Petty !

Rachel Petty

Dr. Caresse John

ENL 3900: Special Studies in Critical Theory

Fall 2016

A Witness to Suffering:

A Narratological Analysis of Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye

In the Afterword to her first novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison tells her readers that the

book is in many ways about telling and therefore about listening. Morrison describes the opening

phrase of the novel, Quiet as its kept, as conspiratorial and writes that she included it

because of how speakerly it is (212). Immediately, this phrase signals that there is a secret

being shared at best, and eavesdropped upon, at least, which creates an intimacy between the

reader and the page" (212). It is an indication that a story is going to be told and an invitation for

the reader to listen. This invitation to listen is first made by Claudia MacTeer, who tells the story

of a poor black girl named Pecola Breedlove, but as the narrative progresses, it becomes clear

that The Bluest Eye is about more than just Pecolas story alone. Claudia is not the only narrator

in the novel, and Pecolas story is not the only one that readers are told. The presence of multiple

tellers and multiple plot strands causes critic Carl D. Malmgren to refer to the novel as

narratological compendium, which is a fitting description given the complex way that

Morrison manipulates formal elements like narration, structure, and representation of time

throughout The Bluest Eye (251). The narrators who convey Pecolas suffering and the broader

suffering within the black community, the seasonal structure of the novel that suggests an

unending cycle, and the anachrony that forces readers to re-assemble and re-evaluate the
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information they are given are all elements that call attention to the way that the novel is

essentially about being a witness to suffering. Morrison uses these formal elements to make the

reader actively witness this suffering, to encourage readers sympathy for the characters who

suffer, and finally to urge readers to act on that sympathy in order to confront the suffering they

see within their own lives.

Narration is one of the most important formal elements of The Bluest Eye, and the novel

begins, continuously returns to, and ends with the narration of Claudia MacTeer, who witnesses

Pecolas suffering directly. The Bluest Eye is divided into four sections, each of which is titled

after a season, beginning with Autumn and ending with Summer. These sections all begin with a

chapter that is narrated by Claudia, followed by several chapters narrated by an anonymous teller

who is not part of the story-world. Claudia also narrates a preface to the novel, and her voice is

the last that readers hear, as well. Claudias is a framing and consistent voice for readers, and

Carl Malmgren plays on the novels title when he describes her as the bluest I that witnesses

Pecolas fate (256). Claudia is a homodiegetic narrator, and she tells of her encounter with

Pecola in retrospect, after both girls have grown up. This retrospective telling is revealed by

Claudias comments such as But was it really like that? As I remember? and by the fact that

she discloses the ending of Pecolas story at the very beginning of her telling (Morrison 12). This

disclosure reveals that Claudia is not telling this story for suspense or so that readers can find out

what happens at the end. Readers initially know about the rape that does not come until the

center of the novel because Claudia tells them, Pecola was having her fathers baby (5). They

even know who survives and who does not. Claudia says, nothing remains but Pecola and the

unyielding earth and Cholly Breedlove is dead; our innocence too. The seeds shriveled and
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died; her baby too (6). Thus, since Claudias telling is not about plot, her story must be about

the telling itself and about the readers invitation to listen to it. In the last line of her opening

address she says, There is really nothing more to sayexcept why. But since why is difficult to

handle, one must take refuge in how (6). In essence, the telling is the how, or at least the how

emerges from the telling. Claudia immediately lets readers know that this story does not end

well; she could not make the seeds sprout, could not change the unyielding earth, could not save

Pecolas baby or her sanity. However, Claudia can and does tell Pecolas story, and this telling is

her motive, her goal. Thus, it is the readers responsibility to listen to this story, not to discover

its plot, but to understand the implications about suffering that Claudias story conveys.

The story of Pecola Breedlove is a tragic one, and even though Claudia is narrating in

retrospect, she recounts parts of her own experience as though she were seeing through the eyes

of the uncomprehending little girl she used to be, which makes the suffering she witnesses even

more profound because it emphasizes her and Pecolas innocence, which readers already know

will be lost by the time the story is through. Claudia is nine years old during those few days

Pecola was with us, the youngest compared to Pecola and Claudias sister Frieda (Morrison 18).

