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Caitlyn Baker

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Dr. Patricia Angley


AML 4300
18 April 2016
Narrative Methods Found in The Bluest Eye and their Effects on the Reader
Introduction
During her acceptance speech for the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison
acknowledged the power of language and how this power is the responsibility of every human
being on Earth, as language can be oppressive or violent (and thus limiting) to the ideas of the
speaker and the audience (Morrison, "The Nobel Lecture in Literature" 200-1). Morrison has an
"insistence that language and its productions are acts rather than products or artifacts. Using
language is thus equivalent to performing particular, situated actions, aimed at particular
audiences, for specific purposes, with specific effects (Lester 125). With this idea at the
forefront of her mind, The Bluest Eye was created, impacting readers since its publication in
1970.
This novel was crafted using various narrative styles, point of view characters, and author
meanings to construct a realistic world fueled by unintentional cruelty and hopeless desires. The
novel revolves around the character Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl, pregnant with
her father's child and longing for the bluest eyes. Although the reader is introduced to this fact
(her pregnancy) at the beginning of the novel, the main purpose of this story is not to find out
why she became impregnated by her father, but how. Various backgrounds of characters are told
to the reader and the purpose of this essay is to analyze how this method impacts the reader in
their opinion of Cholly Breedlove, Pecola's father. These point of views make each character
complicated, especially because each one builds off of the other. Due to this, the reader can have

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complicated emotions about what each character has done. Do these different voices make the
reader understand why Cholly raped his daughter? Do they make the reader understand why
Pecola lost her mind after this event? Does the reader sympathize with Pecola in the end?
This essay will discuss these questions with an examination of Morrison's narrative
styles, author meaning, and points of view in The Bluest Eye.
Creating Empathy Within the Reader
Since narrative styles and character point of views both construct a feeling of empathy or
sympathy within a reader, empathy will be the first topic discussed. Because the reader heavily
relies on the narrator, whether it be an omniscient narrator or a character with a limited point of
view, they depend on them to become immersed into the narrative world. Timo Gnambs et al.
describe this as a method of transportation that varies in level depending on story characteristics
and the individual experiences of the reader (187). But when readers are transported into the
fictional world, they can experience a change in "knowledge for facts, their attitudes, beliefs, and
behavioral intentions, as well as their self-concept, and their theory of mind;" this helps with the
level of empathy they feel for the characters and how well they can relate to them as a whole
(Gnambs, Appel and Schreuner 187-8). However, if the reader is highly transported into the text,
they will not absorb or assess as much information (Gnambs, Appel and Schreuner 188).
A critic of The Bluest Eye, noted in Gurleen Grewal's novel Circles of Sorrow, Lines of
Struggle in chapter one, claims that white readers are "unsure whether to accept at face value
Morrison's presentation of the bizarre and shocking or to consider it symbolically; since the
novels are about black peoplewho victimize each other" and that the acts the characters

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participate in only creates a fear of the African-American race (21). The fears that would arise in
relation to character acts of this novel would be rape, violence, and alcoholism.
However, the chapter that revolves around Cholly's history complicates this
feeling in readers: did he only do it because one action Pecola performed reminded him
of Pauline, his wife? Did he do it because he was drunk? The first question could be
easily answered with a resounding yes, because Pecola's foot scratching is what lured
Cholly in. But this may not be the same answer for every reader, because they will base
Cholly's reasoning on their own experiences and knowledge of the world. This relates to
the idea Morrison had in mind when writing the novel:
To make the story appear oral, meandering effortless, spokento have the reader
feel the narrator without identifying that narrator, or hearing him or her knock
about, and to have the reader work with the author in the construction of the book
is what's important. What is left out is as important as what is there.
("Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation" 59)
The narrator usually creates an impact on the reader; they form opinions based on wording and
descriptors used by the narrator. When a character is narrating, the reader can understand their
perspective and form an opinion based on a character's reasoning and experience. For example,
the reader may feel sympathetic or sorrowful towards Pecola when she is speaking to an
imaginary friend, arguably her past self, about her new blue eyes (the imaginary friend being the
speaker in italics):
What? What will we talk about?
Why, your eyes.

