ENGL 25640 The Problem of Fictional Character

University of Chicago

Page 6 of 14

Pecola and incorporation of the dominant aesthetic

February 12, 2018 / / 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 / / 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 / / 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?

Belonging(s) in The Bluest Eye

February 12, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Much of this book centers around social pariahs, predominantly through the story of Pecola Breedlove, and the process by which their society casts them aside. Parallel to this process of not belonging, the author accentuates a hierarchy of personhood based upon another type of “belonging” – physical possessions and characters’ relations to them. Claudia maps out the social hierarchy determined by characters’ relations to property on pages 17-18, when she notes how Cholly Breedlove has propelled his family from the periphery of “renting blacks” into the wretched state of “outdoors.” When a character finds themselves “outdoors,” as Pecola does in this section, they are devoid of all possessions.

Some objects, illustrated in the case of Claudia and her doll, or the Breedlove’s sofa, are imposed upon characters involuntarily, standing as metaphors for the oppressive social restraints they endure. Whereas Claudia reacts to her doll with anger and destruction, though, rejecting its presence, the Breedloves simply seem to harbor an internalized resentment towards their furniture, but nonetheless accept it.

Later in the narrative, Morrison uses the term “belonging” to describe the ugliness that dominates the Breedlove household. She visualizes the ugliness contagion that originates from Cholly as a type of garment which each member of the family wears distinctly (39). Pecola comes to truly believe that the ugliness belongs to her, and like her family does the sofa, accepts her ugliness as a fact of her existence. Though she has brief moments wherein she expresses a sense of ownership and projects beauty, Pecola mainly sees her “ugliness” as a contaminant, and thus casts aside her beautiful dandelions as weeds (48). This action of discarding foreshadows the physical and spiritual destitution of Pecola’s character – as a result of constant rejection, she ultimately renders herself  “outdoors,” unworthy of both belongings and belonging.

Physical Development and it’s Impact on Character Development

February 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

In the first section of the Autumn chapter, the narrator Claudia describes the incident of her sister experiencing her first period and as a result is now different than them, as “a real person who was ministratin’ was somehow sacred. She was different from us now- grown-up-like.” (32). While Pecola might have achieved physical development before her sisters, her personality does not seem any more “grown up like” in the later chapters for today than it did prior ti that experience, nor does she seem much more “grown up” than her sisters, despite them claiming that she now is. Oftentimes in novels it feels like markers of physical development: reaching puberty or getting a first grey hair etc. correspond with some sort of personal development, but here it does not feel that way, at least not too much.

Alison’s Homophobia

February 7, 2018 / / 1 Comment

One of the things I’ve struggled with in reading Fun Home is Alison’s conditional homophobia. Though gay herself, it seems as though her realization came at least in part from her idolization of masculinity–as in, Alison wanted to take on the role of the man in her house with all that would entail (i.e. dating other women). She laments that her coming out did not separate her from her family as she intended but it seemed destined to be that way. She reviles her father’s femininity, his sexuality, and means to show him how he ought to act through her own life choices. It’s hard for me to reconcile Alison’s clear distaste for gay men with her own sexuality. She detests all of his more feminine characteristics, even when they are not forced upon her and during his funeral scene, she fantasizes about outing him as a “manic-depressive, closeted fag” (129). This hypocrisy does not endear Alison to the reader and I was often struck by a feeling of ‘I want to see what happens, but I’m tired of hearing Alison’s thoughts on things.’ I realized I wanted a different narrator. I don’t know if this is some symptom of an unreliable narrator because I don’t believe Alison is lying but I’ve come to see her as a singularly unhappy person that cannot abide the appearance of wholeness–if she perceives something as broken she wants it to appear broken.

Focalization and Narration: Omniscient, First Person, or Unreliable?

February 7, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I think Bechdel’s inclusion and analysis of her own diary entries in Fun Home bring up an interesting question about what type of narrator she is in her own life.

For the majority of the novel, Bechdel is a pretty omniscient narrator, but not fully omniscient. She is omniscient in comparison with her younger self that she is describing because as she writes this novel, she now knows way more about her parents, especially her father, than her younger self knew. However, she is not fully omniscient; there are still mysteries in her father’s story, which then cause mysteries in her own story. For example, she is still not quite sure if her father committed suicide or not: “There’s no proof, actually, that my father killed himself” (27). Another example is when her father calls her into the morgue to hand him a pair of scissors: “Maybe this was the same offhanded way his own notoriously cold father had shown him his first cadaver…Or maybe he felt he’d become too inured to death, and was hoping to elicit from me an expression of the natural horror he was no longer capable of. Or maybe he just needed the scissors” (44-45). Although she knows more about her father than she did back then, she still does not have the whole picture, so her narration of her own history is limited.

