CHAPTER-2

POST-MODERN BLACKNESS AND THE BLUEST EYE

Any legitimate endeavour to comprehend the concept of post-modern blackness is bound

to be an arduous task. It is thus, necessary to examine the concept of „blackness‟ beforehand and

later deal with the relation between post-modernism and blackness. The concept of blackness is a

constant around which various literary theories and concepts keep orbiting. Re-conceptualizing

post-modern blackness involves a thorough study of blackness from the time of its inception, its

varying facets and aspects. This scholarly pursuit aims to explore the way blackness in America

interacts with postmodern literary theory and how this union lends a new face to Afro-American

aesthetics. It also interrogates how blacks in America counter literary bias, and define their

presence in the contemporary post-modern debate.

Blackness is not a literary construct but a biological construct. It preceded all other

concepts because from the time it was conceptualized, it was ruthlessly imposed on the blacks

and fuelled by political and economic motives. In America, long before the inauguration of

American literature the slave narratives had come into being. Though the slaves lacked formal

education, yet they verbally transmitted folklores and legends by means of storytelling. Both the

runaway slaves and the freed slaves, who got the opportunity to write, verbalized their anguish

by documenting slave narratives. These slave narratives became the earliest archives of Afro-

American literature. Some such acclaimed accounts include Harriet Jacob‟s Incidents in the Life

of a Slave Girl (1861), Lucy Delaney‟s memoir From Darkness Cometh the Light (1891), and

ecclesiastical poetry of first published Afro-American woman poet Phillis Wheatley. Since then

blackness has found recurring expression in Afro-American literary discourse, and it is this

blackness that is cultivated and cherished by contemporary Afro-American writers.

 The origin of blackness is not a humanistic development, but on the contrary it is a

scientific one. The colour of skin and the pigmentation that causes it is a scientific phenomenon.

This biological aspect was studied by French scientist and anthropologist Francois Bernier, who,

according to Léon Poliakov, divided human race on account of „race‟ and „colour‟. Bernier has

been classified as one of the earliest anthropologists to distinguish various racial disparities

among humans. In his paper, “New division of earth”, published in 1684, he advocated the

system of racial classification. Regarding the construction of blackness, Clarencé Sholé Johnson

contends that:

The black race thus conceptualized, in terms of a necessary connection between

color and (quasi-) cognitive deprivation, and being made the antithesis of the

white race, was designated “inferior” to the white race and then ascribed a

subordinate ontological status to the white. (176)

Monique Reolofs affirms in her essay, “Racialization as an Aesthetic Production: What Does the

Aesthetic Do for Whiteness and Blackness and Vice Versa?”, that the racial differences, and the

aesthetic phenomena are related to each other. The author talks of this interaction between,

“aesthetic and racial phenomena”, in terms of “racialized aestheticization” and “aesthetic

racialization”. The concept of “racialized aestheticization” focuses on the manner in which the

racial constructions support aesthetic constructions, and the concept of “aesthetic racialization”

deals with the ways in which aesthetic construction gives support to racialized constructions

(83).

In his attempt to understand the ideology of blackness, Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary

author and philosopher wrote radical and anti-racist books like, Black Skin, White Masks (1952),

and The Wretched of the Earth (1963). After an unbiased inspection of both the black and white
population Fanon concluded that the people of both sections failed to accommodate the diversity

of their respective cultures. They did not celebrate their differences, but, on the contrary they

despised each other and contested for racial supremacy. Fanon was disturbed due to these racist

ideologies. In Black Skin, White Masks he emphatically asserts that, “The white man is sealed in

his whiteness. The black man in his blackness” (3). The inferiority with which the black man

suffers is deeply interwoven in the fabric of his personality because of two reasons. Firstly, it is

the economic deprivation that targets his personality, and secondly, it is the internalization which

Fanon rightly terms as “epidermalization” (4). Thus, he delves into the very existence of blacks,

their psyche and their attitude to define the impact of blackness on them. In his pioneering essay,

“The Fact of Blackness” Fanon supports the discussion he undertakes in this essay by

sarcastically addressing the black man as was often addressed by whites, ““Dirty nigger!” Or

simply, “Look, a Negro!”” (82). The racial tags imposed on blacks were textually condemned by

Fanon so as to focus on the issue of identity-crisis among the blacks. In this essay Fanon also

inspects the corrosive impact of colour-consciousness on the black population stating that:

For several years certain laboratories have been trying to produce a serum for

“denegrification”; with all the earnestness in the world, laboratories have

sterilized their test tubes, checked their scales, and embarked on researches that

might make it possible for the miserable Negro to whiten himself and thus to

throw off the burden of that corporeal malediction. (83-84)

Fanon‟s words call attention to the belligerence of the racist forces that are operative across the

globe. The commodification of blackness has fuelled self-hatred among blacks, and has added to

their humiliation. In his foreword to Fanon‟s Black Skin, White Masks (2008), Ziauddin Sardar

comments on the plight of black men that:

 When the black man comes into contact with the white world he goes through an

experience of sensitization. His ego collapses. His self-esteem evaporates. He

ceases to be a self-motivated person. The entire purpose of his behavior is to

emulate the white man, to become like him, and thus hope to be accepted as a

man. (xiii)

Sardar reveals the genuine plight of blacks. The white man‟s gaze is scornful and arrogant to

such an extent that it penetrates into the black man‟s psyche. His entire personality collapses in

the presence of the whites.

Innumerable literary and critical studies have dealt with the cultural and ethnic

implication of blackness. The concept of Négritude also contributed to the conceptual study of

blackness. This trend emerged in France during the first half of the twentieth-century due to the

zealous efforts of eminent Francophone black writers and activists such as, Aimé Césaire,

Leopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas. These men united to launch the Negritude movement

that inspired the blacks across the globe to take pride in their blackness. This movement was

cosmopolitan in nature and inspired black people to elevate their intellectual zeal by taking pride

in their culture. Négritude has been conceptualized in Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies in

the following words:

The concept of „négritude‟ implied that all people of negro descent shared certain

inalienable essential characteristics. . . . What made the négritude movement

distinct was its attempt to extend perceptions of the negro as possessing a

distinctive „personality‟ into all spheres of life, intellectual, emotional and

physical. (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 162)

In his work titled, “Marvellous Realism: The Way Out of Négritude”, Michael Dash observed

that the most appealing idea behind the movement called “negritude” was, “. . . the notion of the

double alienation of the black man . . . ” (199). Dash further says that the plight of black people

is not only political, or economic but psychological and spiritual. He believes that it was this

psychological and spiritual reconstruction that could actually resolve the problems faced by the

black population.

In Where We Stand Class Matters (2000), bell hooks (sic.) focuses on the way in which

inter-racial enmity breeds among blacks. She accuses the privileged blacks of “selling blackness”

(94). She reaffirms this view by stating that, “They make sure they mask their agenda so black

capitalism looks like black self-determination” (94). Similarly, Homi K. Bhabha in, “Of Mimicry

and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”, contends that, “Black skin splits under the

racist gaze, displaced into signs of bestiality, genitalia, grotesquerie, which reveal the phobic

myth of the undifferentiated whole white body” (92). The whites who hold supreme authority

cannot escape the result of ubiquitous racism, because they are equally corroded in the process of

forcefully imposing their cultural norms on the blacks. bell hooks (sic.) in her essay “Postmodern

Blackness” questions the unrestricted white literary hegemony in the field of post-modern

discourse and deals with the deliberate marginalization of black literature by the white American

literary society. The privileged white writers accused black literature of lacking post-modern

concerns. Their conventional and biased attitude convinced them to hold supremacy over all

post-modern avenues of writing, and their literary arrogance caused them to negate black literary

efforts. She disapproves of this racial stereotyping in her essay, and tries to confront textual

politics in order to win literary recognition for blacks in America. She aptly remarks that:
 It is sadly ironic that the contemporary discourse which talks the most about

heterogeneity, the decentered subject, declaring breakthroughs that allow

recognition of Otherness, still directs its critical voice primarily to a specialized

audience that shares a common language rooted in the very master narratives it

claims to challenge. (25)

She also studies the condition of blacks in Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992). While

exploring different facets of black personal and political life in the Introduction to this work

hooks (sic.) observes that:

