Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye And Sula
Toni
Morrison: The bluest eye and Sula
African- American folklore is arguably
the basis for most African- American literature. In a country where as
late as the 1860’s there were laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves,
it was necessary for the oral tradition to carry the values the group considered
significant. Transition by the word of mouth took the place of pamphlets,
poems, and novels. Themes such as the quest for freedom, the nature of
evil, and the powerful verses the powerless became the themes of African-
American literature. In a book called Fiction and Folklore: the novels
of Toni Morrision author Trudier Harris explains that “Early folk beliefs
were so powerful a force in the lives of slaves that their masters sought
to co-opt that power. Slave masters used such beliefs in an attempt to
control the behavior of their slaves”(Harris 2). Masters would place little
black coffins outside the cabins of the slaves in a effort to restrain
their movements at night; they perpetuated ghost lore and created tales
of horrible supernatural animals wondering the outsides of the plantation
in order to frighten slaves from escape or trans-plantation visits. Tales
of slaves running to the north became legendary. Oral tales of escapes
and long journeys north through dangerous terrain were very common among
every slave on every plantation. Many of these tales seem to be similar
to the universal tales and myths like The Odyssey or Gilgemish. Slaves
on every plantation were telling tales that would later be the groundwork
for African-American literature.
African- American folklore has since been
taken to new levels and forms. Writers have adopted these themes and have
fit them into contemporary times. Most recently author Toni Morrison has
taken the African- American folklore themes and adapted them to fictional
literature in her novels. Morrison comments on her use of the African-American
oral tradition in an interview with Jane Bakerman. “The ability to be both
print and oral literature; to combine those aspects so that the stories
can be read in silence, of course, but one should be able to hear them
as well. To make a story appear oral, meandering, effortless, spoken. To
have the reader work with the author
in construction of the book- is what’s
important”(Bakerman 122).In all of Morrison’s novels it is easy to see
her use of African- American folklore along with traditional fiction. In
the novels The Bluest Eye and Sula, Morrison creates settings and characters
that produce an aura of unreality, that which is directly borrowed from
African- American folklore. With the aura of unreality in Morrison’s characters
and settings, her plots scream with real life themes such as murder, war,
poverty, sexual abuse, and racism. In The Bluest Eye and Sula, Morrison
combines fiction and folklore to create two chilling stories about black
communities struggling to define themselves.
The Bluest Eye is not just a story about
young impressionable black girls in the Midwest; it is also the story of
African- American folk culture in process. The character Claudia MacTeer
is the narrator for this folk tale. Claudia gives a voice to Pecola Breedlove’s
story and to the community. The story is shaped from the beginning with
the expectation of reader involvement and with the presumption of an audience.
The brief preface that begins “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds
in the fall of 1941″, serves to establish Claudia as the communal rehearser
of tragedy. Her first person narration establishes a close relationship
between herself and the reader. Like many of Morrison’s novels, The Bluest
Eye shows the heroic and failed efforts of a struggling black community.
With the use of a first person narrator, Morrison is able to make the story
seem oral and it also requires the reader to participate with her in the
making of the story. Morrison has commented “My writing expects, demands
participatory reading, and that I think is what literature is supposed
to do. It’s not just about telling the story; it’s about involving the
reader. The reader supplies the emotions. The reader supplies even some
of the color, some of the sound. My language has to have holes and spaces
so the reader can come into it”(Harris 17). This style of writing that
Morrison embraces is directly influenced by the African- American folklore
tradition.
The Bluest eye is a story that shows on
going problems that effect the black race. The story is about cultural
beliefs, which are the essence of folkloristic transmission. Early narratives
and tales in African- American folklore were about discrepancies in wealth
and social position between blacks and whites. This story transmits patterns
and problems the have a negative impact on the black race. The story not
only shows these patterns and problems but also shows how they go unresolved
because the black race in the time of this book just accepted this way
of life. The major issue in this book is the idea of ugliness. The belief
that black was not valuable or beautiful was one of the cultural hindrances
to black people throughout their history in America. Morrison emphasizes
that the entire Beedlove family believes that they are ugly. Without any
visible markers to show that belief, they nonetheless act and react as
if it were so. Having inherited the myth of unworthiness, the Breedloves
can only live the outlined saga to its expected conclusion. Because Pecola
believed she was ugly, she never had any type of self- esteem or confidence.
Then being raped by her father, Cholly Breedlove, Pecola was destined to
go insane. In a conversation with Robert Stepto, Morrison comments on her
creation of Pecola. “Well, In The Bluest Eye, I try to show a little girl
as a total and complete victim of whatever was around her”(Stepto 17).
With Claudia giving the background to Cholly’s hard life and showing the
harsh reality of Pecola’s insanity, this oral tale has a certain darkness
to it that shows these patterns that have plagued the black race in America.
Pecola’s basic wish for blue eyes ties
her to all believers in fairy tales and other magical realms. Pecola is
just like Cinderella in the sense that she wants to be something different
than what she is naturally. Just like Sleeping beauty, the ugly duckling,
and Cinderella The Bluest Eye has a notion of fantasy in it. Because Pecola’s
life is doomed in a sense, she must resort to fantasy in her own mind.
Unlike Cinderella and all the other fairy tales this fantasy that Morrison
brings to the page is loaded with the harsh realities of African-American
life. Claudia not only tells the story but tries to effect Pecola’s fate
through her own belief in the power of magic to transform present conditions.