When her diary entries come in, the narration switches from memory to actual primary accounts. These can verify the events and feelings she has been describing. However, most of the entries she includes do not say much; they certainly do not detail and analyze events the way she is doing as she is narrating the novel. Even during the beginning phase of her diary writing where she is just writing down hard facts, the facts are not that significant, such as “We watched the Brady Bunch. I made popcorn.” As she becomes older, her diary writing style changes: “…hard facts gave way to vagaries of emotion and opinion” (169). These entries may actually say more about who she was at this point in her life, but she isn’t always honest about how she feels in her own diary entries. For example, she and her friend can’t go to a football game and school dance because they “stupidly missed” their ride; however, the present narrator Bechdel states, “My profession of disappointment at missing the game at dance was an utter falsehood, of course” (183). In fact, on the very next page, she literally writes, “My narration had by this point become altogether unreliable” (184). I find it so interesting that she from the present is invalidating her own written account from the past. Does she really remember that she was lying about the dance in her diary? Is she interpreting these entries correctly? Or is she interpreting them with a present lens? In fact, on the back of my copy of Fun Home, there is a short bio of Bechdel that reads, “Alison Bechdel began keeping a journal when she was ten and since then has been a careful archivist of her own life.” However, her young diary entries do not at all seem like careful archives. Thy are full of words that do not say enough about an important event or say something that’s different from how she felt about an event. She literally calls herself unreliable! How can we fuse the teenage narrator with the adult narrator in order to figure out what is the truth?

Synchronicities and Intertexuality

February 7, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Of all the “synchronicities” (154) popping up in the summer described throughout chapter 6, Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Ernest is deployed to make sense of Alisons’ parents’ marriage and to provide a narrative reframing of Fun Home as a whole. The Importance  is a  play directed (albeit snickeringly) against the social conventions of the late victorian era that begins with two main characters revealing their double lives and ends with them realizing that their fictionalized personas were actually factual. Surely, it’s no coincidence that Fun Home is labeled a “tragicomic” while Wilde subtitled his play “a trivial play for serious people”.  The novel as a whole exists along a tension between the parts of her past that strike her as tragedy or “old catastrophe” and her impulse to identify comedic ironies along with the dramatic ones; ultimately, these two poles are distinguished as such through chronological reordering and thematization within chapters and it is impossible to situate it within either camp definitively. It is especially worth noting that Bechdel’s own narrational style and sense of narrative evolve or re-focus depending on what writer or work of fiction she is in conversation with. Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald brought out a dour and apt comparison to her father’s frustrated double life, so does the engagement with Wilde draw out a more light-hearted and humorous approach to her own family’s contradictions and subjection to social morays (See the not so subtle innuendo in the first panel of 167). Is it fair to say, then, that authors engaging in  in conversation with other works (even just at the level of allusion?) can be influenced and refocused in the same way that characters and narratives-shape one another reciprocally?

Duality and Inverse Unfolding of Character

February 7, 2018 / / 2 Comments

In Chapter 4, Alison compares the interplay between her narrative arc and her father’s with the ambiguous archetype of the serpent. While quite clearly a phallus, it is also an ancient symbol of femininity and fertility. It is interesting, then, how Alison remarks that “perhaps this undifferentiation, this nonduality, is the point…maybe that’s what’s so unsettling about snakes” (116). She then remarks that “my father’s end was my beginning…the end of his life coincided with the beginning of my truth” (117). This passage precisely captures a question I grapple with in Fun Home: does Alison’s character and her father’s character unfold together throughout the tragicomic? Is this unfolding cyclical, the fleshing out of one character directly feeding back into the development of the other? Or perhaps an inverse duality more accurately characterizes the mapping of the two characters; in attempting to piece together her memories of her father to form a more complete picture of him after his death through this, Alison in fact effectively charts her own character while only further blurring the terrain of her father’s character. Such an inverse relationship can be seen in the horribly static, drawn-out spread (220-221) when Alison’s father, at the crux of a potential moment of true emotional connection and understanding, still resists interpretation, or by the sheer amount of times Alison attempts to fill in the gaps her father left behind and form a more coherent narrative with hypotheticals of “maybe,” “perhaps,” or “what if” throughout her memoir. Do her revelations about herself come at the expense of muddying her memories of her father by creating infinite possibilities, explanations, and justifications for his past actions? Is it possible for a reader’s (and narrator’s) understanding of a character not to expand, but to disintegrate throughout a work of fiction?

Color of Influence

February 7, 2018 / / 0 Comments

This memoir seems to be literally colored through her father’s influence, as the color is either a blue in the shade or some blue and yellow combo that favors the blue, reminiscent of when the yellow carriage was being colored in, as her father intervened and, preventing it from becoming a blue carriage, turning it ‘back’ into a yellow carriage. If color is so important, what does it mean when black silhouettes take the stage at important moments? For example, the last panel of chapter five on page 150, we are told what colors the sunset had (certainly not the ever present shaded blue/blue-green) but at this moment, the two are black silhouettes as if preventing their different colors from intervening in the scene, making this lack of color seem like abject truth. But then in the middle panel on page 203, as we again rehash the visit to the bookstore (following the Ouroboros-like nature of this memoir), it seems like Roy’s black silhouette stands in the background, only to disappear in the next panel as if he was never actually there. Perhaps here the silhouette stands to show the truth of her father’s influence on her, and while this claim might be supported by a similar phenomenon of her brother fleeing a man reminiscent of her father on page 193, and perhaps Roy, and no her father, appears because the parallel between the influence is more appropriate, but while I like this claim, I admit it struggles because Roy, and not her father, appears here.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 ENGL 25640 The Problem of Fictional Character

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