Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye portrays a terrifying tale about a young woman’s encounters with racism during the Great Depression. The novel’s span is divided into four seasons: “Autumn”, “Winter,” and “Spring.” It is through the characters’ experiences we can see how it fails to meet traditional expectations. Morrison uses natural seasons to frame time and help us see the unnaturalness in her characters’ lives.
Morrison opens her novel with the season called “Autumn” which is traditionally associated with crisp air and harvesting. However, the expectations of Morrison are quickly shattered when she encounters the lives of her characters. The juxtaposition between the beauty and the ugly of autumn is what we first notice. Claudia MacTeer, Morrison’s main narrator, recalls the Breedloves storefront, which “foist itself upon the eye of passerby in an irritating and melancholy manner”. Claudia suggests the storefront was not a temporary location for the Breedloves. Rather, it was one of permanence. The Breedloves are “unique” in their ugliness (38). However, Pecola Breedlove is the most visible example of their lack of beauty. Her self-esteem is slowly declining as the seasons progress. Pecola’s beauty and obsession for “she would be different” (46) create a stark contrast between what we expect to see in autumn and the beauty Pecola is actually lacking. Morrison uses “Autumn,” not only to divide the story, but also to highlight Pecola’s ugliness and her obsessive longing for blue eyes in hopes that “she would be different” (46). Claudia recalls Pecola’s sexual maturation, when she begins “ministratin” (31). Pecola’s “raw autumn wind” (57), reveals that her maturity, which is not typically associated with autumn, brings with it the possibility and promise of new life and pregnancy. This leads to Pecola losing her innocence and her inevitable demise. There is also a discrepancy in what we are expecting of autumn and the reality of Claudia’s sickness. Claudia recalls that she once coughed loudly through bronchial tubes that were already full of phlegm. Claudia remembers her mother caring for her during her illness. She said that she thinks of her mother as someone who would not let her die. Morrison uses Claudia’s and Pecola’s unnatural experiences to point out the disparity between what is normal in autumn’s natural cycle and what actually occurs.
Pecola’s rapidly decreasing self-esteem changes as “Autumn” becomes “Winter.” Pecola’s gradual self-rejection (16) is best illustrated by the alienation she feels at the hands of her peers. Maureen Peal is described as a high-yellow, dream child with long hair, which was tied into two lynchropes and hung down her back (62). Claudia remembers winter feeling like it “had hardened itself into something that no one could loosen” (62). Pecola has only known Maureen for a few minutes, but she quickly becomes irritated with her and begins to call them “black and dirty black e mo” (73), which serves to further damage Pecola’s self-confidence. Winter is associated with hibernation and a stable state of being. But Pecola’s ever-changing and rapidly declining psychological state is evident in the snowflakes she observes “falling to the pavement” (93). This was after she fled Geraldine’s home, where she was called “nasty little bitch” (92) for not committing a crime. Pecola’s self esteem is dying just as the pavement snowflakes are dying. Pecola’s mental decline was confirmed in the course study guide. It states that the shift from Autumn’ and Winter’ is “a] gradual shift toward a vision for herself that is equally unforgiving as the shifts of seasons are inevitable” (17). Morrison uses Pecola’s mental change to draw attention to the differences in natural seasons. This is done by giving Pecola the opposite experience.
The connotations of spring are usually associated with renewal, happiness, and awakening. However, Morrison’s “Spring”, as Morrison describes it, is far from what we expect and is severely affected by a series a horrendous events. Claudia’s attitude towards the season is first shown to the reader by recalling the branches of trees that “beat” her differently in the spring (97). She also remembers the “stiffness of a winter band, but there were new green switches which lost their sting even after the whipping was done” (97). Claudia reflects on the negative feelings that remain in her memories of spring by stating, “Even now, spring for me is shot though with the remembered pain of switchings. And forsythia does not hold any cheer.” (97). Morrison’s take on spring is full not only of negativity, but also corruption and death. Cholly Breedlove, in his chapters on Cholly’s childhood, recalls Aunt Jimmy’s tragic death. Cholly is also disappointed when he returns to Macon to search for his father. He is eventually rejected and treated with hostility upon their first encounter. Pecola suffers disappointment too after accidentally spilling some berry cobbler. Breedlove grabbed Pecola by her arm, slapped her once more, and then “Mrs. Because of their unnatural nature, the events in “Spring,” are important because they highlight the unnatural aspects of the season.
