KNOWLEDGE BROKERS: Monday, October 21st 2013: Beginning of the Bluest Eye

Beginning Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye

Today we're going over the basics about the novel The Bluest Eye, and reading from the beginning to page 16 [ending with "in our memory of him"] and, FOR HOMEWORK, you will be reading from 16 to 23 [ending with "adjustment without improvement"]

You can either CLICK HERE and search for (ctrl + f) the appropriate words or read along at the end of the post.

Setting

Where: Lorain, OH CLICK ME for a Map
When: 1941 (CLICK ME)
Who:

The MacTeers;

Claudia -- The narrator of parts of the novel. An independent and strong-minded nine-year-old, Claudia is a fighter and rebels against adults’ tyranny over children.
Freida-- Claudia’s ten-year-old sister, who shares Claudia’s independence and stubbornness.
Mrs. MacTeer-- Claudia’s mother, an authoritarian and sometimes callous woman who nonetheless steadfastly loves and protects her children. She is given to fussing aloud and to singing the blues.
Mr. MacTeer -- Claudia’s father, who works hard to keep the family fed and clothed. He is fiercely protective of his daughters.

The Breedloves;

Pecola -- The protagonist of the novel, an eleven-year-old black girl who believes that she is ugly and that having blue eyes would make her beautiful. Sensitive and delicate, she passively suffers the abuse of her mother, father, and classmates. She is lonely and imaginative.
Sammy-- Pecola’s fourteen-year-old brother, who copes with his family’s problems by running away from home.
Mrs.(Pauline) Breedlove-- Pecola’s mother, who believes that she is ugly; this belief has made her lonely and cold. She has a deformed foot and sees herself as the martyr of a terrible marriage. .
Cholly -- Pecola’s father, who is impulsive and violent—free, but in a dangerous way.

Others: Mr Henry, China, Poland, Maginot (Marie), Geraldine, Soaphead Church, Maureen Peal Marlene, Samson Fuller, Aunt Jimmy.

Themes,Motifs, and Symbols

Beauty
Self-loathing
The "outdoors"
Duality
Growth and Nature
The Female Persona
Violence and Intimacy
Eyes
Babies
And Much more...

Reading the Book

Students cannot take the books out of class so how will we be able to read? We will be reading the book in class, and in the majority of the occurrences, be reading together in partners. In order to help students with this undertaking the class will be expected to use Accountable Talk. The way it will work, is after students read a certain portion of the book aloud to their partner, and then stop and respond with the following questions:

Your responses:

· I discovered that…

· I noticed that…

· I wonder…

· I was confused…

· This reminds me of…

· I predict that…

· I like…

· I didn’t like…

· I think…

After this, the opposite partner will respond to the first partner's answer by using one of the following structured responses:

Your comments:

· I agree because…

· I disagree because…

· In my opinion…

· Why do you think that?

· Can you tell me more about that?

· Why do you feel that way?

· Can you show me?

· Can you explain that another way?

Vocabulary

Lastly; we have vocab this week with a quiz to follow on Friday October 25th, the words are as follows:

timbre --(noun) tone color or quality of sound, esp a specific type of tone color.
unsullied--(adjective) not soiled, untarnished; virginal; pure.
soliloquy--(noun) the act of talking while or as if alone.
chagrin--(noun) a feeling of annoyance, marked by disappointment or humiliation.
foist--(verb) to force upon or impose fraudulently or unjustifiably.
furtive--(verb) taken, done, used, etc., surreptitiously or by stealth.
schemata--(noun) a diagram, plan or scheme. An underlying organizational pattern or structure; conceptual framework.
stultifying--(verb) to make or cause to appear, foolish or ridiculous; to render absurdly or wholly futile or ineffectual especially by degrading or frustrating means.
martyrdom--(noun) the condition, sufferings, or death of a martyr [a person who willingly suffers death or great suffering on behalf of any belief, principle or cause]
dirge--(noun) a funeral song or tune, or one expressing mourning in the commemoration of the dead.
abhorrent--(adjective) causing repugnance; detestable; loathsome. Utterly opposed, or contrary or in conflict.
surfeited--(verb) to supply with anything to excess or satiety; satiate
harridan--(noun) a scolding, vicious woman; hag; shrew.

