I. Toni Morrison: The Nobel
Prize for Literature, 1993
"In
great minds, gravity and humour are close neighbours. This is reflected in
everything Toni Morrison has written, and evidenced in her own summary: 'My
project rises from delight, not disappointment.'"
Presentation Speech
at the awarding of the Nobel Prize
II. The Bluest Eye banned.
The
Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
"This novel
by the Pulitzer prize-winning author was pulled from a high school in Alaska
in 1994 and cited for being too 'controversial.' The novel was both challenged
and banned in Pennsylvania in 1994, and faced challenges in both Florida
and Massachusetts due to the book's sexual content."
Banned
Book Week
2007 "Challenged
in the Howell (MI) High School because of the book's strong sexual content."
2006 "Banned from the Littleton (CO) curriculum and library shelves
after complaints about its explicit sex, including the rape of an eleven-year-old
girl by her father."
Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools
"This was
the 34th most challenged book of the 1990's (which tops Morrison’s other
infamous books, Song of Solomon and Beloved . . .). The Bluest
Eye contains incest, rape, pedophilia, graphic sex, extreme violence, sexual
abuse, physical/emotional abuse, scatological references, sacrilegious references,
animal abuse, and bestiality."
III. So what is the challenge?
A. Pecola
Breedlove: pathos to critical judgment
1. Piecing the story together: dramatic irony
a) "'We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her
father's baby'" (5).
b) "After a long while she spoke very softly. 'Is it true that I
can have a baby now?'" "'How do you do that? I mean, how do you get
somebody to love you?'" (32).
c) "What
did love feel like? she wondered. How do grown-ups act when they love
each other? Eat fish together? Into her eyes came the picture
of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove in bed . . . . Maybe that was love. Choking
sounds and silence" (57).
d) "'That's dirty. Who wants to see a naked man?' Pecola was agitated.
'Nobody's father would be naked in front of his own daughter. Not unless
he was dirty too'" (71).
2. The
unspeakable
"So when the child regained consciousness,
she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect
the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her" (163).
B. Cholly Breedlove: What counts as cause? Loss?
Abandonment? Humiliation?
1.Narrative
placement and accumulation
a) "She listened carefully to the music
and let it pull her lips into a smile. . . . She laughed aloud and
turn to see. The whistler was bending down tickling her broken foot
and kissing her leg. She could not stop her laughter--not until he
looked up at her and she saw the Kentucky sun drenching the yellow, heavy-lidded
eyes of Cholly Breedlove" (115).
b) "When Cholly was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets
and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad" (132).
c) "Cholly loved Blue" (134).
d) "Just as he felt an explosion threaten, Darlene froze and cried out.
He thought he had hurt her, but when he looked at her face, she was
staring wildly at something over his shoulder. He jerked around.
There stood two white men . . ." (147).
e) "Cholly
was afraid to stir, even to relieve himself. The bus might leave while
he was gone. Finally, rigid with constipation, he boarded the bus
to Macon" (153).
f) "'Tell that bitch she get her money. Now, get the fuck outta my
face!' . . . He knew if he was very still he would be all right. But
then the trace of pain edged his eyes, and he had to use everything to send
it away" (156).
g) "While straining in this way, focusing every erg of energy on his eyes,
his bowels suddenly opened up, and before he could realize what he knew,
liquid stools were running down his legs" (157).
2. The thinkable
is the unspeakable.
a) "So it was on a Saturday afternoon,
in the thin light of spring, he staggered home reeling drunk and saw his
daughter in the kitchen" (161).
. . . "He wanted to break her neck--but tenderly. Guilt and
impotence rose in a bilious duet . . . What could a burned-out black
man say to the hunched back of his eleven-year-old daughter?" (161).
b) "she shifted her weight and stood on one foot scratching the back of
her calf with her toe. . . . The timid, tucked-in look of the scratching
toe--that was what Pauline was doing the first time he saw her in Kentucky.
. . . It was such a small and simple gesture, but it filled him then
with a wondering softness. . . . He did it then, and started Pauline
into laughter. He did it now" (162).
c) "Removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and
snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina" (163).
C. Commentary and Reflection
1. Imitation of Life
-- Peola & Maureen Peel (67)
2.
"Racial self-loathing" (Afterward, 210)
3.
Pecola "stepped over into madness" (206).
4.
The novel's attempt at commentary
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