Without a way to name our pain, we are also without the words to articulate our

pleasure. Indeed, a fundamental task of black critical thinkers has been the

struggle to break with the hegemonic modes of seeing, thinking, and being that

block our capacity to see ourselves oppositionally, to imagine, describe, and

invent ourselves in ways that are liberatory. (2)

Afro-American writing attained a new dimension with the creative efforts of Toni

Morrison. Her astonishing literary strategies have rejuvenated Afro-American writing and have

situated it as an important aspect of American literary history and tradition. In her lecture titled

“Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature” (1988),

and her illustrious work, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992),

Morrison redefines blackness in a different perspective. She divides Playing in the Dark:

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination into three segments, “Black Matters”, “Romancing the

Shadow” and “Disturbing Nurses and the Kindness of Sharks”. Her literary agenda primarily

concentrates on the issue of black presence in the white American literary scenario. Morrison

seeks to understand the construct of „literary whiteness‟ and „literary blackness‟. Thus, she takes
up the mission of reinventing black literary identity and mode of expression by means of “Black

Matters”. She uses the term „Africanism‟, while studying blackness as an aesthetic tool. She

emphasizes on the fact that her usage of this term differs from the use made by philosopher

Valentine Mudimbe in his corpus of study. She does not employ this term as indicative of ethnic

varieties of blacks in America. In “Black Matters” she opines that, “Rather I use it as a term for

the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as

the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric

learning about these people” (6-7). Morrison carries on her interrogation of the white literary

supremacy by concluding that the writers have silenced themselves on the issues of race and

colour. They have deliberately carved an “ornamental vacuum in literary discourse” (11), to

negate the Africanist presence in America. She says that it is due to “scholarly lapses” (10), that

black literary production has suffered great losses. Morrison disapproves of this exclusivity of

black writing from American writing, asserting that, “I think of this erasure as a kind of

trembling hypochondria always curing itself with unnecessary surgery. A criticism that needs to

insist that literature is not only “universal” but also “race-free” risks lobotomizing that literature,

and diminishes both the art and the artist” (12). These words suggest that the deliberate negation

and marginalization of black literary prowess is detrimental to the growth of both the art and the

artist. John N. Duvall in The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and

Postmodern Blackness, speaks in support of Morrison‟s effort to provide meaning and

recognition to Afro-American literature. He contends that Morrison:

In particular, she takes canonical white writers‟ figuration of black otherness as

crucial evidence for seeing whiteness as culturally constructed. In other words,

there is no biological essence that makes an individual white. . . . But although

 she demystifies whiteness, her relation to blackness is more complex and seems at

times to hold out hope for both authenticity and essence . . . . (15)

Further, Duvall examines various aspects of Morrison‟s fiction with respect to post-modern

blackness. He explores how Morrison‟s fiction has the element of modernist authenticity, and the

way her literary production participates in the contemporary post-modern debate. Morrison‟s

literary cult has given a language to the budding Afro-American writers. Her prescient vision has

shaped Afro-American literary canon to define and acknowledge the presence and importance of

black literature that came into existence long before American literature came into existence. The

textual confrontation between white American literature and Afro-American literature has been

constructively designed by Morrison to revitalize the black literary strategies and to deconstruct

the white standards of literary evaluation.

Pecola Breedlove, from the very initial stages in the development of The Bluest Eye, is

subjected to social ostracism and domestic violence. Cholly Breedlove, her father, set their house

on fire, and was imprisoned for this act of savagery and her mother Pauline was displaced, her

brother Sammy fled away, and Pecola was handed over to a foster family by the legal state

authorities. She begins her narrative voyage with a mutilated psyche, and is tragically consumed

by the white beauty standards that were impossible for her to confront or achieve. Her blackness

victimized her to such an extent that she began to cherish, and obsessively adore the white icons

of beauty in the form of Shirley Temple and Mary Jane. Shirley Temple‟s ravishing face that was

imprinted on the mug from which she consumed milk not only satiated hunger but also allowed

her to consume Shirley‟s beauty, “She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the

silhouette of Shirley Temple‟s dimpled face” (TBE 12-13). On the contrary, Claudia MacTeer

failed to approve, or appreciate Pecola‟s admiration of the white girls. Claudia envisions a liking
for Jane Withers, who was an icon of black female beauty. Even though Claudia was young, she

did not indulge in the act of self-loathing by criticizing her blackness, or by judging herself

according to the parameters of white American society. This positive and self-reliant attitude of

Claudia was something that Pecola could never achieve.

In this novel Morrison‟s use of Dick and Jane Primer is also an important aspect that

brings into focus the pathetic conditions that surrounded Pecola and the entire Breedlove family.

The primer is attached to the framework of every chapter in the novel. It provides an antithesis to

the Breedlove family. The primer occurs repetitively because the narrative strategy of repetition

and revision is central to Afro-American literary discourse. The primer of Dick and Jane is a

false sign because the reality of life in the novel is contradictory to what is shown in the primer.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the introduction to The Signifying Monkey asserts that, “Free of the

white person‟s gaze, black people created their own unique vernacular structures and relished in

the double play that these forms bore to white forms. Repetition and revision are fundamental to

black artistic forms, from painting and sculpture to music and language use” (xxiv). The primer

corrodes the myth of white literary hegemony as it is a form of textual confrontation that

Morrison undertakes. She condemns the white interrogation of black authorship by deliberately

employing the Dick and Jane primer in an Afro-American novel. She begins the sections with

lines from the Dick and Jane primer to use her writing as a means of counter-discourse.

Observing the primer, Carl D. Malmgren says:

Subsequent sections use as epigraphs primer lines describing Dick and Jane‟s

family, the cat, Mother, Father, the dog, and a friend of Jane‟s. The section

following the epigraph focuses on that figure in Pecola‟s life but relates tales of
 misery that are an ironic counterpoint to the fairy-tale world depicted in the

primer itself. (152)

Morrison also corrodes and deconstructs the white literary supremacy by dividing her novel into

seasons instead of any regimented time-pattern or schedule. She intentionally follows the

traditional pattern of „polychronic‟ cultures as pointed by Edward Twitchell Hall Jr., a renowned

American anthropologist in his works, The Silent Language (1959), and Beyond Culture (1976).

According to Hall, cultures are divided into monochronic and polychronic ones. However, even

though America is a monochronic nation, Morrison does not follow this pattern of time; instead

she adopts the more natural and traditional pattern of seasons. The novel, therefore, is divided

into sections as seasons to focus on the inevitable bond between humans and nature, and the

inherent nature of seasons to follow a repetitive cycle and similar rhythmic pattern of seasons has

been followed by Allan Sealy, an acclaimed Indian English novelist, in his fascinating novel The

Everest Hotel: A Calendar (1998). He employs the narrative device of temporal cycles in his

fiction. The subtitle of this novel is designed upon a Sanskrit poem titled Ritusamhara written by

the well-known Sanskrit poet Kalidasa.

Morrison handles with delicacy the childhood world of black children, and the world of

black adults in the novel. It is not only the young black children, who crave for white beauty but

adult black men and women also hold great regard for the beauty of white girls. Claudia

complains about this prejudiced outlook by saying that the black adults always gifted their

children, “a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll” (TBE 13). Claudia developed a sense of deep hatred for

the stereotypical image of beauty that was imposed on black girls. She reflects upon this issue by

saying that, “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”
(14). These words of Claudia also shed light on the lack of communication between the two

worlds, that of the adults and children. The adults of the black community are unaware of the

juvenile desires and challenges faced by black children growing up in a hostile white society.

The adults seem to have shaped their personalities in such a way that can facilitate in earning

them the respect and praise of the whites. Similar act of desperate violence and hatred towards

white dolls is seen in Maya Angelou‟s remarkable autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird

Sings (1969). In this novel of Angelou the female protagonist Maya dismembers her Christmas

present, a white, blonde and a blue-eyed doll. Pecola randomly selects the desire to acquire a pair

of blue eyes that would fetch her immeasurable social acceptance and familial affection. In

search of meaning and love she sacrifices her intelligence and her reasoning abilities to the harsh

and mercenary surroundings. She desires to disappear and diligently prays to God for blue eyes.

