Part One of Study Questions
for Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (Autumn
& Winter)
Autumn
1. What is the style of the opening section of
the novel: “Here is the house . . .”?
How does it fit with the novel that follows?
2. What kind of narrative voice opens the novel:
“Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941”? What do you know about that voice right
away? Is the voice speaking or thinking?
3. What is the effect of
learning right away that “Pecola was having her father’s baby”?
4. What does “Nuns go by as
quiet as lust” mean? What about “drunken
men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel”?
5. Describe each character
in The Bluest Eye and explain how
four or five of them function in the novel:
6. Morrison includes many
details of material, bodily life: 1939 Buick, Nu Nile Hair Oil, Black Draught
Laxative, roaches, mice, puke, and "ministratin". Why is this inclusiveness important?
7. Morrison describes the
Breedlove family as having no significant social impact, each isolated “making
his own patchwork quilt of reality” (34). What sort of isolation do they
suffer?
8. Can Pecola’s life be
generalized or does her level of vulnerability and victimization remove her
from the experiential map potentially shared with the reader?
9. What was happening in
1941? Do any of the following details help you read Morrison’s novel?
See
http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/1941/
for various events, including the following:
The first Jeep
is produced.
Winston Churchill and Franklin D.
Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims
Adolf Hitler orders a temporary
halt to Nazi
World War II: German troops
reach
Siege of Leningrad begins.
Holocaust: The requirement to
wear the Star of David with the word Jew inscribed, is extended
to all Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas.
World War II: US Navy
ordered to attack German U-boats.
The U.S. Attorney
General rules that the Neutrality Act is not violated when
Concerned that Reza
Pahlavi the Shah of Persia was about to align his petroleum-rich
country with Germany during World War II, the United Kingdom
and the USSR occupy Iran and forced him to resign in favor of his
son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The
For the first time in World
War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship
World War II: Germans
rampage in
World War II: Georgy Zhukov
assumes command of Red Army efforts to stop the German advance
into
World War II:
American photographer Ansel
Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of
World War II: Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin addresses the
World War II: The aircraft
carrier HMS Ark Royal sinks due to torpedo damage from U
81 sustained on November 13.
SS chief Heinrich
Himmler orders the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of
all homosexuals in
World War II: The Royal
Australian Navy cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary
cruiser Kormoran sink each other off the coast of
The radio
program King Biscuit Time is broadcast for the first time (it would
later become the longest running daily radio broadcast in history and
the most famous live blues radio program).
10. What kind of narrator do
we hear/read in the second section (beginning “There is an abandoned store on
the southeast corner of
11. What is the tone of the
following exchange: “’But I don’t want no tore couch if’n it’s bought new.’
Pleading eyes and tightened testicles.
‘Tough shit, buddy.
Your tough shit . . .’” (36)?
12. Would it surprise you to
know that The Bluest Eye has been
used in an alternative sentencing program for changing the lives of prisoners?
See http://cltl.umassd.edu/resourcesinstruct3v.cfm. What do you think about this use/function of
literature?
13. Trace the history of
Cholly Breedlove. How does Cholly’s “back story” function in the fiction? (See
42-3.) When do you start putting things
together? What do you think of
Morrison’s treatment of the parallel scenes with Pauline and Pecola? Does psychological history explain
cause? Can you perfectly understand
without compromising your judgment?
Compare the issues raised by Cholly’s own formative experiences and the
issues raised by Pecola’s experience.
14. What do you make of the
narrator’s use of similes?
“Like
a sore tooth that is not content to throb in isolation, but must diffuse its
own pain to other parts of the body . . .” (37).
“The
unquarreled evening hung like a first note of a dirge in sullenly expectant
air” (41)
“From
deep inside, her laughter came like the sound of many rivers, freely, deeply,
muddily, heading for the room of an open sea” (52).
15. The narrator says of the
Breedloves: “their ugliness was unique” (38).
Is this just a random detail. Or
does their physical ugliness represent something about their characters?
16. How can you describe the
narrator’s portrayal of the internal experience of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove ? And what do you make of their reciprocal need
for each other (41-3)?
17. How does Pecola’s effort
to ‘disappear’ her body compare with Descartes’? (45).
18. Does the “fifty-two-year-old white immigrant
storekeeper” have a moral problem or an epistemological problem in not being
able to see Pecola (48=9)?
19. What do you make of
Morrison’s portrayal of
20. What underlying drama is going on for Pecola
in her questions of the prostitutes?
Winter
1. What kind of narrator do
we get with Winter? What do the
different styles of narration suggest?
2. What does Maureen Peal do to Frieda and
Claudia’s world? How do you account for
their childhood recognition Maureen Peel was “not the Enemy and not worthy of
such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us” (74).
3. What is the relation of
the analysis beginning “They had extemporized a verse made up of two insults”
(65) to the children in this episode?
4. Betty Grable and Hedy
Lamarr join the list indicating a fairly wide range of reference. Overall, what does the presence of film stars
do to the novel’s fiction?
5. Who are the thin brown
girls (81) who have gone “to land-grant colleges, normal schools, and learn[ed]
how to do the white man’s work with refinement” (83). What attitude does Morrison have toward them? Why does Geraldine hate the sight of Pecola?
6. Pecola’s suffering is
relentless. Why do you think Morrison
structures her story this way.