The corruption in “Spring” is first seen in Soaphead Church, a priest who used to pervert little girls through touching them. Frieda’s sister Claudia is also raped by Henry, their houseguest. Pecola is raped and beaten by Cholly her father “on a Sunday evening, in the thin lighting of spring”, (161). It is later revealed that this is her first assault by her father and she is thus infected with her father’s child. Pecola’s pregnancy follows the pattern of spring through the expectation of renewal and rebirth, but the act of immunization still acts as an exception to the norm due to the act’s unnaturalness. Pecola’s pregnancy is a complete deviation from the norm. Morrison makes a juxtaposition in order to emphasize the terrible and unnatural happenings that take place simultaneously within the natural cycle.
The novel’s final season, “Summer,” ends the story after a year. However, it portrays exactly the opposite of what the season is supposed to portray. The earth’s unyieldingness and unexpected death negate all of their hopes for a happy earth, growth, or fulfillment. Claudia’s introduction for the season is a prelude to the negativity to come. It is still a season filled with storms. I don’t think the dry days or sticky nights will ever leave my thoughts, but the storm, the sudden and violent storms, both scared and satisfied me.” (187). The earth might have been unyielding in Frieda’s case, but the marigolds of Claudia and Frieda were not growing. So was Pecola’s “plot with black dirt” in that Cholly Breedlove had “dropped his seedlings” (introduction). Claudia recalls how, even though “the baby arrived too early and died” (204), Cholly was the one who “loved [Pecola] enough so to touch her. He enveloped her, and gave her something of his own.” His touch was fatal and the thing he gave her filled her pain with death (206). Pecola’s unnatural, unyielding earth is reflected in the baby’s tragic death. After that, she experiences a complete loss of her sanity. “She spent her days, her tendril sap-green days moving up and then down, her head jerking so far only she could see,” (204).
Sharon Gravett a critic of this novel provides an interesting perspective. Sharon says that Claudia “sees in the dying seasons of fall to fall again the cycle of year.” This ironic counterpoint is to the story of Pecola breedlove, who becomes of age after being raped and immunized by her father Cholly. She dies and leaves behind a baby. [Morrison] uses seasons and their changes to comment upon similar or ironic developments in the human community. (89). Gravett makes comments about the unfruitful season and its deviation from what one would think of summer. She explains that Gravett’s novel “ends with the blasted dreams of a dying life.” The death of hope and life is more important than the rebirth, Gravett (94). Morrison’s symbolism of Pecola’s death and marigolds refusing to grow suggests that there is a disruption in nature’s natural order. The juxtaposition of the natural cycles of seasons is seen through these unnatural experiences and their subsequent experiences.
Although seasons are predictable and unchanging, Morrison’s characters’ lives do not follow that same pattern. The main sections, “Autumn”, Winter, Spring, and “Summer”, serve as a frame for time. They also highlight the difference between the seasons’ natural expectations and the actual events that occur in the story. Morrison, especially Pecola Breedlove, presents a disturbing distortion of the natural order in which the seasons are ordered. Pecola’s sexual maturity begins in the fall. She is rejected by her peers and suffers from low self-esteem. In the spring, she is raped, impregnated, and then loses her baby. Finally, in the summer, she loses her sanity. Thomas Fick, who is a critic of Morrison, says that Morrison uses seasons to describe time, which he calls a “parody of rebirth, growth” (10). This is how we can see the unnatural events and experiences that affect Morrison’s characters.
Works cited
Castricano C. ‘Unit 7: Bluest Eye.” ENGL4351 Modern American Fiction. Kamloops: TRU Open Learning. 2008
Fick, Thomas. “Toni Morrison’s Allegory of the Cave’ – Movies, Consumption & Platonic Reality in?The Bluest Eye” The Midwest Modern Language Association published an issue of their journal in 1989, which was Volume 22, Issue 1.
Gravett, Sharon. “Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is An Inverted Forest?” Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Harold Bloom wrote in 2009 that literature is essential to understanding the human experience. Google Books offers readers access to a vast collection of books.
Morrison, Toni. In The Bluest Eye, a novel by Toni Morrison, a young African-American girl struggles to come to terms with her own beauty and worth in a society that places a high value on whiteness. 1970. New York’s Plume publishing company released the book in 1994. Print.