This notion of invisibility or the desire to disappear has been an important motive in Afro-

American fiction. The thematic concern of social invisibility and deprivation of identity has been

successfully employed by Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man (1952). The thematic treatment of

identity crises had a deep impact on the black population living in America. The plight of people

was translated into verbal expression by great Afro-American writers like James Baldwin, Ralph

Ellison and Richard Wright. In this regard John N. Duvall observes that the use of invisibility or

the desire to disappear as employed by Morrison is very similar to that of Ellison. Both the texts

are similar in this regard and can be read intertextually, “Self-loathing motivates Pecola‟s desire

for blue eyes . . .” (27). Duvall continues to examine Pecola in light of Ellison‟s thematic

concerns. He asserts that, “She is in Ellison‟s terms already the invisible girl, and her prayer for

new eyes symbolizes a desire for perception outside the culturally iterated messages of white

superiority” (27). Pecola‟s unnatural yearning for blue eyes was the reason behind her painful
life and unfortunate death. She failed to acknowledge her own beauty, and disregarded herself in

quest of attaining an unattainable wish, “Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that

only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what

there was to see: the eyes of other people” (TBE 35). These words exhibit Pecola‟s lack of self-

reliance and the way in which she gave undue importance to the desires that she should have

renounced.

The instability of Pecola‟s perception is evident in her behaviour. On her way to

“Yacobowski‟s Fresh Veg. Meat and Sundries Store” (TBE 36) in the novel, Pecola praises the

dandelions that other people often disregard as wild plants, or weeds. However, after an awful

experience at Yacobowski‟s store, Pecola describes the same dandelions as ugly plants that were

unworthy of any admiration. This abrupt change of perception is reflective of Pecola‟s fickle and

childish perception. Yacobowski‟s cold attitude and derogatory gaze penetrated her innocent

psyche to such an extent that it distorted her vision and encouraged her to recognize her ugliness.

She begins to see the world in the way people see her. In quest of Mary Jane‟s looks and Shirley

Temple‟s beauty, Pecola forgot to look at herself with affection. She abhorred herself and her

blackness to such an extent that she invented ways of cherishing the beauty of white girls.

Shrewd capitalist ideology distorted the vision of people and fostered feelings of inferiority and

disappointment. Morrison deals with this aspect when she describes how every Mary Jane candy

provided Pecola with immense imaginative ecstasy, “Three pennies had bought her nine lovely

orgasms with Mary Jane. Lovely Mary Jane, for whom a candy is named” (38). This

commodified sexual gratification is an ideal characteristic of contemporary pomophobic society.

People have attributed unnecessary importance to commodity. It can be aptly concluded that in

such a capitalist setup there is commodification of humans and humanization of commodity.

Consumerism has preyed upon all innocent and natural aspects of human life. At this juncture it

becomes obligatory to mention that the hyper-real world of marketing strategies and

advertisements has intellectually castrated people across the globe. Marc O'Day in

“Postmodernism and Television” contends regarding Jéan Baudrillard‟s keen insight:

He argues that with the massive increase in signs and images circulating in

postwar media society, the distinction between objects and their representations

has disappeared. . . . Signs and meanings float in a self-referential „hyperreality‟-

an excessive reality and also one which is literally „hyped‟ by advertisers and

others. (112-113)

In The Bluest Eye, Pecola is not portrayed as an extrovert character; on the contrary she is

happy in her lonely world with Frieda and Claudia as her only comrades. They establish female

sorority with each other because instead of sympathizing with Pecola, these girls empathize with

her. Pecola‟s agony and failure to live a happy life worries Frieda and Claudia unlike the other

members of their community. In the novel, as the plot advances the character of another

charming white girl called Maureen Peal is introduced. Pecola befriends Maureen for a short

span of time. When the two girls‟ converse with each other Pecola‟s name reminds Maureen of a

movie character named Pecola, “Pecola? Wasn‟t that the name of the girl in Imitation of Life?”

(TBE 52). Maureen further informs Pecola that it was a picture show in which, “. . . this mulatto

girl hates her mother ‟cause she is black and ugly but then she cries at the funeral. It was real

sad” (52). This statement of Maureen reflects the pity she had developed for that particular name

in the picture show, which she somehow related to Pecola and her ugliness. The movie Imitation

of Life was released in the year 1934, starring Claudetta Colbert. It was a theatrical success and

the mention of this movie in the novel is of some consequence. Though the movie in no way
contributes to Pecola‟s tragedy, yet it must be mentioned that the title of the movie somehow

resonates with the reality of Pecola‟s life. Breedlove family did not actually live, but, they

imitated life in order to live it. The author‟s idea of taking into account a movie with such a name

strikes at the root of the hostile and miserable life of poor black population in America. Many

blacks just imitated life so as to survive the adverse circumstances created by the race conscious

white Americans. Life here is again a meaningless and a fake sign that seemed real. It is but a

simulation and nothing beyond that. Pecola Breedlove‟s tragic life is also an outcome of

excessive consumerism. The post-modern society is lenient towards consumerism. The process

of „cosmetic transfiguration‟ is a post-modern phenomenon that has innumerable followers. The

latest trends in fashion and beauty have created an atmosphere of jealousy and competition.

People spend huge amounts to transform their looks and bodies. Nigel Watson in his essay,

“Postmodernism and Lifestyles” remarks that:

The body is also a focus for identity construction in a more permanent and serious

way. . . . Noses can be reshaped, wrinkles removed, faces lifted, fat siphoned and

breasts reduced or augmented. The body itself can be seen as a consumer

commodity, and this is a process available and promoted to both men and women.

(56)

Similar concern was expressed by Fredric Jameson in “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”.

He asserts that, “I believe that the emergence of postmodernism is closely related to the

emergence of this new moment of late consumer or multinational capitalism” (20). This new

moment has created a scenario where, as Jameson observes, all that is of consequence is the

“perpetual present” and the “perpetual change” (20). He also affirms that this new moment has

destroyed the faith in traditions and the information that the traditions provided leading to a state
of “historical amnesia” (20). Daniel Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in

America (1961), discussed how gradually American society transformed itself into a postmodern

society, or a society where reality was nothing. He laid emphasis on the fact that American life

altered greatly because of the inauguration of an advertising era where the pseudo-events were

given importance. These pseudo-events were indeed no-events or unreal events that created

hyper-real situations for the advertising world. Thus, the corroding impact of false images is

evident throughout the novel. The tragedy of Pecola was caused by many such agents of this

ruthless and spiteful social setup.

Pauline Breedlove, like Pecola, her daughter, detested the blackness of her skin. The zeal,

with which Pecola longed for blue eyes, was there in Pauline who cursed her limping foot for her

misfortunes. As stated by the narrator, “Her general feeling of separateness and unworthiness she

blamed on her foot. Restricted, as a child, to this cocoon of her family‟s spinning, she cultivated

quiet and private pleasures. She liked, most of all, to arrange things” (TBE 86). These words

throw light on how Pauline disliked herself, and searched for the meaning of her existence in the

outside world. She married Cholly Breedlove and surrendered her maiden name Pauline

Williams for the rest of her life. Cholly and Pauline shared marital bliss for some time, but, as

time passed, Cholly became a drunkard. Pauline gave birth to Sam, and then to Pecola, after

which she got attached to Fisher‟s household as a maid. Pauline cultivated deep admiration for

cinema after beginning her career as a domestic servant.

There in the dark her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier

dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to

another―physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of

 human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in

disillusion. (95)

The idea of physical beauty as examined by Morrison in the novel is quite unconventional. She

categorizes this concept as a dreadful creation of human mind. She also focuses on this aspect of

physical beauty to expose the actual cause of rift between the white and the black population.

This colour-consciousness promoted by means of cinema contributed in fuelling racist

tendencies. Pauline was a victim of celluloid fantasy. Cinema appeared to be the ultimate reality

for her, whereas her own life had appeared to be a mere shadow. The understanding of the signs,

simulacra and simulation must be made in order to examine the hazardous impact of cinema and

consumerism on the life of the black population in America during those days. Jéan Baudrillard

(1929-2007), a legendary French philosopher, sociologist and critic in his post-modern treatise

Simulacra and Simulation (1981), asserted that:

The cinema in its current efforts is getting closer and closer, and with greater and

greater perfection, to the absolute real, in its banality, its veracity, in its naked

obviousness, in its boredom, and at the same time in its presumption, in its

pretension to being the real. . . . (n. pag.)