One of the first descriptions Claudia gives of Pecola is as a girl with no place to go, who

came with nothing (16; 18). Pecola appears at the MacTeer house with no other options, and

the family agrees to let her stay. Through Claudias childlike eyes, readers see Pecola start her

period then innocently and heartbreakingly ask, How do you get someone to love you? after a

conversation about having babies (32). Later, Claudia directly witnesses Pecola being the

victim of a group of boys who taunt her for her ugliness and the color of her skin (65). In the

aftermath of this scene, Claudia observes that Pecola seemed to fold into herself, like a pleated
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wing. Her pain antagonized me (73). When Frieda and Claudia finally piece together the rumors

that they hear about Pecola after she is raped, Claudia says, We were embarrassed for Pecola,

hurt for her, and finally we just felt sorry for her, which illustrates that they understand and

empathize with her suffering (190). Claudias retrospective, childlike narration places the

emphasis of her story on the innocence that adult Claudias adult self says their experience

caused them to lose. Claudias childlike observations as well as her and Pecolas naive questions

make the loss of innocence all the more evident and saddening. Pecola is a child whose suffering,

as Claudia says, cannot be explained with a simple why, so readers must settle for listening to the

how, and Morrison thus makes them into witnesses of Pecolas suffering.

Claudia establishes that Pecolas story is being told for a reason and recounts her

firsthand experience with this broken girl, but the presence of the impersonal, heterodiegetic

narrator in the chapters that follow Claudias narration gives readers a much broader perspective

than Claudias limited homodiegetic view allows; this heterodiegetic narrator gives readers

access to additional scenes involving Pecola and is also able to access Pecolas thoughts and the

thoughts of characters who encounter her. The presence of this narrator changes the focalization

in the novel, which is defined as the perspective in terms of which the narrated situations and

events are presented (Prince 31). These scenes can be described as having zero focalization,

which means the narrator is above the world of the action, looks down on it and is able to see

into the characters minds as well as shifting between the various locations where the story takes

place, and the text may allow the reader access to multiple perspectives (Fludernik 38; 102).

This freedom to focalize the text through multiple characters is something that Claudia, as a

narrator and character contained within the story-world, cannot provide. Carl Malmgren argues
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that to achieve its purpose, the novel must go beyond the personal and diaristic, and the

inclusion of the other narrator shifts the focus from what Claudia does and does not know to a

broader perspective of the characters and events in The Bluest Eye (258). Similarly, Linda

Dittmar writes of the insufficiency of any one voice to tell the story that Morrison is trying to

tell (143). Morrison includes this heterodiegetic narrator in order to allow readers to witness a

different side of Pecolas suffering and also witness the broader suffering within the black

community, which helps readers comprehend that the story Morrison is trying to tell is bigger

than just one girl.

In the brief moments when the story is focalized through Pecolathat is, when readers

are given access to her thoughts and feelingsthe reader is able to witness her suffering exactly

as she perceives it, which is something that Claudia-as-narrator is not able to do, and this

focalization helps readers empathize with Pecola and understand how grave her situation truly is.

One of the most notable scenes in which this happens is when Pecola prays for blue eyes,

whispering, Please GodPlease make me disappear (Morrison 45). Readers get direct access

to her wrenching thoughts about her lack of beauty, her internalized blame, and her

worthlessness, and learn that she spends long hourslooking in the mirror, trying to discover

the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers

and classmates alike (45). Pecola prays for blue eyes, with the blinding conviction that only a

miracle could relieve her (46). This focalization gives readers direct access to just how broken

and desperate Pecola is. At the end of the novel, readers are granted access into Pecolas head for

a final time, where they find her nearly insensible, speaking and quarreling with an imaginary

friend. At this point, Pecola truly believes that she has been granted blue eyes, which get prettier
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each time [she] look[s] at them (201). From Claudias narration, readers understand that Pecola

suffers and is a figure worthy of their pity, but the direct access into Pecolas head that the other

narrator allows intensifies these feelings of sympathy in a way that Claudias telling cannot.

Because of this focalization through Pecola, readers are able to experience the world just as she

does, which creates a sense of empathy and therefore an increased understanding of her

suffering.

The presence of the heterodiegetic narrator also provides access to the thoughts and

feelings of other characters, like the man in the candy shop, Geraldine, and Soaphead Church, as

they encounter Pecola, which shows why her feelings of being unloved and unwanted are

justified and continues to increase readers pity and sympathy for her as they repeatedly watch

her suffer. For example, when Pecola goes to the candy store, Morrison writes, [the man] does

not see her because for him there is nothing to see (48). This mans eyes draw back, hesitate,

and hover away from Pecola, and at the end of their exchange, he hesitates, not wanting to

touch her hand (48; 49). Likewise, when Geraldine confronts Pecola, she also does not see her

as an individual but as representative of a whole group of undesirables with hair uncombed,

dresses falling apart, shoes untied and caked with dirt that she had seenall of her life (92).

