cohesion. Even more interesting is the occasional injection of these passages before a chapter, reminding the reader of the abstract way in which the novel is constructed.

What’s more intriguing to me, however, is the way in which this abstract method of writing relates to Pecola’s characterization. In addition to living on the fringes of society, she’s described as “concealed, veiled, eclipsed”, only occasionally peering out from “behind the shroud” (39). It’s interesting, and perhaps a little strange, to consider how Pecola’s own abstract, enigmatic characterization is the best way in which to understand her character. Much like Morrison’s introduction, Pecola’s own interiority can come across as simultaneously mysterious and revealing, developing the ways in which her character’s inferiority complex is constructed and displayed.

Pecola: A Minor Character in Her Own Story

February 12, 2018 / caitlin24538 / 1 Comment

In The Bluest Eye, the plot is not centered around just one character, but two, both Claudia and Pecola. It is almost difficult to determine who is the minor character in the other person’s story. So when beginning to think about writing a post, I was surprised that I didn’t quite know which character was the main character. If you read the summary added by the publisher on the back of the book, it makes it quite clear that Pecola is the main character, the primary person of interest. No other character is mentioned. But when we read the actual novel, we find that we get none of Pecola’s interiority or internal thoughts, only her outward behaviors and actions. At the same time, we get all of Claudia’s internal thoughts. We can track Claudia’s development on a personal level, but we are always somewhat removed from Pecola. We never hear her internal voice. She is a minor character in her own story.

In the Forward, Morrison writes that, “Begun as a bleak narrative of psychological murder, the main character could not stand alone since her passivity made her a narrative void. So I invented friends, classmates …” (x). How is our understanding of Pecola affected by this status as a ‘minor’ main character? Does it limit the reader’s ability to connect with her? Does it inform the reader’s understanding of her relegated position in society?

It is also interesting to think about the strange things the narration must do in order to have Pecola’s story told by Claudia. There are some instances where Claudia is very clearly the narrator, and where she is talking about thoughts and experiences in first person, many of which have nothing to do with Pecola, like when she is narrating her interactions with her mother or her thoughts about Maureen Peal. However, there are other sections of the story where Claudia is absent, and the story is centered just on Pecola, like the scene with Junior and the cat or the time Pecola goes to buy Mary Janes. These are all narrated in third person. Are we supposed to understand Claudia, perhaps an older Claudia, narrating these stories, or are we supposed to understand them as coming from an outside, third person narrative voice?

ENGL 25640 The Problem of Fictional Character

University of Chicago