He believed that advertising seduced people with its „hyperreal euphoria‟. Thus, he meant to

convey in words, the falseness of signs and the way it tricked people. He sketched four

successive phases of simulacra. The first phase is where the sign represents a basic reality, the

second is where the sign distorts the basic reality, the third phase is where the sign is the one

which disguises the fact that there is no corresponding reality underneath, and the fourth sign

bears no relation to any reality at all. His study of Disneyland as a simulation helps us in

understanding how the unreal life or signs are taken for real by the people. As suggested by
Baudrillard, Disneyland is a world of fake amusement and illusionary charm that presents an

unreal picture of America to the rest of the world. While describing Disneyland, he observes:

Disneyland: a space of the regeneration of the imaginary as waste-treatment

plants are elsewhere, and even here. Everywhere today one must recycle waste,

and the dreams, the phantasms, the historical, fairylike, legendary imaginary of

children and adults is a waste product, the first great toxic excrement of a

hyperreal civilization. (n. pag.)

It must be noted that in The Bluest Eye the play of signs deceived Pecola and Pauline to such an

extent that they misinterpreted the meaning of their lives. The fraudulent signs around them

enhanced their misery, and pushed Pecola towards her tragic end.

Roland Barthes in his study of „semiology‟ suggests that cinema, television, and the

advertising world are modes of mass communication that lend importance to a culture of

signifying media. Throughout the novel we come across the names of famous actors and

actresses. This shows that both cinema and television play an important role in shaping the views

and lives of people. The mention of celebrities like, Jean Harlow, Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr,

Clark Gable, Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers, points to the fact that the society in those days was

obsessed with cinema. Pauline remembers that, “I ‟member one time I went to see Clark Gable

and Jean Harlow. I fixed my hair up like I‟d seen hers on a magazine” (TBE 96). These words of

Pauline reflect how common people were motivated to follow fashion trends promoted by

cinema. In this novel Morrison upholds the motto “Black is Beautiful”, in order to reclaim the

Afro-American beauty that was vehemently negated by the white population in America. As

aptly pointed by Eleanor W. Traylor, “Through Pecola, The Bluest Eye‟s black female child,

othered in her home and in her community, an unprecedented black subjectivity was born into
literature” (67). In her debut novel, Morrison interrogates the aesthetics of beauty, and promotes

Afro-American female writing on an international rostrum. She candidly explores the radical and

taboo themes that were previously overlooked.

bell hooks (sic.) in her universally acclaimed essay “Postmodern Blackness” observes

that the Afro-Americans have a right to participate in the literary advancement of the nation.

Specifically she notes that the black presence must not be negated heedlessly from the post-

modern literary scenario. The blacks, as hooks (sic.) contends, must not be restricted from

situating themselves in the fabric of post-modern discourse, as they are capable of producing

literature that promotes the aesthetic sensibility of post-modern discourse. She alleges that if the

Afro-Americans were marginalized from the mainstream American literary arena it would be a

result of white literary skepticism and race conscious prejudice. The debates and discussions

over the issues of heterogeneity, displacement and otherness in the sphere of post-modern

literary endeavour will be incomplete and shallow without Afro-American writing. The blacks

cannot be textually ostracized with regard to the issues of alienation, deprivation and loss of

identity because for ages, they have confronted these issues in the name of racist and classist

suppression. Thus, hooks (sic.) aptly remarks in “Postmodern Blackness” that:

Radical postmodernism calls attention to those shared sensibilities which cross the

boundaries of class, gender, race, etc., that could be fertile ground for the

construction of empathy―ties that would promote recognition of common

commitments, and serve as a base for solidarity and coalition. (27)

She promotes literary solidarity and intends to overcome the literary abyss by means of her

provocative writing.
 Toni Morrison in her debut novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), experiments with the

exceptional modes of writing and deals with the post-modern thematic concerns in it with

peerless literary craftsmanship. By focusing on the themes of displacement, alienation, and

identity-crisis with utmost caution and deliberation, Morrison verbalizes the agony of

innumerable people suffering under these categories. Novels like the Bread Givers (1925),

written by Anzia Yezierska, and Lucy (1990), by Jamaica Kincaid focus on similar issues of

hardship faced by immigrants in an alien land. In connection with the term Diaspora, Paul Gilroy

in Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line (2000), asserts that, “The

term opens up a historical and experiential rift between the locations of residence and the

locations of belonging. This in turn sets up a further opposition” (124). Morrison‟s oeuvre

reflects the complexity of Afro-American culture and graphically captures the Diaspora

experience. In her lectures titled “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence

in American Literature” published first in Michigan Quarterly Review (1989), as “Canon

Fodder”, Morrison laid emphasis on the writing strategies she had adopted while writing The

Bluest Eye:

The points I have tried to illustrate are that my choices of language (speakerly,

aural, colloquial), my reliance for full comprehension on codes embedded in

black culture, my effort to effect immediate co-conspiracy and intimacy (without

any distancing, explanatory fabric), as well as my (failed) attempt to shape a

silence while breaking it are attempts (many unsatisfactory) to transfigure the

complexity and wealth of Afro-American culture into a language worthy of the

culture. (“Unspeakable” 388)

The Great Migration of black population from rural south to urban north in search of

employment and improved living conditions stirred enormous social, cultural and political havoc

in America. The blacks could never position themselves amidst the snobbish white population

that mocked at their blackness and considered them racially inferior. However, their hyphenated

presence as Afro-Americans continued for long until some positive advancement took place both

socially and politically. Racial segregation was legally abolished by the Civil Rights Act of 1964,

and the blacks were granted equal status. In The Bluest Eye, the community of blacks living in

Lorain, Ohio, is portrayed rather pessimistically. There is inter-racial enmity, racial self-loathing,

hypocrisy and a sense of insecurity. In this context critic Tessa Roynon contends that, “In both

The Bluest Eye and Sula, Morrison explores the catastrophic effects of intra-racial racism

through depicting communities that subject members of their own to misguided practices of

alienation and expulsion” (113). Within such a community the little girl protagonist of the novel,

Pecola, is traumatized and abandoned by the members of her own community. As one explores

the narrative of The Bluest Eye in detail, one discovers the camouflaged conflict that exists

throughout the novel. Racial discrimination coupled with economic deprivation keeps haunting

the characters as the narration progresses. The society that seems to be united is indeed

fragmented and divided to the core. The disparity of culture, class and colour is an acute problem

for many characters created by the author in this novel. Pecola, Pauline, Cholly, the MacTeer

family and the three whores are all victims of the malevolent social forces that corrupt their

psyche and drain all pleasure and innocence from their lives.

Pecola Breedlove is displaced because she is “outdoors” (TBE 11). As mentioned in the

novel, “Outdoors was the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact, defining and

complementing our metaphysical condition” (11). These words of Claudia MacTeer suggest how
horrifying the impact of being „outdoors‟ was. Pecola was sent to live with the MacTeer family,

who provided her a foster home when Cholly, her father, put to flames their own habitat and was

imprisoned for this offence. Pecola‟s innocence and self-confidence is gnawed by the adverse

circumstances that corrode her childhood and disrupt her life. Her human self is not validated

throughout the novel, but all that gets profound attention is her blackness and her ugliness. Mr.

Yacobowski preys on her self-esteem by ignoring her on account of her blackness, and she

assumes that, “The distaste must be for her, her blackness. All things in her are flux and

anticipation. But her blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that

creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes” (37). These words suggest how shattering

his gaze was for young Pecola. Mr. Yacobowski was a fifty-two-year old white immigrant

storekeeper, who though in an alien land believed in, and conformed to the orthodox classist and

racist mindset. He was white and hence superior to the black population surrounding him.

