Bluest Eye Study Guide.qxd, Exercises of Theatre

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The Bluest Eye is the story of a young African

American girl and her family who are affected in

every direction by the dominant American culture

that says to them, "You're not beautiful; you're not

relevant; you're invisible; you don't even count."

That is what is painful in the novel -- the way in

which our country has dealt with race, the way in

which the power structure has hurt us, and the way

in which it has made us hurt ourselves. Often

enough we African Americans don't get the

opportunity to say "This is the source of my

dysfunction, and it’s not all my fault."

To be shown that when you are young is painful,

horrible. On the other hand, it is very affirming to

have all these things made very clear and relevant;

things that I knew were sick and wrong, things

that touched me in these intangible ways, all made

clear just by having the lives of people like me

represented in literature.

• Lydia Diamond, Adaptor

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Table of Contents

Autumn

Claudia and Frieda

Mama

Mrs. Breedlove

Winter

Maureen Peal

Spring

Cholly

Soaphead Church

Summer

Pecola

Page to Stage

Toni Morrison

Adaptation

Script to Stage

Appendix

Characters in the Play

Setting of the Play

Plot Summary of the Play

Other Works by Toni Morrison

Sources

page 7

page 15

page 19

page 25

page 29

page 37

Claudia and Frieda McTeer are adult sisters remembering events that happened when they were nine and ten years old. Since the story is told through the filter of childhood memory, Claudia and Frieda speak as children for much of the play, using adult voices only when reflecting on the events of the play from a future vantage point. They live with their Mama and Daddy, a secure family in a modest home. Claudia is very precocious and observant. Frieda, the older sister, is more practical and less contemplative than Claudia. Both have strong opinions and vivid imaginations.

Claudia and Frieda

“Since why is difficult to handle,

one must take refuge in how .”

In a community and a culture where the adults are not acting as caretakers for their children, children must take responsibility for each other. Claudia and Frieda look after Pecola when she lives with them. They continue to feel responsible for her after she has been raped and impregnated by her father. In doing so, they shoulder a burden that should be carried by the entire community. They give up hope of buying a bicycle and instead, in an attempt to save Pecola’s unborn baby, plant the marigold seeds they have been selling to earn money. Their offering, their prayers, and their magic song may be childish, but the girls make a sacrifice of their own comfort and privilege, something that no one else in their community is willing to do for Pecola. They link their lives to hers and hold themselves accountable for her fate.

Claudia and Frieda, the narrators of The Bluest Eye , guide us into the story and establish the framework of memory that creates the reflective tone of the play. As adults, Claudia and Frieda try to understand why the terrible events they remember happened, but they cannot. Instead, they tell the story of Pecola's life, hoping that putting what happened into words will allow them to understand it. In telling Pecola's story, they find it necessary to also tell her parents' stories, which contain the foundations of her life. By using the tangible and immediate as a means to describe something too compli- cated and fraught to be easily grasped, they use the how of Pecola's life to approach the why of her disintegration.

“Quiet as it's kept, there were no

marigolds in the fall of 1941.”

Storytelling

Community

Claudia and Frieda are given baby dolls for Christmas. Frieda and Pecola adore these white dolls and Shirley Temple, thinking of the dolls and the little girl with the golden ringlets and rosy cheeks as examples of ideal children. When asked why she loves Shirley Temple so much, Pecola says, "She's pretty and talented and people love her." Shirley Temple seems to be all that Pecola is not, and Pecola loves her for it.

Claudia, on the other hand, hates Shirley Temple in the same way that she hates the blonde, blue-eyed dolls she is given for Christmas. Claudia doesn't know why she should love such a doll, so instead of caring for it, she dissects it, thinking maybe she'll find "what the world thought was so wonderful about pink skin and yellow hair." Claudia is angry that Shirley Temple gets to dance with Mr. Bojanles, a black man, " my friend, my uncle, my daddy, who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me." It seems to Claudia that the world likes little white girls best, and so the dolls become a symbol of that preference and a symbol of how she, as a little black girl, can never be loved the most.

Claudia distrusts the "magic" through which little white girls are able to win the hearts of adults, but Pecola believes that if she looked even a little bit like them, people might think she was pretty and would love and take care of her. Claudia does not believe that whiteness equals goodness and senses the racism inherent in that assumption. A pervasive element of Pecola’s tragedy is her internalization of the disregard with which her community treats her.

“I had only one desire: to dismember it.”

Race and Beauty

TThhee DDoollll TTeesstt

During the 1940s and ‘50s, the husband and wife team Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted a series of psychological experiments examining young black children's relationship to race. The study had several parts, but the "Doll Test" is most remembered today: The Clarks gave very young children otherwise identical brown and white dolls. The children were asked to say which doll was "nice," and which was "bad." An overwhelming majority of the black children identified the white doll positively and the brown doll negatively. The results of the study were cited in the Brown v. Board of Education decision as an indication of the psychological damage done to black children by school segregation.