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Oh, yes. My eyes. My blue eyes. Let me look again.
See how pretty they are.
Yes. They get prettier each time I look at them.
They are the prettiest I've ever seen.
Really? Oh, yes.
Prettier than the sky?
Oh, yes. Much prettier than the sky. (Morrison, The Bluest Eye 201)
The reader could feel sorrowful towards Pecola because the trauma of being raped highly
affected her in a negative mannershe became insane. She believed that sex was an action that
two people performed because they loved one another. Therefore, her reasoning would become
muddled: Cholly loved her but he was her father, thus making that act taboo. Pecola believed that
the community will not look at her because she has the bluest eyes in the world, but in reality it
is because of her father's crime and her victimization. This idea of her having blue eyes also
makes her think that if she had had them all along "She would have been taken along by Sammy,
her brother, loved and recognized by her peers and her parents would not have quarreled before
her" (Kochar).
This part of the novel is also meant to showcase authorial intent or meaning from
Morrison to relate how her previous idea, "Along with the idea of romantic love, [Pauline] was
introduced to anotherphysical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of
human thought," (The Bluest Eye 122) can harm young people because they do not match up to

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the current standard of (white) beauty. This idea helps readers, especially white readers,
understand how society has constructed beauty and how unfair this construction is.
On a side note, this idea of Pecola desiring blue eyes came from Toni Morrison's
childhood, when she was arguing with a friend about the existence of God. This friend said that
God was not real because he did not give her the blue eyes that she had been praying for over a
period of two years (Morrison, Toni Morrison on the Inspiration for The Bluest Eye).
Most readers, female readers especially, would understand Pecola's desire because they
know about and can feel the pressure of society's standard of beauty and their expectation to
meet it. Pecola's ugliness is a fact that she tries to avoid throughout the novel. This struggle with
identity is seen in multiple characters throughout the novelGeraldine, Pauline, and Cholly
being the most notable besides herself. It is this conflict of identity within Cholly that brings
about the rape of Pecola, as his past and present are mixed together and create confusion within
him. This topic will be further discussed later on in the essay.
Narrative Styles
Morrison begins her novel in an unusual manner, with a Dick-and-Jane narration. The
simple sentences and structure tells the reader that the story may be told from a child's
perspective. But as the sentences grow more chaotic with lacking punctuation and, eventually,
spaces to separate the words, the reader has a sense that chaos will grow in the story as well,
perhaps as the child ages. In conjunction with this, the subject of this piece is relatable to Pecola
Breedlove: Jane is isolated from her parents and brother in that they will not play with her.
Pecola also has this isolation from her family and from the community around her because she is

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ugly. In order to relate this to what is happening throughout the novel, the disjointed phrases are
used as chapter titles to foreshadow the complications and chaos that arises.
Foremost, Morrison's use of foreshadowing relates to Aristotle's idea of showing versus
telling events that occur. Foreshadowing would be under the aspect of showing, where the reader
can visualize the events as they happen. For example, the sequence of events before Pecola's
incident is of Cholly "Crawling on all fours toward her, he raised his hand and caught the foot in
an upward stroke. Pecola lost her balance and was about to careen to the floor" (Morrison, The
Bluest Eye 162). The reader is able to imagine this sequence of events because they are basic
actions. Aristotle thought that by using the showing method, the reader would create "an illusion
of 'real experience'" by merging "processes of imagination, identification and empathy"
(Andringa 433). Telling would be a statement of facts given by the narrator. An example from the
novel would be when Claudia and her sister are overhearing what happened to Pecola: "'Did you
hear about the girl?' 'What? Pregnant?' 'Yas. But guess who?' 'Who? I don't know all these little
old boys.' 'That's just it. Ain't no little old boy. They say it's Cholly'" (Morrison, The Bluest Eye
188-9).
In some instances, there are shifts in narrative perspective. Labeled as "free
indirect style," this method is "anchored simultaneously in the character's present and the
narrator's past, and to combine third person reference with character subjective idiom and
expressivity" (Sotirova 108). Studies have found that this combination of voices within a
text makes the reader read slower than they would if there was only one narrative voice
(Sotirova 109). This is an effective method to make a reader become more involved in the
story and form an opinion based on the information as it is told. For example, the second
chapter in the Spring section of the novel is written with two narratorsthe omniscient