Regarding Mr. Yacobowski, Judylyn S. Ryan observes that:

Mr. Yacobowski‟s gaze enunciates both dominance and dismissal. Yet, as

Morrison explores his gaze, she also exposes its deficiency. Mr. Yacobowski‟s

blindness, his inability to “see” Pecola, points to both the hegemony and the

weakened state of the male White gaze. It is both debilitating and debilitated.

(154)

Pecola, though a native of the country is, yet treated as an outsider and an ostracized character.

The immigrant-native conflict is employed at this point in the narrative. Mr. Yacobowski tries to

„fit in‟ the standard white parameter by mistreating and negating Pecola‟s presence, “She looks

up at him and sees the vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge. And something more. The total

absence of human recognition―the glazed separateness” (TBE 36). He denies her existence in
order to strengthen his own. This encounter sows the seeds of identity crises in Pecola‟s life, and

promotes in her a sense of racial self-loathing.

The novel opens with certain oxymoronic expressions to heighten the nomadic aura

maintained throughout the novel with an entire gamut of characters in search of their identity.

Nuns/lust, drunken/sober, are contrary terms juxtaposed together by Morrison to sow the seeds

of chaos and skepticism from the very outset. Rosemary Villanucci is introduced early in the

novel as an Italian-American girl, who lives next to Frieda and Claudia‟s house. She is a mean

girl who flaunts her riches by sitting in her Buick eating bread and butter. She lures Frieda and

Claudia with her rich edibles. Though she is a young girl, yet her arrogance reveals that her

family status holds superiority over the black population of the town. This minor episode in the

novel exposes the racist mindset of the people and outlines the ultimate catastrophe that the

novel gradually unfolds. Maureen Peal is another light skinned, upper-middle class, green-eyed,

pretty girl, who questions the presence of blackness in a white dominated society. She arrived

from the large city of Toledo, Ohio, and harassed Pecola and the MacTeer sisters by calling them

black and ugly. The notion of beauty is reasserted by Morrison focusing on the detrimental

impact of this notion on those lacking the universally accepted traits of beauty. Claudia observes

that, “And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal 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” (TBE 58).

These words of Claudia express the pent-up feelings of hatred and curiosity that grew in the

minds of the young black girls, who were victimized on the basis of their skin colour.

Another curious character in the novel is a woman named Geraldine who migrated to

North in greed of social escalation and other monetary benefits. She arrived to Lorain from

“Mobile, or Meridian, or Aiken” (TBE 67) as the narrator mentions in the novel. She lived with
her husband Louis and her little son Louis Junior. From the onset one can figure out that

Geraldine, though a coloured woman dislikes the blacks to a great extent, “She had explained to

him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored

people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud” (67). These words are reflective of

Geraldine‟s racially perverted mindset and her craving for adopting the white cultural norms and

mannerisms. Geographical displacement has poisoned Geraldine‟s attitude and, as pointed by

Morrison, girls like Geraldine, “don‟t have home towns just places where they were born” (63).

Geraldine has a confused perception of identity as she considers herself superior to the black

population surrounding her. She employs what critics call, “assimilationist policies by masking

or „whitewashing‟ cultural differences” (Ashcroft 119). She kept a strict vigil on Junior to

maintain his physical appearance as distinct as possible from the other black children of the

town. Morrison‟s vivid verbal illustration of Geraldine‟s house conveys the fact that she faked

homely grandeur of the whites. Tracey L. Walters contends regarding Geraldine‟s ostentatious

attitude that, “. . . Geraldine manages to create a household similar to what is presented in the

primer” (117). This makes it clear that she aspires to imitate the white standards of living in

order to win their approval. Pecola was insulted by Geraldine on account of the false allegations

imposed on her by Louis Junior. Geraldine reprimanded Pecola for injuring her cat and

disturbing the peace and sacredness of her house. She abhorred Pecola‟s blackness, her ugliness

and unkempt condition. Such black children had always haunted her and reminded her of her true

identity as a black woman, “Like flies they hovered; like flies they settled. And this one had

settled in her house” (TBE 72). Pecola was turned out of Geraldine‟s, “Pretty gold-and-green

house” (72), after her brush with the reality of black life in white American society.
 Fishers family lived next to the picturesque grandeur of Lake Shore Park, that was only

meant for the whites. They were a Caucasian family who owned a palatial house bedecked with

lush green plants and foliage. Pauline Breedlove worked in that household with great reverence

for their lifestyle. She acquired great satisfaction and spiritual comfort in working for the Fishers.

She was indeed an “ideal servant” (TBE 99), whom the family had even honored with a nick

name, Polly. However, Pauline‟s domestic skills were confined to Fishers family alone because

she neither cared for her own household, nor did she pay heed to the miserable condition of her

children Pecola and Sammy, “Pauline kept this order, this beauty, for herself, a private world,

and never introduced it into her storefront, or to her children” (100). Thus, Pauline alienated

herself from her domestic responsibilities and maternal duties. She showered maternal affection

on the little Fisher girl, but vociferated curses on her own daughter Pecola when unintentionally

she spilled the blueberry pie. This shows how Pauline devotes herself in serving the masters,

who do not acknowledge her existence and segregate her community from all the prospects of

respect and social acceptance. The malicious process of cultural alienation and otherness is

always at work in the novel. However, while discussing the, “Three merry gargoyles. Three

merry harridans. Amused by a long-ago time of ignorance” (42), we encounter varied impact of

cultural disparity and marginalization. The three whores who inhabited the space above the

storefront of the Breedlove family were known as, Miss Poland, Miss China and Miss Marie

popularly known as Maginot Line. These whores have geographical names, suggesting

Morrison‟s political concern regarding the involvement of these geographical identities in World

War II (1939-1945) with U.S. participation formally starting in the year 1941. The three whores

are the only adults who communicate with Pecola and show interest in her juvenile queries. They

disregard Pecola‟s ugliness, and, on the contrary, they “did not despise her” (38). These women
had unconventional attitude and were free-spirited. The society had pushed them towards its

periphery on account of their forbidden vocation as whores. Allen Alexander in this respect aptly

suggests:

Whereas Pauline has done her best to squelch her own and her daughter‟s taste for

the passion of life, the prostitutes, with their large appetites for the sensual,

whether it be in the form of sex or food, show Pecola that the physical is a realm

to be embraced rather than shunned. (121)

The whores do not imitate life; they live it even under adverse circumstances. Miss China is very

often seen curling her hair in quest of altering her looks, and Miss Poland is very fond of the

blues music as she is often found singing in the novel. The whores in The Bluest Eye have a

nonconformist outlook and are free of all moral obligations. They nurture deep hatred for men,

“without shame, apology, or discrimination” (TBE 42-43). They categorize women, who yoke

their moral depravity in the garb of modesty and marital dedication as, “Sugar-coated whores”

(43). The whores celebrate womanhood and cherish freedom from rigid customary attitude. They

were visited by men of various nationalities, “Black men, white men, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans,

Jews, Poles . . .” (43). This statement points towards the fact that in spite of ethnic and

geographical diversity these men share a common sexual appetite. It is at this juncture that their

spatial differences overlap and they unite in pursuit of carnal bliss.

Soaphead Church is a, “cinnamon-eyed West Indian with lightly browned skin” (TBE

132), also known as Elihue Micah Whitcomb. He is a self-proclaimed spiritual healer, a

deceptive pedophile, and a perverted character portrayed in the novel. He disregarded his African

lineage and like many other characters in the novel makes desperate attempts to fit in the white

society. Allen Alexander further observes regarding Soaphead that:

 The instrument that finally pushes Pecola over the edge is Soaphead Church, a

character who not only rejects his African heritage but who also relinquishes his

identity as a human being in favor of the self-generated delusion that he is in

some sense a god. (119)

Soaphead began to work as a “Reader, Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams” (TBE 130-131). He

convinced Pecola that he had the power to grant her blue eyes if she agreed to follow his

instructions. He manipulated Pecola to poison his landlady‟s pet dog, Bob in order to get rid of it.

