#THE BLUEST EYE PAGE COUNT MOVIE#

So, the abstract question of what kinds of narratives produce the identity of a person becomes for Morrison a political question. The quality of MorrisonвЂ™s fiction could not be more different from the quality of BarthвЂ™s fiction, and I want to suggest to you that thatвЂ™s because in MorrisonвЂ™s fictionвЂ“this is her first novel begun in the early вЂ™60s, published in 1970вЂ“in this novel, she is absorbing something from that вЂ™60s culture, reflecting on it, that Barth kept very much at armвЂ™s length. Pecola came into the world, essentially, through her mother and the society that surrounded her, stocked with the story of white aesthetics, the story that told her that she and her family were ugly and irredeemable. Well, Toni Morrison advances an analysis that is not so different. The sperm comes already stocked with the phrases and patterns of prior literature. If John BarthвЂ™s characters inhabit stories, stories that precede them in the worldвЂ“ Remember, this is why itвЂ™s important that the narrator of the first story in that collection is the sperm. And this is how she ends up, and the cost of inhabiting that story is derangement. So, PecolaвЂ™s mother absorbed that white aesthetic, projected it on to her daughter, and her daughter finally so longs to inhabit that story that she goes to Soaphead Church. But itвЂ™s about race relations, and it features a little girl named Peola who ends up passing for white because she so hates the blackness of her mother.

#THE BLUEST EYE PAGE COUNT MOVIE#

Remember, in the novel weвЂ™re told that PecolaвЂ™s name is close to a name from the 1934 movie Imitation of Life, which has a complicated story.

So, what he has invited her to do is to fully inhabit the dream of the white aesthetic that her mother has absorbed through the movies and has used in naming her. But it is very patently a story, and we get that because he says вЂњshe will live happily ever after.вЂќ So, he makes that story he tells her, one, into a sacramental story, as if he is giving her GodвЂ™s gift. It refers to the Last Supper вЂњIt is meet and right so to doвЂќ to commemorate ChristвЂ™s last supper with his disciples through the sacrament of the Eucharist. That last line, вЂњmeet and right so to do,вЂќ is from the Anglican liturgy, or may also occur in the Catholic liturgy. I, I have found it meet and right so to do.вЂќ No one else will see her blue eyes, but she will, and she will live happily ever after. I gave her two blue eyes, cobalt blue, a streak of it, right out of Your own blue heaven. I played You,вЂќ he says to God, вЂњand it was a very good show. вЂњI looked at that ugly little black girl and I loved her. But Soaphead is very satisfied with his work, and this is how he describes that work: So of course the dog dies, and this convinces Pecola that her prayers have been answered, and it pushes her over the edge in to something like schizophrenia. And, of course, what he has given her to give to the dog is poison. He has, remember, tricked Pecola in to thinking that if something happens to the dog that he sends her out to feed, it will be a sign that God has answered her prayer for blue eyes. This is the letter that Soaphead Church writes to God explaining his action. This is, of course, the story of a little girl who is totally remade by a story thatвЂ™s told to her, and I just want to point this out to you, on page 182 of The Bluest Eye. This novel has a lot to do with the questions that John Barth was thinking about, in a very different register, in Lost in the Funhouse.

Professor Amy Hungerford: So, today we will talk about The Bluest Eye. MorrisonвЂ™s Politics: The Other Side of the 1960s

The American Novel Since 1945 ENGL 291 - Lecture 13 - Toni Morrison, The Bluest EyeД¬hapter 1.

The bluest eye page count