Section from the Bluest Eye (pg. 16-23)

She slept in the bed with us. Frieda on the outside
because she is brave—it never occurs to her that if in her
sleep her hand hangs over the edge of the bed
“something” will crawl out from under it and bite her
fingers off. I sleep near the wall because that thought has
occurred to me. Pecola, therefore, had to sleep in the
middle.

Mama had told us two days earlier that a “case” was
coming—a girl who had no place to go. The county had
placed her in our house for a few days until they could
decide what to do, or, more precisely, until the family
was reunited. We were to be nice to her and not fight.
Mama didn’t know “what got into people,” but that old
[page 17]
Dog Breedlove had burned up his house, gone upside his
wife’s head, and everybody, as a result, was outdoors.
Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The
threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those
days. Every possibility of excess was curtailed with it. If
somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If
somebody used too much coal, he could end up outdoors.
People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink
themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers put their sons
outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what
the son had done, all sympathy was with him. He was
outdoors, and his own flesh had done it. To be put
outdoors by a landlord was one thing—unfortunate, but
an aspect of life over which you had no control, since
you could not control your income. But to be slack
enough to put oneself outdoors, or heartless enough to
put one’s own kin outdoors—that was criminal.

There is a difference between being put out and being
put outdoors. If you are put out, you go somewhere else;
if you are outdoors, there is no place to go. The
distinction was subtle but final. Outdoors was the end of
something, an irrevocable, physical fact, defining and
complementing our metaphysical condition. Being a
minority in both caste and class, we moved about
anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our
weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the
major folds of the garment. Our peripheral existence,
however, was something we had learned to deal
with—probably because it was abstract. But the
concreteness of being outdoors was another matter—like
the difference between the concept of death and being, in
[page 18]
fact, dead. Dead doesn’t change, and outdoors is here to
stay.

Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred
in us a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm
possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied
black people spent all their energies, all their love, on their
nests. Like frenzied, desperate birds, they overdecorated
everything; fussed and fidgeted over their hard-won
homes; canned, jellied, and preserved all summer to fill the
cupboards and shelves; they painted, picked, and poked at
every corner of their houses. And these houses loomed
like hothouse sunflowers among the rows of weeds that
were the rented houses. Renting blacks cast furtive glances
at these owned yards and porches, and made firmer
commitments to buy themselves “some nice little old
place.” In the meantime, they saved, and scratched, and
piled away what they could in the rented hovels, looking
forward to the day of property.

Cholly Breedlove, then, a renting black, having put his
family outdoors, had catapulted himself beyond the
reaches of human consideration. He had joined the
animals; was, indeed, an old dog, a snake, a ratty nigger.
Mrs. Breedlove was staying with the woman she worked
for; the boy, Sammy, was with some other family; and
Pecola was to stay with us. Cholly was in jail.
She came with nothing. No little paper bag with the
other dress, or a nightgown, or two pair of whitish
cotton bloomers. She just appeared with a white woman
and sat down.

We had fun in those few days Pecola was with us.
Frieda and I stopped fighting each other and concentrated
[page 19]
on our guest, trying hard to keep her from feeling
outdoors.

When we discovered that she clearly did not want to
dominate us, we liked her. She laughed when I clowned
for her, and smiled and accepted gracefully the food gifts
my sister gave her.
“Would you like some graham crackers?”
“I don’t care.”

Frieda brought her four graham crackers on a saucer
and some milk in a blue-and-white Shirley Temple cup.
She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at
the silhouette of Shirley Temple’s dimpled face. Frieda
and she had a loving conversation about how cu-ute
Shirley Temple was. I couldn’t join them in their
adoration because I hated Shirley. Not because she was
cute, but because she danced with Bojangles, who was
my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have
been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me. Instead he
was enjoying, sharing, giving a lovely dance thing with
one of those little white girls whose socks never slid
down under their heels. So I said, “I like Jane Withers.”

They gave me a puzzled look, decided I was
incomprehensible, and continued their reminiscing about
old squint-eyed Shirley.

Younger than both Frieda and Pecola, I had not yet
arrived at the turning point in the development of my
psyche which would allow me to love her. What I felt at
that time was unsullied hatred. But before that I had felt
a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the
Shirley Temples of the world.