He has been portrayed by Morrison as a pedophile, who sexually abuses young girls, but in

Pecola‟s case he preferred psychological objectification. With his deceptive manipulations he

exploited Pecola‟s desire for acquiring blue eyes. Soaphead‟s „cultural cringe‟ caused him to

negate the norms of humanity, and he perpetually juggled with the emotions of those, who

visited him for advice, “His business was dread. People came to him in dread, whispered in

dread, wept and pleaded in dread. And dread was what he counseled” (136). He exploited people

without cautioning them of the unjust and sinister nature of their pleas. He married Velma but

the wedlock did not last long as Velma discovered that Soaphead, “. . . was suffering from and

enjoying an invincible melancholy” (134). His distorted religious ideology and his loss of faith

resonated with the dilemma of the post-modern man lost in the urban wasteland in quest of futile

desires. Soaphead is a victim of superiority complex because he often tries to enact the role of

God. He is a geographically displaced character, who has no connection, or desire to cherish the

ideas of domesticity and cultural pride.

The Bluest Eye is not primarily a Diaspora novel, but it has a conglomeration of diasporic

elements that add to the richness of its post-modern narrativity. Morrison has here realistically

expressed by means of her novel the psychological crisis which is a result of geographical
displacement and alienation. Homi K. Bhabha in the introduction to his seminal work The

Location of Culture suggests regarding Morrison‟s “unhomely fiction”, that such fiction consists

of “freak social and cultural displacements” (12). The Bluest Eye accommodates people with

different nationalities like the, “Hungarian baker, modestly famous for his brioche and poppy-

seed rolls” (TBE 24), and the gypsies with their vagabond lifestyle. Morrison crafts animate and

inanimate characters with equal literary finesse. She describes the Breedlove‟s habitat with great

intricacy informing the reader of the way the furniture, the Christmas tree, the piano and other

such stuff crowded the storefront, but was never used with affection, or familiarity. The impact

of geographical dislocation and nomadic lifestyle results in an attitude of negligence and

insensitivity regarding which the narrator in the novel reflects, saying:

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. (25)

Thus, the dismal facts behind cultural and geographical uprooting are panoramically pictured by

the author. Christopher Douglas emphatically affirms that, “The Bluest Eye is an inaugural text

of U.S. literary multiculturalism” (226). This makes it very clear that ethnic diversity is an

integral aspect of American society.

Since its inception the Afro-American literary canon dealt with religious and spiritual

experience with utmost sincerity. In the infantile stage the early Afro-American writing

comprised of sermonic literature that was shaped as a result of black oral traditions. As the slave

narratives emerged a more concrete interpretation of religion emerged. Writings of Phillis

Wheatley with their religious themes and focus on black spirituality earned great critical acclaim,
and paved way for future Afro-American literary production. Gospel music, religious themes, the

spiritual and biblical allusions have deeply embedded themselves in Afro-American literary

discourse. Writers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, Gloria

Naylor, Toni Cade Bambara, and countless others have enriched the corpus of Afro-American

literature by providing the readers with multifaceted religious and spiritual concerns, along with

innovative textual strategies to accommodate religious theology in a rapidly evolving post-

modern society. The religious and mythological metaphors of Afro-American fiction bestow this

literary canon with aesthetic beauty and authenticity.

In The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison creates a saga of suffering, a story that reverberates

with the traumatized life of a poor, young black girl, called Pecola Breedlove. The fictional

writing of Morrison contributed to the Afro-American literature, and is considered to be the

genesis of black female writing in America. Critic Rachel C. Lee opines with respect to

Morrison‟s literary prowess that, “. . . Toni Morrison cultivates an aesthetic of ambiguity” (181).

Thus, it can be stated that Morrison‟s writing, particularly her fiction, posits postmodern

concerns of immense magnitude. In this novel role of religion and community are connected as

both the institutions fail Pecola and abandon her in the face of malignant circumstances.

Communal hostility coupled with unresponsive pleas to God aggravated Pecola‟s self-hatred and

finally pushed her towards insanity and death as noted by critic Ágnes Surányi, “The inculcation

of blackness as a “negative signifier” in the minds of the black community causes the destruction

and madness of Pecola”(14).

The Dick and Jane primer works as a pastiche, a sort of addition to the literary collage

designed by Morrison in form of The Bluest Eye. Various episodes are juxtaposed together to

maintain the literary coherence even after involving the inversions. The novel is divided into four
seasons; namely, Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer. Religion as portrayed in this novel is a

kaleidoscope of varying interpretations. In its true sense the institution of religion in the novel is

static and uninspiring. It neither evolves, nor does it shed its yoke of dormancy to help those in

crises. It is these obdurate and harsh norms of both the community and religion that transform

this novel into a post-modern dystopia. As Philip Page aptly asserts regarding this novel, “In The

Bluest Eye images of splitting dramatize a broken community, broken families, and especially

broken identities” (99). As the novel advances, Morrison deconstructs and criticizes certain

aspects of religion and community life. She changes the role of God from an over-powering

master to a mute spectator. He is seen as passive and ignorant by the characters who have lost

hope of any interference from Him. The characters are very often reevaluating their relationship

with God and interrogating His divine authority. Mrs. MacTeer quotes the teachings of the Bible

habitually while rebuking Pecola for consuming a huge quantity of milk from her pantry without

her permission. She says, “. . . Bible say watch as well as pray” (TBE 17) and, “Bible say feed

the hungry” (19). Morrison tries to define and give shape to Pecola and her family‟s physical

ugliness by dumping the cause of their ugliness on the Creator, “It was as though some

mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each

accepted it without question” (28). It is evident from this statement that God has been accused of

imposing on the Breedlove‟s the tag of physical inferiority.

In the novel Pauline Breedlove basks in the fake glory of her self-proclaimed martyrdom.

She addressed with conviction her plight after marrying Cholly Breedlove who is an alcoholic.

She assured herself that she had to play the role of a crusader by reprimanding Cholly for all his

faults and sins. As stated by the narrator, “Mrs. Breedlove was not interested in Christ the

Redeemer, but rather Christ the Judge” (31). This aspect of Pauline Breedlove‟s spiritual
inclination indicates the way she tried to manipulate the role of God in her life and use it to

gratify her whims. She negatively employs her religious freedom, that she could have otherwise

utilized in a more profitable and decent manner. As the narrator tells, “Holding Cholly as a

model of sin and failure, she bore him like a crown of thorns, and her children like a cross” (98).

These words foreground the Biblical allusions often used by Morrison in her fiction. Regarding

Pauline Breedlove, it can be observed that she had spiced her monotonous life with domestic

chaos. She needed the flaws of Cholly to elevate her status and fuel the heroism with which she

fought the battle of her life, “In the name of Jesus” (31). In this regard Patricia Hill Collins

observes:

U. S. Black women writers have chronicled other forms of Black women‟s

attempts to escape from a world predicated upon derogated images of Black

womanhood. Fictional African-American women characters use drugs, alcohol,

excessive religion, and even retreat into madness in an attempt to create other

worlds apart from the ones that produced such painful Black female realities. (94)

While discussing the aspect of religious hypocrisy as portrayed by Morrison in the novel,

a mention of Henry Washington becomes obligatory. He rented an accommodation at the

MacTeer‟s house in Lorain, Ohio. He was a religious hypocrite, who committed adultery in the

name of religion. He is a licentious character, who is visited by the whores, and when Frieda and

Claudia discover this, he misleads them by saying that the whores were his friends, who had

come for reading Bible with him. This fake excuse reveals the fact that Morrison tries to describe

how religious practices were treated with disregard by the people who used religion as a tool to

conceal their depravity. Many characters in the novel narrowed the scope of religion by giving

Pecola what she did not deserve as a child. They did not allow her to experience the joys of
childhood by imposing on her the tag of racial inferiority, and by subjecting her to the scourge of

inequality on account of her blackness and poverty. At another place in the novel Mr.

Yacobowski‟s cold attitude towards Pecola drained her mind of all innocent fancies, and

instantly changed her perception of the beautiful dandelions to mere weeds. The image of, “. . .

doe-eyed Virgin Mary” (TBE 36), restricted Mr. Yacobowski from looking at anything, or

anyone ugly. The beauty of Virgin Mary had blinded his perception because he could never

associate any inferior physical trait with that notion of ethereal charm which he idolized. The

blacks in America were incapable of accepting the Christian God, who was often depicted as a

charming old white man. The myth that Christianity was the religion of whites alone, distorted

the Afro-American view of religion. This myth was corroded only when a black church was built

in America during the reconstruction phase. Racializing the identity of God was detrimental for

the entire humanity. Hence, positive efforts in this regard were channelized on both the social

and the political fronts.

