Wednesday, October 23 The Bluest Eye day 2; Mariner essay info

Yesterday, Tuesday, 22 October.
                    In class essay. If you did not finish, you had the opportunity to complete the assignment at home. I need to collect them all today. If you struggled and would like to augment or correct your essay, there is writing support after school tomorrow: Thursday. What you complete after school will be your grade for this writing assignment; otherwise, what you did- or did not do- in class will stand.

A reminder that the grade scale is as follows: class participation 50%, writing 40% and homework 10%.

Due today: having read through page 23 of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
Due Thursday: vocabulary practice sheet
Due Friday: vocabulary quiz. 

FOR HOMEWORK: you will be reading from 33 to 37 [ending with "it always saw fit to die."]

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

Today we're going to be continuing with the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. We'll be reading from page 23 ["Three quarts of milk..."] through page 32 ["And I didn't know."] in class. Again using  Accountable Talk. A refresher:

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?

Before anything else, we're going to talk about first impressions of the book. What were some of the things you were saying to your partner the other day? What are some of the things you noticed, thought, wondered, or agreed with?

We'll also breifly talk about what a themes, motifs, and symbols are and why we should pay attention to them as we continue to read. 

Themes,Motifs, and Symbols

1. Beauty
2. Self-loathing
3. The "outdoors"
4. Duality
5. Growth and Nature
6. The Female Persona
7. Violence and Intimacy
8. Eyes
9. Babies
10. And Much more...

Section from the Bluest Eye (pg. 33-37)

HEREISTHEHOUSEITISGREENANDWH
ITEITHASAREDDOORITISVERYPRETT
YITISVERYPRETTYPRETTYPRETTYP

There is an abandoned store on the southeast corner of
Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street in Lorain, Ohio. It does
not recede into its background of leaden sky, nor harmonize
with the gray frame houses and black telephone poles
around it. Rather, it foists itself on the eye of the passerby in
a manner that is both irritating and melancholy. Visitors
who drive to this tiny town wonder why it has not been torn
down, while pedestrians, who are residents of the neighborhood,
simply look away when they pass it. 

At one time, when the building housed a pizza parlor,
people saw only slow-footed teen-aged boys huddled about
the corner. These young boys met there to feel their groins,
smoke cigarettes, and plan mild outrages. The smoke from
their cigarettes they inhaled deeply, forcing it to fill their
lungs, their hearts, their thighs, and keep at bay the shiveriness,
the energy of their youth. They moved slowly, laughed
slowly, but flicked the ashes from their cigarettes too
quickly too often, and exposed themselves, to those who 

[page 34] were interested, as novices to the habit. But long before the
sound of their lowing and the sight of their preening, the
building was leased to a Hungarian baker, modestly famous
for his brioche and poppy-seed rolls. Earlier than that, there
was a real-estate office there, and even before that, some
gypsies used it as a base of operations. The gypsy family
gave the large plate-glass window as much distinction and
character as it ever had. The girls of the family took turns sitting
between yards of velvet draperies and Oriental rugs
hanging at the windows. They looked out and occasionally
smiled, or winked, or beckoned—only occasionally. Mostly
they looked, their elaborate dresses, long-sleeved and longskirted,
hiding the nakedness that stood in their eyes. 

So fluid has the population in that area been, that probably
no one remembers longer, longer ago, before the time of
the gypsies and the time of the teen-agers when the
Breedloves lived there, nestled together in the storefront.
Festering together in the debris of a realtor’s whim. They
slipped in and out of the box of peeling gray, making no stir
in the neighborhood, no sound in the labor force, and no
wave in the mayor’s office. Each member of the family in his
own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork
quilt of reality—collecting fragments of experience here,
pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions
gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging
and tried to make do with the way they found each other.
The plan of the living quarters was as unimaginative as a
first-generation Greek landlord could contrive it to be. The
large “store” area was partitioned into two rooms by
beaverboard planks that did not reach to the ceiling. There
was a living room, which the family called the front room,
[page 35]
and the bedroom, where all the living was done. In the front
room were two sofas, an upright piano, and a tiny artificial
Christmas tree which had been there, decorated and dustladen,
for two years. The bedroom had three beds: a narrow
iron bed for Sammy, fourteen years old, another for Pecola,
eleven years old, and a double bed for Cholly and Mrs.
Breedlove. In the center of the bedroom, for the even distribution
of heat, stood a coal stove. Trunks, chairs, a small
end table, and a cardboard “wardrobe” closet were placed
around the walls. The kitchen was in the back of this apartment,
a separate room. There were no bath facilities. Only
a toilet bowl, inaccessible to the eye, if not the ear, of the
tenants. 

There is nothing more to say about the furnishings. They
were anything but describable, having been conceived, manufactured,
shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness,
greed, and indifference. The furniture had aged
without ever having become familiar. People had owned it,
but never known it. No one had lost a penny or a brooch
under the cushions of either sofa and remembered the place
and time of the loss or the finding. No one had clucked and
said, “But I had it just a minute ago. I was sitting right there
talking to . . . ” or “Here it is. It must have slipped down
while I was feeding the baby!” No one had given birth in
one of the beds—or remembered with fondness the peeled
paint places, because that’s what the baby, when he learned
to pull himself up, used to pick loose. No thrifty child had
tucked a wad of gum under the table. No happy drunk—a
friend of the family, with a fat neck, unmarried, you know,
but God how he eats!—had sat at the piano and played
“You Are My Sunshine.” No young girl had stared at the
[page 36]
tiny Christmas tree and remembered when she had decorated
it, or wondered if that blue ball was going to hold, or if
HE would ever come back to see it. 

There were no memories among those pieces. Certainly
no memories to be cherished. Occasionally an item provoked
a physical reaction: an increase of acid irritation in the
upper intestinal tract, a light flush of perspiration at the back
of the neck as circumstances surrounding the piece of furniture
were recalled. The sofa, for example. It had been purchased
new, but the fabric had split straight across the back
by the time it was delivered. The store would not take the
responsibility . . . . 

“Looka here, buddy. It was O.K. when I put it on the
truck. The store can’t do anything about it once it’s on the
truck . . . .” Listerine and Lucky Strike breath. 

“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 . . . .” 

You could hate a sofa, of course—that is, if you could
hate a sofa. But it didn’t matter. You still had to get together
$4.80 a month. If you had to pay $4.80 a month for a sofa
that started off split, no good, and humiliating—you
couldn’t take any joy in owning it. And the joylessness stank,
pervading everything. The stink of it kept you from painting
the beaverboard walls; from getting a matching piece of
material for the chair; even from sewing up the split, which
became a gash, which became a gaping chasm that exposed
the cheap frame and cheaper upholstery. It withheld the
refreshment in a sleep slept on it. It imposed a furtiveness on
the loving done on it. Like a sore tooth that is not content to
throb in isolation, but must diffuse its own pain to other
parts of the body—making breathing difficult, vision lim-
[page 37]
ited, nerves unsettled, so a hated piece of furniture produces
a fretful malaise that asserts itself throughout the house and
limits the delight of things not related to it.

The only living thing in the Breedloves’ house was the coal
stove, which lived independently of everything and everyone,
its fire being “out,” “banked,” or “up” at its own discretion,
in spite of the fact that the family fed it and knew all
the details of its regimen: sprinkle, do not dump, not too
much . . . . The fire seemed to live, go down, or die according
to its own schemata. In the morning, however, it always
saw fit to die.