Only My Eyes are Left

Morrison triggers certain feelings as I read every passage. At first, he described Claudia’s self-image so well that I understood her desperation to dismember the blue-eyed doll. Then she lets me stand by the kitchen dinner table and dodge Cholly as he catapults into a stove, feeling every blow to my face and wishing his death just like Sammy did. I feel the cold climb up my spine as I too nag about the lack of coal in this household, because at some point we are all just going to freeze. And now, I want to disappear with Pecola but my eyes are the only thing that keeps me from vanishing. I’m always so close.

Her use of detail and shift in narration, allows me to experience every emotion and feel every stimuli that bounces off the walls of the household. It becomes so detailed that I feel the floor thud as Mrs. Breedlove limps into her room. This is the kind of reaction that every author should achieve through dialogue, exposition, or narration.

We Lost It

Never have I ever encountered so much hatred in a couple of paragraphs. From flesh to flesh, and words to screams, Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove pour out the sum of their articulated fury. Of course every bad relationship starts with our dearest friend alcohol because when you wish somebody dead, it’s probably because they are close to death anyways, “strike that bastard down from his pea-knuckle of a pride”(42). And if that isn’t enough and Jesus is not answering your prayers well them go ahead and trip him into the red-hot stove, “ get him, Jesus! Get him!”(44). That’ll do the job!

But wait I forgot to introduce these characters. It might come as a surprise or it might sound familiar, but they are husband and wife. Makes you want to consider divorce, yet in my case it makes me curious as to how this couple met. How long ago was it when they fell for love at first sight? How would they describe their tender feeling towards each other before reality struck and ripped them away from their placid relationship? I yearn to read about the times when they went out on dates and gushed over their embarrassments as they vowed for true love. But this seems miles away from where they stand now and I can’t help but feel nostalgic for something I hope was real. They are killing themselves inside and they are killing the entire household as they fill it up with hatred. It won’t be long when it bursts.

A Story by Definition

Given the fact that the first chapters are actually told by a child, in this case Claudia, the vocabulary is well…childlike. The words are simplistic and even self-explanatory, but when their definitions are put together they tell a story of their own.

Martydrom: A display of feigned or exaggerated suffering

Schemata: A representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model.

Debris: Scattered fragments, typically of something wrecked or destroyed.

Zest: Great enthusiasm and energy.

Hollyhocks: A tall Eurasian plant (Alcea rosea) of the mallow family, widely cultivated for its large showy flowers

Starch: Stiffen (fabric or clothing) with starch

The family is clearly suffering and the children are mirror images of who they are supposed to be, except that they are shattered wrecked and destroyed. They have been born into an outline of their lives. The way they despise their roots, the way they curse poverty, and the way they accept the fact that they were born into misery is merely proof of the zest they were deprived from since the beginning of their existence. Like Hollyhocks, the minds of the adults are thin, narrow, and still, but the children seem to breakthrough those limitations as long as they stay innocent and naïve when it comes to reality. They are shielded by creation, imagination, and most importantly their ability to question.

UGLYUGLYUGLYUGLYUGLYUGLY

That was the only word that stood out in the text. While I was reading I took the job of a word watcher and decided that there was no better way to analyze the characters than by their lexicon. If I were to classify the usage of this word it would be lined up like this:

“You are ugly people.”

“Their ugliness was unique.”

“They wore their ugliness.”

“Why were they so ugly?”

The narrator has the most disgusted perception of the Breedloves, she expresses the fact that they inherited or perhaps were born into their ugliness, “…they took the ugliness into their hands” (38). Even though she emphasizes every despicable detail of the character’s physique, at the same time she acknowledges the way they adjust to their identity. Mrs. Breedlove takes hers for support of a role she frequently plays, Sammy uses his as a weapon to inflict pain upon others, and Pecola simply hides behind hers as if were a mask that shielded her from life (ironically it is the same thing that haunts her). 