Shirley Temple and Bojangles

TThhee GGrreeaatt DDeepprreessssiioonn

The Bluest Eye is set at the end of the Depression, and its effects are still felt by the characters. It is, in part, because of the Depression that Cholly does not have a job and that waste is so abhorrent to Mama.

On Tuesday October 24th, 1929, the Wall Street stock market crashed, precipitating the most severe economic crisis in U.S. history: the Great Depression. The stock market crash caused a downward spiral that resulted in over a decade of mass unemployment and poverty. By 1933, unemployment nationwide had risen to 26.6%, and those who were fortunate enough to find work were severely underpaid. Frugality could mean the difference between having enough food to feed your family and going hungry.

In hopes of giving relief to the struggling nation, President Roosevelt established the "New Deal" programs to create jobs and stimulate economic recovery for the United States. The Civilian Conservation Corps, Civils Works Administration, Works Progress Administration, and other government offices instituted by Roosevelt employed millions in many different capacities. Although the New Deal assisted greatly, it was not until World War II that employment returned to a normal level and most of the poverty and destitution associated with the Great Depression came to an end.

Waiting for food in a breadline In search of work

President Roosevelt with a friend

Mrs. Breedlove

Pauline Breedlove is Pecola's mother. She lives in a hastily converted storefront with her husband, Cholly, and her children, Pecola and Sammy. She works as a maid for a rich, white family. When she was a girl, Mrs. Breedlove stepped on a nail and injured her foot, causing her to walk with a limp for the rest of her life. She blames the beginning of her unhappiness on her foot, but she remembers when her dreams seemed attainable.

TThhee GGrreeaatt MMiiggrraattiioonn

In the period between 1916 and the 1960s, more than six million Southern black people moved to the North. Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove left the rural South as a part of this trend, as did many African Americans who came to populate Lorain and other Midwest towns.

Like many northern towns with industrial economies, Lorain was a destination of this “Great Migration”. The end of the Civil War and emancipation of slaves did not result in racial equality in the South. Lynching continued, Jim Crow laws limited the rights of black people, and the transition out of a slave-based economy resulted in economic hardship for everyone, especially for the former slaves. In the late 1800s, black people started moving north in search of jobs and greater racial tolerance. This migration increased dramatically in the early 20th century, largely in response to an increased number of unskilled factory job openings in northern companies during World War I.

“I didn't mind that he sometimes

drank too much, 'cause it seem like

we was all the time laughing.”

Memory

Mrs Breedlove narrates parts of The Bluest Eye , and her memories provide the context for Pecola's experiences. While Claudia and Frieda are the primary narrators for the events that occur in their lifetimes, Mrs. Breedlove’s voice is heard when the play moves into the past. Her oral history of her family helps explain the pain and violence of Pecola’s life. Mrs. Breedlove’s unhappiness at Pecola’s birth instigates Pecola’s self-loathing and conviction of her own ugliness. Mrs. Breedlove describes the traumatic experi- ences of Cholly’s youth with empathy. Her point of view adds dimension to Cholly, who would otherwise appear to be only violent and destructive. Mrs. Breedlove’s memories provide a picture of the circumstances of her family and her community that produce Pecola’s tragic life.

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Winter

Maureen Peal

Beauty and Worth

Race and Beauty

page 16

The advantages that Maureen's looks confer upon her are unfair and unearned, and the most poisonous result of that inequity is the doubt the other girls develop. Claudia and Frieda have not yet learned to consider themselves "lesser," but when faced with Maureen, whose light skin accords her so many benefits, they begin to wonder what makes her more worthy than they. Without considering the implications, they begin to reject themselves: when Maureen insults them by calling them "black," Claudia responds with "Who are you calling black?"

“We felt comfortable in our own skins...and could not

comprehend this unworthiness.”

“I am cute! And you are ugly!"

DDiicckk aanndd JJaannee

From the 1930s to the 1960s the “Dick and Jane” books served as school texts for the vast majority of American school children. Students followed the carefree lives of Mother, Father, Dick, Jane, little sister Sally, and Spot. The characters’ environment represented the white, middle-class American ideal: a home and neighborhood that was clean, safe, and friendly, where no one ever scraped a knee, got into a fight, or was punished for misbehaving. Father would come home after work and eat a dinner made by Mother, and the family lived securely behind their white picket fence.

For many children of the Depression and World War II era, the “Dick and Jane” series did not speak to their experience of poverty and suffering. Many grew to resent the artificial illustration of American life that the books offered. As America continued to evolve in its ideas about race, gender, and class, the “Dick and Jane” books strove to reflect these standards. With the fervor of the Civil Rights movement, more inclusive versions of the stories appeared which included African American, Asian American, and other minority families, acknowledging America's diverse population.

