The Analysis Of The Bluest Eye From The Perspective Of Rhetoric Of Fiction

Toni Morrison is the most outstanding Afro-American contemporary womenwriter; she received the Nobel Prize in literature in1993and she enjoys a highreputation in her race, for she is the first one who wins the award. Morrison’s novels areall centered on Afro-Americans and their community life. Her works contribute a lot tothe Afro-American culture and provide a window to see the daily life of black people.Toni Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye was published in1970. In the novel,Morrison, in her unique way, creates a little girl as the protagonist. It tells a tragic storyabout an eleven-year-old black girl named Pecola. Living in the rudeness of her parents,the taunt of her classmates and the indifference of the people in her community, Pecolawrongly senses that all her life difficulties are rooted in her being black and ugly. Inorder to be loved by her family and other people, she longs for a pair of blue eyes likethe whites. However, she is raped and impregnated by her own father. Finally, Pecolagoes insane.This thesis uses the theory of the rhetoric of fiction to analyze the novel. Thewestern theory of rhetoric has been developed for over two thousand years from thetime of ancient Greece to the present. Aristotle was the first to write about rhetoric. Nowrhetoric has systematic theories. But the turning point in the development of rhetoriccame when W. Booth’s book Rhetoric of Fiction was published in1961. The publicationof W. Booth’s Rhetoric of Fiction (1961) marks a new era in the rhetoric study offictions and has a significant meaning. After more than four decades, Li Jianjun’s TheStudy in Rhetoric of Fiction (2003) was published. Li’s book gives a detailedsummarization of the theory of the rhetoric of fiction represented by Booth. Li alsoadvances some new concepts of rhetoric and points out the deficiency and limitation ofBooth at the same time.Some researchers have paid attention to the rhetorical skills in this novel, but fewof them studied the rhetoric of fiction in this novel. At least in China, there is noresearcher who analyzes the rhetoric skills in this novel based on the theory of therhetoric of fiction. This thesis will try to use the theory to analyze the novel from a newperspective. It will study the novel in macro-rhetoric and micro-rhetoric perspectives. Altogether there are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter one is a general introduction toToni Morrison and her achievements, the introduction to The Bluest Eye, the researchpurpose and the framework of this thesis. Chapter two presents a brief review of theprevious studies on The Bluest Eye and on the theory of rhetoric of fiction. Chapterthree provides the theoretical foundation of the thesis. Chapter four is the main body. Itconcentrates on Morrison’s rhetoric use in the novel The Bluest Eye. This study iscarried out from macro-rhetoric and micro-rhetoric perspectives. It discusses the controlof point of view, the structure, the musical language and the figure of speech. Chapterfive is the last part of this thesis, which will make a conclusion of the thesis.