It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The
[page 20]
big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blueeyed
Baby Doll. From the clucking sounds of adults I
knew that the doll represented what they thought was my
fondest wish. I was bemused with the thing itself, and the
way it looked. What was I supposed to do with it?
Pretend I was its mother? I had no interest in babies or
the concept of motherhood. I was interested only in
humans my own age and size, and could not generate any
enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother.
Motherhood was old age, and other remote possibilities.
I learned quickly, however, what I was expected to do
with the doll: rock it, fabricate storied situations around
it, even sleep with it. Picture books were full of little girls
sleeping with their dolls. Raggedy Ann dolls usually, but
they were out of the question. I was physically revolted
by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes,
the pancake face, and orangeworms hair.

The other dolls, which were supposed to bring me
great pleasure, succeeded in doing quite the opposite.
When I took it to bed, its hard unyielding limbs resisted
my flesh—the tapered fingertips on those dimpled hands
scratched. If, in sleep, I turned, the bone-cold head
collided with my own. It was a most uncomfortable,
patently aggressive sleeping companion. To hold it was
no more rewarding. The starched gauze or lace on the
cotton dress irritated any embrace. I had only one desire:
to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover
the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had
escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls,
shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the
world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired,
pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.
[page 21]
“Here,” they said, “this is beautiful, and if you are on
this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.” I fingered the face,
wondering at the single-stroke eyebrows; picked at the
pearly teeth stuck like two piano keys between red
bowline lips. Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy
blue eyeballs, twisted the yellow hair. I could not love it.
But I could examine it to see what it was that all the
world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend
the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and
the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the
sweet and plaintive cry “Mama,” but which sounded to
me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our
icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the
cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still, “Ahhhhhh,”
take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back
against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still. The gauze
back would split, and I could see the disk with six holes,
the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness.

Grown people frowned and fussed: “You-don’t-knowhow-
to-take-care-of-nothing. I-never-had-a-baby-doll-inmy-
whole-life-and-used-to-cry-my-eyes-out-for-them.
Now-you-got-one-a-beautiful-one-and-you-tear-it-upwhat’s-
the-matter-with-you?”

How strong was their outrage. Tears threatened to
erase the aloofness of their authority. The emotion of
years of unfulfilled longing preened in their voices. I did
not know why I destroyed those dolls. But I did know
that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas.
Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken
me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would
have known that I did not want to have anything to own,
or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel
[page 22]
something on Christmas day. The real question would
have been, “Dear Claudia, what experience would you
like on Christmas?” I could have spoken up, “I want to
sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap
full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me
alone.” The lowness of the stool made for my body, the
security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen, the smell of
the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be
good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a
peach, perhaps, afterward.

Instead I tasted and smelled the acridness of tin plates
and cups designed for tea parties that bored me. Instead I
looked with loathing on new dresses that required a
hateful bath in a galvanized zinc tub before wearing.
Slipping around on the zinc, no time to play or soak, for
the water chilled too fast, no time to enjoy one’s
nakedness, only time to make curtains of soapy water
careen down between the legs. Then the scratchy towels
and the dreadful and humiliating absence of dirt. The
irritable, unimaginative cleanliness. Gone the ink marks
from legs and face, all my creations and accumulations of
the day gone, and replaced by goose pimples.

I destroyed white baby dolls.

But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror.
The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the
same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with
which I could have axed them was shaken only by my
desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret of
the magic they weaved on others. What made people
look at them and say, “Awwwww,” but not for me? The
eye slide of black women as they approached them on the
[page 23]
street, and the possessive gentleness of their touch as they
handled them.

If I pinched them, their eyes—unlike the crazed glint of
the baby doll’s eyes—would fold in pain, and their cry
would not be the sound of an icebox door, but a
fascinating cry of pain. When I learned how repulsive this
disinterested violence was, that it was repulsive because it
was disinterested, my shame floundered about for refuge.
The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from
pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love. It
was a small step to Shirley Temple. I learned much later
to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness,
knowing, even as I learned, that the change was
adjustment without improvement.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Monday, October 21st 2013: Beginning of the Bluest Eye