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narrator and Pauline Breedlove. What the first narrator is tell what has happened in
Pauline's life; the second gives her view of what happened intermixed with feelings and
dialect.
Blaine Mullins and Peter Dixon discuss in their article that the reader relies on the
narrator to "provide information about the story in a cooperative manner" so that they can
understand the main point of the story. This helps the reader to make inferences to the
information given based on what is happening in the story (263). In relation to the novel,
the reader knows at the beginning that Cholly has sex with his daughter and impregnates
her, but do not understand why he did so. Missing the information given later on in
Cholly's point of view chapter, they would assume that he did it with evil intentions; but
when the event happens, the reader understands why he did it and, more importantly, how
he felt about it.
This relates to Els Andringa's idea that "the narrator selects and arranges the
events, presents them from a certain point of view and sometimes inserts comments and
judgements" (432). The Bluest Eye begins with the point of view of Claudia MacTeer as
an adult remembering her childhood. She tells the reader that Pecola was carrying her
father's child but it died in the womb, not only in a point blank format but also
metaphorically: "We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as
Pecola's father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirtThe seeds shriveled
and died; her baby too" (Morrison, The Bluest Eye 6). The reader would naturally have a
negative opinion of Cholly after reading this statement. However, Morrison styles her
novel with multiple point of views to give character background information in order to
justify their actions, rendering the reader with conflicting emotions. This makes the

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reader become highly involved in the text and fill in missing areas with ideas of their own
so that the situation becomes more relatable to themselves. Because there is a heavy
emphasis on Pecola's pregnancy at the beginning of the novel, the reader will have an
easier time remembering this throughout and apply this fact to the events as they occur
(Mullins and Dixon 269).
Character Points of View
The most important aspect of the novel, in terms of forming opinions and creating
emotions in the reader, are the point of view chapters for Pauline, Cholly, and Pecola.
They create the backdrop for the events that lead up to Pecola's rape. Let it be noted that
there are essentially two ways for reader to become emotional about a story: through
identification and empathy and through "the way information and the images are
conveyed to them" stylistically (Andringa 434). Elys Andringa also argues that a reader's
understanding and feelings towards a story is not restricted by becoming involved with
the characters or the events of the story (434).
Pauline's chapter, as mentioned above, is split between the omniscient narrator
and her speaking about her past. The notable parts in Pauline's chapter is how she met
Cholly and where their relationship diverged from there, interspersed with her feelings on
the events. She met him when she was idly standing by a fence post scratching her calf
with her foot, when suddenly she felt something tickling her broken footit was Cholly,
kneeling down and kissing her leg (Morrison, The Bluest Eye 115). The couple had a
happy relationship until they moved to Ohio and Pauline became more dependent on
Cholly and purchasing items to either improve the apartment or her beauty. This chapter
tells the reader that Cholly was once a nice, decent human being and not the malevolent,

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violent person he became. However, the reader does not understand how or why this
came to be because they are limited by Pauline's knowledge.
This creates a "narrative distance" within the story since there is somewhat a
separability between her and the facts of the story. Her chapter gives a new meaning to
Cholly's character, one that the reader has not seen before, building a "double
representation" of him(Andringa 433). This begins the conflict within the reader on their
opinion of Cholly: he was not an inherently evil person. He simply could not handle
Pauline's dependence and the constant need to support her. After she had two children and
they also relied on him, the pressure mounted. One could argue that this is what turned
him towards alcoholism and burning the house downthat he did both of these in an
attempt to escape his responsibilities as a husband and father.
This thought can be applied to Cholly's opinion on marrying Pauline and having
children:
And it was Pauline, or rather marrying her, that did for him what the
flashlight did not do. The constantness, varietylessness, the sheer weight
of sameness drove him to despair and froze his imagination. To be
required to sleep with the same woman forever was a curious and
unnatural idea to him. But the aspect of married life that dumbfounded
him and rendered him totally dysfunctional was the appearance of
children. Having no idea of how to raise children, and having never
watched any parent raise himself, he could not even comprehend what
such a relationship should be. (Morrison, The Bluest Eye 160)

