Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye And Sula Essay, Research Paper

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.