While examining the tragedy of Pecola that was caused by various social and religious

factors, the name of Geraldine cannot be skipped. In this novel Geraldine is a migrant from rural

South to Lorain, Ohio. She, like Mr. Yacobowski, insults Pecola because of her blackness.

Geraldine discriminates against the black children by comparing them to “flies”, and by

categorizing Pecola as a, “nasty little black bitch” (TBE 72), who had disturbed the terrifying

symmetry of her house. The “big red-and-gold Bible” (69), was in Geraldine‟s house nothing

more than a part of her home decor that was on display to maintain the aura of elegance,

superiority and religious sanctity. As graphically described by Pecola there was a, “color picture

of Jesus Christ hung on a wall with the prettiest paper flowers fastened on the frame” (70). The

picture was embellished with paper flowers, which were artificial flowers and not the natural
flowers. This symbolizes the artificiality of Geraldine‟s faith and her feigned appearance. When

Geraldine orders Pecola to leave her house, on her way out Pecola notices, “ … Jesus looking

down at her with sad and unsurprised eyes, his long brown hair parted in the middle, the gay

paper flowers twisted around his face” (72). The author creates a picture of dismay and gloom. It

seems as though God has given up before the diabolical and cunning nature of human beings.

Nietzschean proclamation of the death of God in The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes

and an Appendix of Songs (1882), reveals the truth behind contemporary defunct value system

that has rendered God worthless and powerless. He (God), as Pecola observes appears to be

aggrieved at her helplessness but is unable to intervene between the oppressor and the oppressed.

Pecola feels the presence of God everywhere, but she can never actually make any use of this

companionship.

The narrator gives a detailed description of an incident that took place in Cholly

Breedlove‟s youth. Cholly had gone for a church picnic with Blue Jack. While enjoying the

outing, Cholly created the image of God in his mind, when he observed a black man holding a

watermelon in his hand to rip it open for his family. He thought that the man holding the melon

could never resemble God, because Cholly believed that, “God was a nice old white man, with

long white hair, flowing white beard, and little blue eyes that looked sad when people died and

mean when they were bad” (TBE 105). Cholly seemed to be obsessed with the idea of white

beauty like his daughter Pecola, who was obsessively in love with blue eyes. His racial self-

loathing drastically changed his view regarding the black man whom he had earlier mirrored as

an image of God because he later addressed that black man as the, “black devil” (105). The

identity of God is questioned by the characters in order to trace their own identity. At this

juncture the corroding impact of racism is clearly visible. The narrator in another incident vividly
pictures the funeral of Aunt Jimmy, Cholly‟s aunt, who had nursed him since childhood. Before

Aunt Jimmy‟s burial the female visitors discuss the expenses of the burial ceremony and the high

amount of fee that was being charged by the undertaker. They also discuss the plans regarding

the post-burial banquet with excitement and eagerness. As expressed by the narrator, “The

funeral banquet was a peal of joy after the thunderous beauty of the funeral” (111-112). At this

point Morrison juxtaposes certain contradictory ideas, she pictures the “funeral banquet” as a

“peal of joy”, and focuses on the “thunderous beauty” of the funeral. Morrison uses oxymoronic

expressions to reveal the absurdity of delight that Cholly felt all along the funeral ceremony. This

black humour coupled with grotesque realism lends Morrison‟s narrative a uniqueness of its

own. The vitality of narration stresses on the human craving for happiness and hunger that often

follow an episode of intense agony. A sort of “carnival spirit” overtook Cholly as he returned

home from the funeral, and he, “ate greedily and felt good enough to try to get to know his

cousins” (112). As is noticeable here, the author dexterously handles the two extremities of life:

agony and happiness. It can thus be concluded that for Cholly the image of the devil is much

more dynamic and enticing than that of God.

Pecola perpetually prays and yearns for blue eyes. She believes that it is only the

acquisition of blue eyes that can fetch her familial love and social acceptance. Patricia Hill

Collins in this regard opines that:

In Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye (1970), Pecola Breedlove is a study in

emotional abuse. Morrison portrays the internalized oppression that can affect a

child who experiences daily assaults on her sense of self. Pecola‟s family is the

immediate source of her pain, but Morrison also exposes the role of the larger

community in condoning Pecola‟s victimization. (158)

Pecola is overlooked by the society because of her blackness and her ugliness. She vehemently

desires to disappear in order to escape the domestic upheaval and the regular violence between

her parents. Domestic chaos has a negative impact on both Pecola and her brother Sammy.

Pecola waited for a miracle to grant her blue eyes, but that miracle could never happen. She lost

her sanity after being raped and impregnated by her own father Cholly in an incestuous fit of

lust. At the end of the novel she is seen wandering, “. . . picking and plucking her way between

the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and

beauty of the world—which is what she herself was” (TBE 162). Her family, her community and

even God betrayed her. Her death was not only tragic, but also a result of the malevolent

surroundings that preyed on her innocence and youth.

Soaphead Church, also known as Elihue Micah Whitcomb, fuelled Pecola‟s desperate

yearning for blue eyes by promising to grant her forbidden desire. Morrison probes into the

deepest layers of religious hypocrisy by portraying the character of Soaphead Church. He, with

his lofty and fake idealism, polluted the community by using his tricks as a “Reader, Adviser,

and Interpreter of Dreams” (TBE 131). He was adept in the art of self-deception, and was a

pedophile. His ideology presents religion in its most perverted form. Soaphead is a conjurer who

accuses God of betraying humans, and holds the conviction that he could have done better had he

himself been God. This statement finds expression when Soaphead philosophizes that:

Evil existed because God had created it. He, God, had made a sloven and

unforgivable error in judgment: designing an imperfect universe. . . . God had

done a poor job, and Soaphead suspected that he himself could have done better.

It was in fact a pity that the Maker had not sought his counsel. (137)
Though for a moment he truly wished to help Pecola and grant her plea, yet he could not give up

his malicious and cruel intentions of exploiting her. He pens a blasphemous letter that is

addressed to God. In Alice Walker‟s novel The Color Purple (1982), Celie writes letters to God.

The tradition of writing letters to God or verbally communicating with God is an important

aspect of Afro-American writing. The distressed characters address God when they are alienated

and marginalized with no one to communicate with. However, Soaphead is not writing to God in

a remorseful mood, on the contrary he writes this letter to criticize God. The literary strategy of

introducing letters in the novel is an exercise that adds to the literary realism of the narrative. The

letter in this novel is monologic in nature, as there is no scope of dialogue between the writer of

the letter and the assumed receiver. Somehow, Soaphead‟s letter to God is similar to the letters

written by Moses E. Herzog in Saul Bellow‟s novel Herzog (1964). Like Herzog, Soaphead

never sends his letter but keeps it with himself. The letter helps in outlining the character of

Soaphead, as in the process of writing he reveals the dark side of his personality. The

incorporation of epistles in a work of fiction as Henry Louis Gates Jr. professes, “. . . allows for a

maximum of identification with a character, precisely because the devices of empathy and

distance, standard in third-person narration, no longer obtain” (246). Soaphead writes to God in a

satiric mood, because he informs God about the geographical location of his ancestral home,

deliberately ignoring the omniscient nature of God. He tries to mock God‟s autonomy by

focusing on irrelevant issues. Danielle Russell observes regarding the uncertainty of Soaphead‟s

status saying that:

Soaphead‟s meticulous, indeed obsessive, positioning of himself effectively

inserts a map into Morrison‟s novel. It is significant that the precise geography is

in fact a landscape from Soaphead‟s past. He appears to offer a concrete

 statement of location, but is in fact dodging the issue by focusing on the “once

upon a time.” He makes no reference to his current locale. (42)

He focuses in the opening of the letter on the way the inhabitants of his homeland mimicked,

and tried to adopt the ways and mannerisms of the colonizers who had territorial domination

over their land. In this regard Soaphead remarks:

