On The Artistic Features Of The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison (1931- ) is the most prominent and successful African American woman writer of the 20th century. She received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 for her excellent achievements in writing, and becomes the first African American woman to win this award. The winning of Nobel Prize implies that Morrison is a literary artist of the first rank. She writes novels not for presenting the present world only, but for thinking about the life of black women in history and reality. Her novels can make readers think and imagine. More and more people all over the world have become interested in her novels.As a gifted writer, Morrison employs many writing techniques, the excellent mastery of the writing crafts and heart-beat spoken languages to create the sense of intimacy. In the novel The Bluest Eye, several prominent artistic features should be paid attention to. They are the structures of the novel, the multiple narratives, the symbols, metaphors and contrasts used in the novel. All of them make the novel more attractive and interesting to read. Meanwhile these writing techniques help to express the novel's theme successfully, which can make readers imagine and think freely and deeply.This thesis is divided into five parts:Introduction; Chapter One; Chapter Two; Chapter Three; Conclusion.The first part is a brief introduction to literary background, especially that of Morrison and her novels, and the present studies on Morrison and her works. Toni Morrison is the very sort of important and influential writer who can bring people thought-provoking ideas and help her readers look into society and the world they live in.Chapter One consists of three sections. Section one gives a brief introduction of the response-inviting structure. As a talented writer, Toni Morrison is good at leaving the"gaps"in her novels and inviting her readers to participate in her stories. Those"gaps"not only exist between paragraphs, but among chapters and between the beginning and the ending of her novels. Therefore, it is appropriate to use the response-inviting structure to explore her writing strategies. Section two explores the distinctive prelude of the novel. The"Dick-and Jane"story is retold three times: the first as"normal"; the second without any punctuation; and the third without any punctuation or space between the letters. Without having read the first story, the third would be like a cipher that needs to be deciphered. In the context of the story, this third section suggests that language itself is a problem, that it does not clearly or easily reflect the complexities of family life. Section three focuses on the arrangement of the chapters in this novel. Instead of conventional chapter orders, The Bluest Eye is divided into four chapters—Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. This kind of organization suggests that events described in the novel will occur inevitably just like the circulation of the four seasons in a year. But the novel does not begin its chapters from the Spring just as the natural law does. It begins its development from the autumn, which implies the story will not develop as the natural process of growth from sowing to harvest, meanwhile implying that Pecola's story is doomed to be a tragic one.Chapter Two discusses the narrative techniques of multiple narrators and the use of black music in the novel. In order to express the theme of the novel well, Morrison adopts the technique of multiple narrators. One is Claudia as a survivor—the first-person narrator, who accounts the episodes in the novel retrospectively. The other is the omniscient narrator who narrates the episodes introduced by extracts from the primer. The use of the first person narrator makes the story seem oral and it also requires the reader to participate with her in the recount of the story. The omniscient narrator can go backward and forward in time and space, and can avoid the limitations of the first-person narrator's consciousness. Section two is about the Blues Aesthetic used in the narratives of the novel. This novel contains an abundance of cultural wisdom. Music is a style, a sound, a feeling and an expression. Music can be a remedy for the blues or a sound for joy. Morrison wishes to insert something that has been fully expressed in music into her writing. It is through this musical language that an understanding can be reached about the characters and their musical languages and silence.Chapter Three focuses on the writing techniques used in the novel. Throughout the novel, many rhetorical devices and writing strategies can be found. They are metaphors, symbols and contrasts, which make the novel more interesting and attractive, more believable and reasonable and help to express the theme of the novel well.The final part draws a conclusion of the previous discussion. After reading the novel several times, we know that Morrison pays much attention to the writing crafts during the process of her creation. Her language is humorous and quick-witted, absorbing the essence of tradition in the black oral literature. Her narration is full of changes, which makes her readers appreciate her novel with great interests. It is clear that Morrison sees her work not only as speaking to a specific audience, but also as reaching beyond the bounds of that audience to the rest of the human kind. When we are going over the novel as a whole, we can find that it is really a perfect combination of the picture and music.