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Due to his upbringing and disassociation from others after the age of thirteen, Cholly did not
understand the responsibilities linked to the roles of father and husband. In a sense, he did not
see himself as the father of two children as he did not participate in parental activities. Lacking
this relationship with Pecola, he did not know how to love her. When she scratched her leg with
her toe in the kitchen, Cholly did not associate the action with herself, but rather with Pauline.
He knew that the act of having sex with his daughter was wrong"the doing of a wild and
forbidden thing excited him" (162)but he could not resist his desire. During and after his rape
of her, Cholly did not identify her as a whole person but rather broke her down into a collection
of body parts: "her vagina," "her throat," "her wet, soapy hands" (163). The reader may feel
repulsed by this way of describing her. After this, Cholly feels a sense of hatred and tenderness,
but the object of this hatred is not known.
After this traumatic event, Pecola in a sense loses her mind. She visits Soaphead Church
and asks him to give her blue eyes. She was made to believe that God would grant her wish if
she fed Bob the dog and he had an unusual reaction. The dog's "unusual reaction" is his death.
Pecola's chapter shows that she believes that her wish has been granted and the reader learns,
perhaps broken-heartedly, what has otherwise not been told:
Then why didn't you tell Mrs. Breedlove?
I did tell her!
I don't mean about the first time. I mean about the second time, when you were
sleeping on the couch.
I wasn't sleeping! I was reading!
You don't have to shout.

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You don't understand anything, do you? She didn't even believe me when I told
her. (Morrison, The Bluest Eye 200)
The reader could, perhaps, excuse the first instance due to Cholly's drunkenness and confusion
because they understood his reasoning behind the event: he was reminded of his wife during a
happy time in his life. As for the second time, they know nothing besides the fact that it
happened. This is where more conflict comes in. Did it happen because of the same reasons? Or
did it happen because Cholly is evil? And while a reader may understand the why of the matter,
they may not be able to emphasize or sympathize with him because it was an atrocious act.
Conclusion
In the end, the final opinion of Cholly depends entirely on the empathy and experiences
of the reader. Morrison wrote her novel to revolve around the how of the situation to answer the
eventual question of why. Her usage of various points of view were the most effective way to
explain this coupled with her narrative styles. Morrison tried to expand the mind of the reader
by introducing horrific actions in a setting parallel to real life. Some readers may have been
unable to read her novel after Claudia's first chapter because it hits a very real fear that women
have.
There are some aspects where the author's voice comes into play to give the reader a
lesson, namely when beauty is referred to as a horrible thing and its implications run deep. What
does the reader take away from the novel as a whole, then? That humans are complicated
creatures and whatever reasons that may be justifiable to one person are not justifiable to
everyone.

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Works Cited
Andringa, Els. "Effects of 'Narrative Distance' on Readers' Emotional Involvement and
Response." Poetics, 23 (1996): 431-52. Document.
Gnambs, Timo, et al. "Experiencing Narrative Worlds: A Latent State-Trait Analysis."
Personality and Individual Differences, 69 (2014): 187-92. Document.
Grewal, Gurleen. Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1998. Document.
Kochar, Shubhanku. "Treatment of Violence: A Study of Morrison's The Bluest Eye and
Beloved." Language in India, 13.1 (2013): 532-622. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23
Apr. 2016.
Lester, Cheryl. "Meditations on A Bird in the Hand: Ethics and Aesthetics in a Parable by Toni
Morrison." Conner, Marc C. The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the
Unspeakeable. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. 125-138. Document.
Morrison, Toni. "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation." Morrison, Toni. What Moves at the
Margin: Selected Nonfiction. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi., 2008. 56-64.
Document.
. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage International, 1970. Novel.
Morrison, Toni. "The Nobel Lecture in Literature." Morrison, Toni and Ed. Carolyn Denard.
What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2008. 198207. Document.

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Morrison, Toni. Toni Morrison on the Inspiration for The Bluest Eye. Patrick Kovarik. BBC, The
Arts Hour. 17 July 2015. Web.
Mullins, Blaine and Peter Dixon. "Narratorial Implicatures: Readers Look to the Narrator to
Know What is Important." Poetics, 35 (2007): 262-76. Document.
Sotirova, Violeta. "Reader Responses to Narrative Point of View." Poetics, 34 (2006): 108-33.
ScienceDirect. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

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