Morrison believes their ugliness does not belong to them, in other words they were convicted to eternal discrimination and still they did nothing to contradict the statement! This can only mean that the author’s true purpose is to demonstrate the true beauty of the family by doing the exact opposite: calling them ugly. It is almost as if he were tempting the reader to agree with his vivid descriptions when in reality he is showing that they can choose to accept their racial background and embrace who they are, but instead they lower their heads and accept to hear that they are branded as uniquely ugly. They fall victims of the imposter syndrome. The human tendency to self-doubt your potential and brand yourself as INCOMPETENT. The Breedloves yearn for the return of their mask.

Peeped

While reading the first chapter I realized there were specific phrases or sentences that were unique when it came to the understanding of the characters and the author’s illustration of their lives.

Sentence #1

“Gone the ink marks from legs and face, all my creations and accumulations of the day gone, and replaced by goose pimples”(22).

Claudia is actually saddened by the fact that the shower is washing away the marks on her skin, yet we usually perceive a shower for washing away the dirt, filth and even memories or emotions. When you are stressed out by a situation there is nothing more soothing than a nice hot bath, but for Claudia it is obviously the worst ending for her day. This sentence emphasizes the childlike narration because children actually HATE taking a shower and what we perceive as dirt and filth, Claudia sees as “creations and accumulations of the day gone”. She feels like her memories are erased every time she steps in and she is fixated on the way the ink runs down her legs alongside the drops of water.

Sentence #2

“ Ain’t nobody even peeped in here to see whether that child has a loaf of bread. Look like they would just peep in to see whether I had a loaf of bread to give her but naw”(25).

Although written in a very informal conversational tone, Mama has a far more important social statement that uses a loaf of bread as her metaphor towards economic injustice. “Ain’t nobody” can perhaps be “old trifling Cholly”, Pecola’s father, who has been out of jail for two days and hasn’t bothered to pick up his daughter. It might also be the government for not supporting her financially now that she is raising a girl that is not even her own. Her irritated tone implies that the problem is not whether Mama is giving her kids enough food, its whether she has food to give them, and nobody has bothered to peep in and realize it.

Sentence #3

“I picked toe jam, Frieda cleaned her fingernails with her teeth, and Pecola finger-traced some scars on her knee-her head cocked to one side”(24).

In a healthy environment when we just sit there, you can say: I fixed my dress, Beatriz finished the last crumbs of her cake, and Andrea painted her nails. This is an event more suitable and typical when it comes to girls of a young age. Obviously an event these three girls are far from experiencing . Toni Morrison uses a simplistic tone in order to exemplify the way tracing one’s scars is just anotherway to entertain yourself, its normal. I hope I’m not the only who agrees to disagree, but the author wants this exact reaction in the reader: I WANT TO LOOK AWAY!

As White as a Rose's Pedal

IWISHIWASABLUEEYEDYELLOWHAIREDPINKSKINNEDDOLLIWISHIWASABLUEYEDYELLOWHAIREDPINKSKINNEDDOLLIWISHIWASABLUEYEDYELLOWHAIREDPINKSKINNEDDOLLIWISHIWASABLUEEYEDYELLOWHAIREDPINKSKINNEDDOLL

While reading the second chapter, as a reader, we finally catch a glimpse of how this family’s life is full of abuse, discrimination and misery. Morrison demonstrated Claudia’s escape from her reality through a blue-eyed doll. But wait. You might think like the rest of the adults, and believe she wants to play house while feeding the precious doll and nurturing it as her mother. You’re wrong. How can Claudia be given such a false representation of beauty, and not be expected to yearn every aspect of it?

Her desire is so powerful that she feels that having it to play with is not enough. So what does she do? Simple, she dismembers it “to see of what it is made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped…”(20).

Your reaction: “You-don’t-know-how-to-take-care-of-nothing. Now-you-got-one-a-beautiful-one-and-you-tear-it-up-whats-the-matter-with-you?”

Oh stop it you sound just like her mother!

Morrison creates a character that does not have anything materialistic in her life, and yet she does not want to possess any object. She would rather feel. She would rather be the very thing she holds on to everyday because she believes her race is guilty for everything that happens in her life.