In retaining the identity of our race, we held fast to those characteristics most

gratifying to sustain and least troublesome to maintain. Consequently we were not

royal but snobbish, not aristocratic but class-conscious; we believed authority was

cruelty to our inferiors, and education was being at school. (TBE 140)

Soaphead later talks of Velma in his letter. He criticizes her and complains to God regarding her

insensitive attitude. Velma deserted Soaphead because she could not tolerate his lack of potential

to live a normal life. He drained her life of all its charm, and she left him, because she could no

longer, “. . . spend her life in the soundless cave of Elihue‟s mind” (TBE 135). However, in his

letter he falsely accused Velma of betraying him. He states sarcastically that, “She (Velma) left

me the way people leave a hotel room” (141). He later goes on to describe the prepubescent

physical characteristics of a girl‟s body to God justifying his lust and pedophiliac mindset:

Let me tell you now about the breasts of little girls. . . . One could not see them

and not love them. You who made them must have considered them lovely even

as an idea―how much more lovely is the manifestation of that idea. I couldn‟t, as

you must recall, keep my hands, my mouth, off them. (141-142)

He recalls how the little girls often visited him and how he offered them gifts of mints, money,

and ice cream. He lured them with these edibles so as to carry on his indecencies. It was like a

party for Soaphead, where there was only fun and no sexual discomfort. The little innocent girls
did not realize that they were being physically mishandled by Soaphead, who pretended to be

extremely polite and caring. They played the games he made them play like all other childhood

games, “And there wasn‟t nastiness, and there wasn‟t any filth, and there wasn‟t any odor . . .”

(144). He abused children due to his perverted psyche and piled the accusations of his sins upon

God. He uses God as his scapegoat, and acquires solace in unburdening himself of all his

negativity and turpitude.

Soaphead in his letter to God informs Him about the little black girl who had visited him

in quest of “Blue eyes. New, blue eyes” (TBE 143). He tells God that he granted Pecola the wish

that God had refused to grant her. He convinced her to believe that she had been granted blue

eyes as a result of his supernatural powers. He takes pride in asserting to God that, “But I gave

her those blue eyes she wanted. Not for pleasure, and not for money. I did what You did not,

could not, would not do: I looked at that ugly little black girl, and I loved her. I played You. And

it was a very good show!” (144). He did not realize that he had turned Pecola towards insanity

for the rest of her life. He had indeed cheated both Pecola and God for gratifying his whims. He

challenged God by pointing His flaws and drawbacks. He lacked faith in God‟s omniscient and

omnipotent nature. He celebrated his victory over God after creating the imaginary blue eyes for

his victim, Pecola. Soaphead is not conversing with God in a confessional frame of mind, or

philosophizing upon ecclesiastical concerns, but he keeps on boasting of his potential to play

God in the lives of those who visited him for help. He is neither an atheist, nor a religious

minded person craving for answers to his existential queries. He is a trickster, who tricks Pecola

into his hideous conspiracy, and later tries to dupe the readers with interplay of his verbal

competency by writing to God. Morrison in designing Soaphead‟s letter to God traverses beyond

conventional fiction writing. She examines perverted human psyche with peerless audacity. She
creates for the reader a character that violates all ethical norms disregarding his stature as a

spiritual healer. Thus, it can be aptly inferred that Morrison introduces to Afro-American fiction

the taboo theme of pedophilia, or sexual abuse of children, that can be better understood as a

psychological disorder and a scourge of defunct post-modern society.

The black community of Lorain, Ohio as portrayed by Morrison in this novel is not a

very strongly united community. Apart from racial inequality, the black population suffers due to

interpersonal discord. Racial self-loathing is deeply imbedded in the social fabric, and the people

do not cherish their ancestral culture. It is this corrupt social order that imposes on Pecola the

westernized paradigm of beauty, a feeling of self-hatred and mistrust. The society that Pecola

inhabited did not offer her any emotional comfort, when her father brutally raped and

impregnated her. As rightly pointed out by Danielle Russell, “The Bluest Eye provides a

particularly powerful indictment of the assumption that both woman and land are available for

appropriation and exploitation” (81). This act of bestiality and violence ruined Pecola‟s life but

the society did not share her pain. Instead of sympathizing with her, they ridiculed and mocked at

her misery. Claudia accused the society for Pecola‟s tragedy, declaring that:

All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our

beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. We were so beautiful when

we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us,

her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a

sense of humor. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty,

and yawned in the fantasy of our strength. (TBE 163)

Claudia is the mouthpiece that provides the reader with an eye-opener in the form of Pecola‟s

tale of woe. The malice and aggression of the society are blatantly exposed by her. Pecola‟s
insanity, her child‟s death and, ultimately, her own death shook Claudia‟s perception of her

surroundings because she was the only character, who, unlike others, wished Pecola‟s unborn

child to survive. She vents her remorse by saying that, “I thought about the baby that everybody

wanted dead, and saw it very clearly” (149). This harsh and hypocritical social order tries to

maintain a false decorum within itself by castrating the happiness of other people. The bitter

words that Frieda and Claudia overhear regarding Pecola‟s unborn child display the true

belligerence of the outwardly serene society. They heard the town women gossiping, “She be

lucky if it don‟t live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking. . . . two ugly people doubling up like

that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground” (TBE 149).

Lynn Orilla Scott remarks regarding the arrogant community in The Bluest Eye by

asserting that, “The community‟s act of scapegoating Pecola as a racial and moral other

functions to maintain notions of white superiority and seriously compromises the “innocence and

faith” of the girls wishing to grow flowers in black earth” (88). This statement brings to focus the

legality of accusations that Claudia levied on the community that ostracized the Breedlove

family on account of their poverty and ugliness. Pecola‟s ruptured identity is the cause of her

schizophrenic psyche. Religion and society participated in Pecola‟s tragedy with equal zeal. The

world of Pecola and many other young black girls was transformed into a dystopia by these two

forces. This novel resonates with the suffering of black children under the indelible scar of

racism, classism and sexism during the early twentieth-century. Pecola cannot complete her

cycle of maturation. Her character resembles that of Velutha, an untouchable in Arundhati Roy‟s

Booker Prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things (1997). Velutha, like Pecola, makes an

impractical wish and suffers the consequences that finally culminate in his tragic death. Religion

and community betrayed both the characters, irrespective of their geographical disparity.
 The Bluest Eye can be read as a counter discourse that Morrison candidly writes to

emancipate Afro-American writers from imitating the white literary standards. Counter discourse

is “A term coined by Richard Terdiman to characterize the theory and practice of symbolic

resistance” (Ashcroft 56). It breaks free from all conventional writing strategies. Morrison‟s

interaction with the reader is of utmost significance throughout the novel, as she believes in the

active participation of the reader in understanding and shaping the text. She fashioned a rostrum

for encouraging Afro-American women‟s writing during the era that witnessed limited

participation of women in the literary scenario of the nation. She enlarged her literary

exploration in such a way that has allowed her to verbalize the agony of those Afro-Americans

who were socially and politically ostracized. Her versatility is globally acknowledged, and her

fictional and non-fictional endeavour is revered. She throws light on the problems faced by Afro-

Americans which were earlier neglected, and articulates the plight of those peripheral voices

which were unheard for decades. Rehabilitation of black oral tradition, black vernacular, black

music, and black gospel has been one of Morrison‟s unsurpassed achievements. In The Bluest

Eye she outstretched her narrative skills to handle issues that were rarely explored, or discussed.

Most of these were taboo concerns like incest, rape, child abuse and prostitution. This is the

reason why Morrison‟s fictional and non-fictional oeuvre is considered to be quite

confrontational, oppositional and convention-defying. As affirmed by Harold Bloom:

Morrison, like any potentially strong novelist, battles against being subsumed by

the traditions of narrative fiction. As a leader of African-American literary

culture, Morrison is particularly intense in resisting critical characterizations that

she believes misrepresent her own loyalties, her social and political fealties to the

complex cause of her people. (1)

It is, thus, apt to remark that Morrison has sculpted for black American writers a literary corpus

that provides them the opportunity to write and cherish their own cultural legacy. Literary

positioning of Afro-American writers has facilitated Afro-American literary canon on an

extensive scale.