In response to her presence in her house, Geraldine calls Pecola a nasty little black bitch and

sends her away (92). Later, at the peak of her desperation, Pecola goes to Soaphead Church to

ask him for blue eyes because she has given up on God. When he sees her, Soaphead thinks,

here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty (174). After she leaves, Soaphead writes a letter to

God in which he accuses God of abandoning one of His children. Soaphead asks, Tell me, Lord,

how could you leave a lass so long so lone that she could find her way to me? (180). None of
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these specific instances are witnessed by Claudia, but the heterodiegetic narrator makes the

reader witness these scenes, as well as know the thoughts and feelings of Pecola and the

characters she encounters, which gives readers a more comprehensive picture of Pecolas

suffering than Claudias narration alone.

Morrisons choice to include this heterodiegetic narrator also serves to make readers

aware of the broader suffering beyond that of Pecola and create sympathy even for characters

who do not initially seem sympathetic, which is particularly evident when details of Polly and

Cholly Breedloves upbringings are revealed in some of the novels later chapters. It is as though

Morrison is saying, Look how we got to this place by giving readers a closer look at the

suffering of the people who created Pecola and make them understand how this suffering is

perpetuated and passed down. This transforms the story from being about a single black girls

suffering to the broader suffering that happens within the entire black community. Pecolas

parents, who the readers already know are cruel and broken in their own ways, become

heartbreakingly human as readers learn about the particular kind of suffering they have

experienced in their own lives. Pecolas mother grew up with a general feeling of separateness

and unworthiness, and the narrator tells readers the way that her marriage to Cholly starts in

happiness but descends into misery (111). Pecolas father was placedon a junk heap by the

railroad right after he was born and was once forced to have sex with a girl under the

voyeuristic gaze of two white men in what is one of the most uncomfortable scenes in the novel

(132). Even if readers cannot accept Polly and Chollys tragic backstories as a justification for

their actions, Morrison, via the heterodiegetic narrator, clearly sends the message that they have

suffered, too. As Linda Dittmar argues, their stories serve as a reminder that the withering of
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seeds, babies, and minds in Lorain, Ohio of 1941 fits into a much larger picture (143). The

multiple narrators in The Bluest Eye help readers understand and sympathize with the terrible

nature of Pecolas suffering while also showing them that this experience is not confined to one

girl but has implications on the black community as a whole. By requiring that readers witness

the suffering of other characters besides Pecola, Morrison is encouraging readers to think more

broadly about suffering and about the ways that suffering is perpetuated.

This broader view of suffering and its perpetuation, particularly in terms of Pecolas

parents, is directly tied to the novels seasonal structure, which suggests, in the words of Dittmar,

a suffocatingly cyclical design (143). The structuring of the novel around seasons places the

racial oppression in the novel within an unbroken, continually occurring system which

communicates that these injustices have been and will be repeated. This seasonal/natural theme

starts with Claudias remarks in the preface of the novel, where she tells readers that no green

was going to spring from our seeds and describes the unyielding earth (Morrison 5). Each

subsequent section of the novel begins with Claudias commentary on that particular season. For

example, she says, Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of

switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer, autumn provokes associations of somebody with

hands who does not want [her] to die, and summer is a season of storms(97; 12; 187). These

are all relatively non-traditional and unexpected associations. Linda Dittmar writes about this

subversion of expectations and traditional associations: Avoiding both the positive use of spring

and summer as symbols of renewal and the epic use of the seasons to punctuate a historical

process of struggle and change, Morrisons four-part design implies a trap (144). Readers expect

that the seasonal cycle will contain within it the potential for growth and renewal, but Pecolas
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story and the other stories readers are told reveal that this trap is one of endless, cyclical

suffering instead of rebirth. These seasons are a deterministic cycle that was not broken with

Pecolas parents and will not be broken with her, either. Readers already know how the story

ends, so even when there are moments of happiness, like in Pollys story about her rainbow,

readers realize that things will not stay positive. Even though seasons can often imply a sense of

rebirth and renewal, Morrison works against these traditional associations with the structure of

The Bluest Eye. Dittmar claims that the fatalism inscribed in the cyclical organization of the

novel cannot be denied because each new section of the novel promises a new beginning which,

the subsequent narrative shows, offers no change (148). While the narration reveals the reality

of Pecolas suffering and the suffering within the black community, the structure of The Bluest

Eye is representative of the way that marginalized groups are often trapped in cycles of suffering

and oppression that self-perpetuate and are difficultand sometimes impossibleto break.

