The Bluest Eye: Toni Morrison's Narrative Strategy

Toni Morrison 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 outstanding achievement on writing, and became the first African American woman writer to win this award. She is clearly aware that the dignity and identity of the black are based on the relatively integrated African American culture. Most of her stories happened in the black community, where the daily life of the ordinary black people is connected closely with the myth and folk tradition of Africa. Morrison roots herself in black tradition, culture, history and reality and brings the black novels to a new degree both thematically and artistically.The Bluest Eye, Morrison's first novel, published in 1970, is still the best seller of the 21st century and shows her extraordinary talent, charm and her unique writing features as a great black woman writer. In the novel, Morrison subtly probes a distinctive theme---the practical way for the black to healthily survive in the dominant white culture is to retain the black ethical culture root so as to eliminate the internalization of white cultural value---a theme different from that of many other African American writers---racism and the conflict between black and white. In order to reveal the theme of this novel, Morrison applies some prominent narrative techniques such as multiple points of view, interior monologue and multiple narrative structures. Moreover, she makes skillful use of some techniques such as symbolism to depict the social environment and the characters.This thesis is a detailed study of Morrison's distinct narrative strategies in The Bluest Eye, including four chapters, besides Introduction and Conclusion. Introduction introduces the life and achievement of Toni Morrison, the writing background of the novel, and various literary criticisms about the novel. Chapter One is the analysis of alternated narrative voices, which make the narration objective and justified. Besides, diversified narrative structures are exploited to achieve a perfect artistic effect. On the one hand, its meandering narrative style can make the reader feel like sitting over a cup of coffee, chatting with the narrator. On the other hand, the circulative structure suggests that everything occur in the novel will inevitably happen again like the endless repetition of four seasons. Chapter Two, from the viewpoint of symbolism, explores the various layers of symbolic meaning of flowers, colors and names of characters, exemplifying and enriching the theme of the novel. Chapter Three focuses on diversified the goddess mythology and diversified Afro-American traditional culture, varying from Greek myths to folk beliefs and superstitions, from folk speech to fairy tales and then to folk rituals, which show the importance of the comprehension of traditional cultures and the participation of community activities for black people. Chapter Four, from the perspective of folk blues music and gospel music, explains how black people in loss and depress console their mind by singing blues songs and gospel music, and the reason for totally different destinies for Claudia and Pecola, who are almost of the same age. Finally, the part of Conclusion briefly summarizes the strength of The Bluest Eye and its beneficial effect on readers. Generally, Morrison has forged a place for herself and opened a space for other African-American women writers in the American literary canon with her unique writing techniques and her sharp insight to the black world.