Maureen is considered beautiful in large part because of the characteristics that make her look white: her fair skin, her long hair, and her green eyes. Her wealth also makes her seem to Claudia more like the white girls at school. Her whiteness (and hence her beauty and rank) is unattainable for Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola, but they see its power nonetheless. Pecola's wish for blue eyes presents a pathological extreme of the desire to share that power. Pecola imagines that if she had blue eyes people would not do bad things in front of her, and Maureen's charmed life seems to support that idea.

Her perceived proximity to whiteness attracts people to her, but since she is still black, Claudia and Frieda are more free to express their hatred of her privilege than that of the rich white girls at school. Her position between two races also provides Claudia and Frieda fodder for an ugly version of her name: Meringue Pie, which is brown outside and white inside. Maureen is a safer and more accessible target for their anger than actual rich white girls. (Morrison gives those girls, whose lives are very foreign to Claudia and Frieda, only a passing mention.) However cute and privileged, Maureen is not a rich white girl, and her similarities to Claudia and Frieda place her within their reach.

Race and Beauty

Cholly

Cholly is Pecola's father, Mrs. Breedlove's husband. Abandoned by his parents, he was raised in Georgia by his great aunt Jimmy, and he left home after her death, when he was fourteen. As a young man, Cholly is tender and curious, but marriage dulls his imagination and fatherhood dumbfounds him. He is a volatile presence in Pecola's life, vacillating between neglect and violence.

“Had he not been alone in the world since he was

thirteen…he might have felt a stable connection

between himself and [his] children.”

Family

Cholly's life exemplifies the problems that occur when family bonds disintegrate. With Aunt Jimmy, his life is meager but secure. She dies, and Cholly no longer has a family to belong to. He is adrift in a destabilized world suddenly without rules -- there is no one to "whup" him -- but also without support or protection. In the book, he runs away in a desperate search for his long-absent father. After a long journey, he meets his father, but instead of family stability he finds only a small and angry man with no interest in or connection to his son. Cholly comes unmoored from any structure which might support him. He becomes "dangerously free" -- a "godlike" state in which he is no one's responsibility and is responsible for no one. His response to the world, to his wife, and eventually to his children is based only on his feelings at a particular moment. He has had no models for being a father and member of a family nor for being a man of dignity and compassion.

Community

“I even think now that the land of the entire country

was hostile to marigolds that year.”

In telling Cholly's story, Morrison expands on the "why" of the novel's tragedies by explaining the "how." She does not excuse Cholly's violence, but she refuses to isolate his actions from his community's failings. That Morrison includes Cholly’s history at all indicates her intent that readers regard him not as a mindless, unaccountable monster but as a damaged and wounded man whose inability to confront and repair his pain has tragic consequences. In light of his past, his role of abuser and exploiter is dispiriting but hardly surprising.

Cholly is a living lesson that we are all repositories of our experience, that the cruelties visited upon us play out in our conduct. Morrison offers the horrifying scene of Cholly and Darlene -- interrupted, threatened, and humiliated by a pair of white hunters who delight in terrifying a black man for sport -- as part of the "how" of Cholly's failure to build a strong and nurturing relationship with his wife and children.

After Aunt Jimmy's funeral, emboldened by the sudden loss of anyone to watch over him and by the privileges of his bereavement, Cholly seeks out the girl he likes, Darlene. She is an excit- ing distraction from the loss of Aunt Jimmy, and their time together might have been a sweet transition from childhood to adulthood. They shift naturally from the games of children -- throwing grapes and running through the gully -- to a gentle exploration of each others' bodies. Cholly is caught between his sadness and his desire; his insecurity and uncertainty are coupled with a fierce need for affection and closeness. He is mourning the loss of Aunt Jimmy and his childhood as he embraces Darlene and the possibilities of adulthood.

The indelibly shocking arrival of the two white hunters damages Cholly. They destroy the tenderness which he had felt with Darlene, and, worse, they poison his experience of the world thereafter. He is left stranded, with neither the gentleness of a child nor the power of a man. What might have proved the beginning of a caring and powerful maturity has been derailed, leaving Cholly a wounded man whose inability to confront and repair his pain has tragic conse- quences: his anguish is perpetuated and its sickening ripples radiate outward.

Theft of Innocence

“Never did he once consider

directing his hatred toward

the hunters.

Such an emotion would have

destroyed him.”

TThhee WWoommeenn

An unnamed but significant character in The Bluest Eye is the community in which the events take place. In the play, the community is personified by the three women who periodically comment on the action. They function as an expository device, giving the audience needed information, and as a tool for establishing the time and place of the story.

The women are played by various actors and remain unspecific but influential. When Cholly overhears the women of his childhood talking about Aunt Jimmy, he understands a crucial ramification of her death: that he is now alone. Frieda and Claudia hear of Pecola’s pregnancy by listening to the women of their town gossip.

The women gossip and they judge the events in their communities. They comment, but they do not become involved. They keep busy with the day-to-day tasks while talking about events that change lives, and their collective inaction permits Pecola’s rape, pregnancy, and madness.