Lit Anal #3

1.       The novel The Bluest eye takes place after the great depression and describes the life of African Americans. The main characters are Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola. Claudia and Frieda are sisters and they meet Pecola when she and another man named Henry move into their home for a while. At first they are hesitant about Pecola but soon begin to help her and guide her. Pecola is obsessed with having blue eyes and blonde hair like Shirley Temple. Pecola is also very troubled because of the family she comes from, her parents constantly argue and the arguments constantly turn violent. One day Pecola is rapped by her father, Cholly, and she becomes pregnant. Everyone in the neighborhood judges her and her mother even beats her. The neighborhood hopes her baby dies but Claudia and Frieda hope otherwise. The baby ends up dying because it was born prematurely. After her child’s death Pecola goes mad and believes everyone hates her because her blue eyes are so beautiful.

2.       The theme of this novel is lack of love. This is constantly seen with every character in the novel. Not only does Pecola not receive love from her own family but the community doesn’t show her love either. Her parents did not receive much love when they were growing up which explains why they can’t show love to their own children. The lack of love which Pecola receives ends up driving her crazy and to hating herself so much.

3.       Toni Morrison uses first person point of view which gives us an inside look to the novel. It makes it be that much more interesting and detailed. Her tone is melancholy and through every event we foreshadow something bad resulting from it. Some of the examples in the novel are “All he would do was get drunk sand beat her.” Also “although his income was small he had no taste for luxury.”

4.       The literary techniques that Morrison used that helped me better understand the novel were foreshadowing, diction, dialect, and imagery. The foreshadowing allowed us to get a heads up for all of the bad things to come. The dialect used allowed me as a reader to be able to get a better understanding of the characters. The imagery made the reading become more realistic and the diction was very simple which made reading enjoyable.