Claudia and Frieda attempt to influence Pecola’s future by planting the
marigolds correctly. They hope, as Pecola does with the offering to the
dog, to bring a sort of sympathetic magic that will make Pecola’s future
more healthy. Unlike most fairy tales, The Bluest Eye does not have a happy
ending. The Breedlove family is broken up and Pecola has gone insane. Morrison
made no attempt for a happy ending; in fact the book was primarily just
to show the harsh realities of African- American life in the 1940’s.
The novel Sula is very similar to The Bluest
Eye because it focuses on many of the same issues. Both novels are dark
in a sense because neither book shies away from the realities of African-American
life. Sula is a story that takes place in a fictional town called Medallion,
Ohio. In an interview, Morrison explains her thoughts on the creation of
Medallion, Ohio. “When I wrote Sula, I was interested in making a town,
the community, the neighborhood, as strong as a character as I could”(Stepto
11). Medallion, Ohio is a black community struggling to define itself against
the racism that was so prevalent following the abolition of slavery. The
town was actually founded as a second chance, or some hope for former slaves.
This type of town lends itself more easily to the folklore tradition because
it stands for the power of dreams and a change from the harsh realities
of slavery.
The characters in Sula also lend themselves
easily to the folklore tradition because they seem very unreal and magical.
The characters Sula and Shadrack are both looked at as monsters. Like characters
in an oral tale their evilness is exaggerated to show what is good. The
idea of defining by opposites is very popular in Morrison’s novels, especially
in Sula. Morrison asks the question “How would we know what black is if
there were no white? How would we know good if there were no evil?” Morrison
uses Sula and Shadrack to help the Medallion community define itself. Sula
and Shadrack’s differences must be labeled so that the rest of the community
can go about their business. Since the people of Medallion have no words
to explain Sula and Shadrack they just label them as crazy and evil. “Imagination
gives the community diversity from its own stupored monotony; it comes
to make a monster out of their differences. Sula’s don’t give a damn attitude
makes her an easy target for tales, for she lacks the egotistical concern
for reputation” (Harris 63). But, in a strange way the townspeople welcome
Sula’s rebelliousness, her violations of the social codes of their community.
“Their conviction of Sula’s evil,” Morrison’s narrator tells us, changes
” the towns people in accountable yet mysterious ways.” Defining their
lives in contrast to Sula’s”(Century 48). The people of the bottom use
Sula to define what is evil. After Sula returns from her ten year long
absence from Medallion, Sula begins to sleep with just about every man
in the city black, or white. Sula is regarded as a “slut” among the community.
But after her return, the people of the town start behaving better than
they had before. The women of Medallion begin to cherish their husbands
more and treat their kids better. Everyone in the community joins together
to band the evil that is in their midst. Shadrack, like Sula helps the
community define what is sanity. “Shadrack provides diversion from their
normalcy; though they do not wish to emulate him, his antics make them
secure in their own identities”(Harris 61). This idea of defining by opposites
is also in The Bluest eye. Pauline Breedlove needs her drunk, sinful Husband
to make her sanctified. This idea of defining by opposites is the underground
bases in racism. Morrison uses this in such a way to show the patterns
and problems in human nature.
A major theme in Sula and also in The Bluest
Eye is one that is directly rooted in African-American folklore. It is
the idea of evil, and it dominates every aspect of Sula. In an interview
with Toni Morrison, Morrison comments on her use of evil in Sula. “Now
I was certainly very much interested in the question of evil in Sula- in
fact, that’s what it was all about”(Childress 8). Morrison uses the folklore
tradition to show how the black race accepts evil unlike the white race.
“It never occurs to the people of Medallion to kill Sula. Black people
never annihilate evil. They don not run it out of their neighborhoods,
chop it up or burn it up. They don’t have witch hangings. They accept it,
almost like a forth dimension in their lives. They try to protect themselves
from evil, of course, but they do not have that puritanical thing which
says if you see a witch, then burn it, or if you see something than kill
it”(Childress 8). The evil that is seen in Sula is one that is borrowed
from the Tradition of African-American folklore. Since the times of the
slaves, blacks accepted
evil like a fourth addition to the trinity.
Slave masters tried to convert the slaves to Christianity by stressing
the power of the devil and the condemnation of hell.
The same acceptance of evil is also seen
in The Bluest Eye. When Mr. Henry molested Frieda, she didn’t even hate
him, she just accepted his actions as normal. Also, after Pecola was raped
by Cholly, she did not dispise him she just let it add to her destruction
of her self.
The influence of African- American folklore
is all over the novels The Bluest Eye and Sula. With Morrison demanding
participatory reading just like an oral tale to the evil and strangeness
in some of her characters, Morrison tells stories rich with African- American
folklore. Her settings, characters, and the issues she explores, tell of
the history of the Black race in America. The oral tradition of African-
American folklore is a way for Morrison to educate and analyze what the
black race is all about.
Work Cited Page
Century, Douglas. Toni Morrison: Author
New York: Chelsea Publishing, 1994
Childress, Alice. “Conversations with Toni
Morrison” “Conversation with Alice Childress and Toni Morrison” Black Creation
Annual. New York: Library of Congress, 1994. Pages 3-9
Harris, Trudier. Fiction and Folklore:
The Novels of Toni Morrison Knoxville: The university of Tennessee press,
1991
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Plume,
1973
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York:
Plume, 1970
Stepto, Robert. “Conversations with Toni
Morrison” Intimate Things in Place: A conversation with Toni Morrison.
Massachusetts Review. New York: Library of Congress, 1991. Pages 10- 29.