Because of this structure, readers are made aware of the cyclical nature of the characters

suffering, and Morrisons unfulfilled promise of renewal gives them space to think of what

circumstances might make renewal possible and ask themselves if there are any ways that the

cycle might be broken.

The structure of The Bluest Eye is not linear, and the anachrony of the story keeps readers

from being passive observers, which makes them act on their sympathy and implicates them in

the creation of the story. According to Gerald Prince, anachrony is a discordance between the

order in which events occur and the order in which they are recounted (5). Monica Fludernik

similarly defines it as deviations from chronological order (34). The Bluest Eye is certainly not

told in chronological order because readers know the ending of the story from the very first time
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that Claudia speaks. They are told pieces of Pecolas story first, and then in a series of analepses,

or flashbacks, they learn about the backstories of her parents. Toni Morrison openly writes about

her intention to break the narrative into pieces that had to be reassembled by the reader, and

this anachrony makes readers continuously re-evaluate and re-consider the information that they

learn (211). Readers have the task of gathering the novels parts into a signifying whole, which

requires self-conscious participation in the reconstitution of the text (Dittmar 141; 142). This is

Morrisons attempt to prevent readers from simply being observers of the suffering that they

witness; her novel demands their direct participation and forces them to take action in order to

fully understand this suffering by putting the pieces of the story together. Morrison says that she

was displeased with The Bluest Eye because she feels that readers remain touched but not

moved by it, but readers become moved by the story when they participate in the moving of its

pieces (211). Readers are moved by the novel when they truly listen to the story of suffering they

are being told and then make the commitment to go beyond simply listening and participate in it,

as well.

At the end of the novel, as Claudia fully reveals what becomes of Pecola, she

communicates to the reader about what to do in the face of suffering and as a witness to

suffering. Throughout the novel, Claudia and the other narrator require the reader to witness and

sympathize with suffering, and because the events are presented out-of-order, the reader must

take an active rather than passive role in this witnessing. Claudias ending address to the reader

is, in essence, an indictment, a call to action, because what she did in the face of Pecolas

suffering did not work. She tells readers:

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We had failed her. Our flowers never grewWe tried to see her without looking at her,

and never, never went near. Not because she was absurd, or repulsive, or because we

were frightened, but because we had failed herSo we avoided Pecola Breedlove

forever. (205)

Claudia and the others failed Pecola because they watched her suffering and they pitied her

without taking action. Sympathy and pity did not save Pecola; they were not enough to break the

cycle of suffering. Claudia acknowledges this when she says, hopelessly at the end, it doesnt

matter. Its too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of

my town, its much, much, much too late (206). This statement seems inherently pessimistic,

but perhaps it also contains the idea that this terrible thing happened there, in Claudias town, but

it might not have to happen everywhere. The Bluest Eye is ultimately a plea for readers, in the

face of suffering, to try to save the broken lives they encounterby truly listening, witnessing,

and then taking actionrather than turn away their eyes and let the cycle continue forever.

Readers are asked from the first line of the novel to listen and to witness and at the end are given

an example of how not to respond to the suffering that they see. Readers are moved by The

Bluest Eye when they understand what Claudia (and Toni Morrison) is trying to tell themthat

the acknowledgement of suffering without action is not enough. In order to break the cycle, to

save the broken girl, to have a positive impact on the suffering they see, they must be moved to

take action.
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Works Cited

Dittmar, Linda. Will the Circle be Unbroken? The Politics of Form in The Bluest Eye.

NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 23, no. 2, 1990, pp. 137-155. JSTOR, http://

www.jstor.org/stable/1345735.

Fludernik, Monika. An Introduction to Narratology. Translated by Patricia Husler-Greenfield

and Monika Fludernik, Routledge, 2009.

Malmgren, Carl D. Texts, Primers, and Voices in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye. Critique,

vol. 31. no. 3, 2000, pp. 251-262. EBSCOhost, doi: 3068108.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Vintage Books, 1970.

Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology: Revised Edition. University of Nebraska Press,

2003.