Literary Analysis: Gothic Themes, Lolita, and Postmodernism
The Monkey’s Paw, The Magi, The Open Window, Freaks, A Rose for Emily: We have been taught that everything logical must be true. This idea comes from the Era of Enlightenment, as they rejected God. Physics and math became a new light, a new direction to society. The problem is that math is an abstraction, math is in the human mind, therefore is only as real as God was. As once society was moved by mythology, then God came, and, in the same fashion, Darwin and mathematics came. We have always approached literature as something different from reality. Nonetheless, literature is a mirror for society to represent their hopes and fears. Pieces such as Metropolis (1917) or Mad Max (2015) represent the dangers and hopes of transgressions in meanings and powers in society. Literature is then also a representation of a human thought based off reality, just like math or physics. Therefore, most literature has that inclination towards the Gothic art, each piece with its own context; an inclination to explore the potential of humankind. Where to go and where not to, a concept of “Us” and the “Other”, the good and the bad; all of those concepts stay within the exploration of humankind’s potential intended to be explored by literature. From these constructions of fear some of the monsters in pop culture are born from literature; Frankenstein, Dracula, the Hunchback. All of them with a common characteristic, a human background. As deformed as they are, all fears are only that, deformations of reality, pieces or wreckages of humankind. In this way, Gothic and Victorian literature made a very much still relevant suggestion on humanity; we can see the right and the wrong, differentiate them. Nonetheless, both aspects coexist within the same concept, inside every human there is both goodness and wickedness.
The Nine Mile Walk, The Magic Barrel: The movie Freaks (1932) gives a twist to the concept of normality, in the movie malformation becomes the norm. Monstrosity becomes the norm, turning monstrosity against the common and the everyday instead. Therefore becoming a pillar in contemporary literature, making the audience align towards the Other. In the movie, the supposed Freaks welcome the Normal girl into their normality; just after that, she refuses to become one with the monstrosity that has become the norm along the film. In the short story A Rose for Emily we can perfectly perceive how something is odd. Yet, still it seems hard to really figure out what is exactly that keeps the reader from empathizing with the main character. The conclusion that Emily is a killer is easily appreciable from what the narrator says; nonetheless it is only given to the reader through foreshadowing. The reader interprets the story how someone would do with gossip, in a biased way. Either way, the narration, as the narrator, is biased; this is also the reason it lacks from certain unknown private facts. That is indeed the way Faulkner wanted the short story to be, he intended to give the reader a wide variety of possibilities for the story to have.
The Lottery, A Good Man Is Hard to Find:
Analyzing Nabokov’s Lolita
Lolita: The novel is a confession written by a man who is awaiting his trial for murder. It is narrated as a statement for a jury which already knows the true facts. From the beginning of the story, the editor tells us that he has changed the names of certain characters and locations in order to protect their identities. However, he says that he will maintain Lolita’s name because not only he was explicitly asked to do so by Humbert Humbert but because it was essential for the understanding of the novel. The reason why Lolita is pronounced the Spanish way and not the English one is because Nabokov wanted it to carry an ambience of desire. The foreword’s purpose is to give credibility to the story, it explains to us of most of the things that we need to know in order to start reading the actual novel. The first and most important thing is that our narrator is not trustworthy. Apparently, the novel is Humbert Humbert’s honest confession written before the trial in which he will be sentenced. Nevertheless, we see a lot of artificiality in the way that things are told (for example, the fact that the first and last word of the novel is Lolita). Apart from that, the novel contains numerous literary references to authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Elliot or Borges, among others. This means that he is constructing a narrative fathered by the great authors of literature. This gives him authority and helps him disguise his guiltiness. One of the main problems of the novel is that it constantly tries to ascertain whether Humbert Humber is guilty or not. Of course, this is a manipulation because the narrator is not an objective third party but a murderer trying to explain why and how he is not guilty. He will try and engage in our sympathy in order for us to exonerate him. So, all in all, we as readers are part of the jury. Another problem is the fact that the editor, who from the beginning states that he has made a few changes within the text, publishes the novel after both Lolita and Humbert have already died. This not only means that we only have Humbert Humbert’s written words to rely on, but it also implies that some elements have been manipulated and therefore we are not getting the whole truth. In chapter eight, Humbert Humbert confesses that he “has only words to play with”, this means that the rendering of his memories are playful and thus, tricky. And thanks to that beautiful and precise use of language, is that eventually, we get to understand the darkness within the novel as it hides the presence of sexual violence. The foreword makes the first allusion to the number 52 (Humbert dies in 1952), which is going to be a cryptical number through the whole novel. He is constantly trying to put the blame on something else: his childhood, his parents, literary authors, the bad luck he had when he was unable to fulfill his sexual desires with Annabel Leigh, etc. Annabel Leigh’s name is an allusion to the character of Annabel Lee which appears in a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. The fact that Lolita’s name is pronounced emphasizing the “li” is a sign that, for Humbert Humbert, Annabel and Lolita mean the same. Even the description of the pronunciation of Lolita’s name implies a sexual innuendo. Humbert Humbert does not refer to Dolores like everyone else does, he makes up a new name for her, in order to possess her. He takes everything from her, even her own name and identity. What appears to be just a lovable nickname turns out to be an exertion of power, he re-baptizes her. We only have Humbert words to read, so when the narrator recounts Lolita’s actions he is maybe trying to decorate his memory in order not to appear as the one who was imposing all the power in their abusive relationship and forcing Lolita to do things that she didn’t actually want. We do not miss her crying in her pillow every night or her becoming sick and vomiting almost after every sexual encounter with Humbert Humbert, these are not common things for someone who is accepting that everything is fine because she is in love with this man. It is obvious that Lolita is terrified, that she is being blackmailed and she is being punished by being taken away from everything she knows. Here we encounter the first element of hidden information: “About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer”. If Humbert Humbert was 12 years old at the time and another 12 years had passed, that means he was 24 years old when Lolita was born; If Lolita was already 9 or 10 when this was going on, Humbert should have been around 35 when he met her. In other words, from the very beginning, we are told by the narrator himself that there is something rotten going on. When he states that it all began in a “princedom by the sea”, he is acknowledging that he was never the king, therefore he was never in full control of anything that happened. If we keep on reading, we are directly addressed as the members of the jury that we are (“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury”), and we find two important elements. The first one is a mention to the seraphs, angels that also appear in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, Annabel Lee. In it, the poetic voice states that the love between him and Annabel Lee was so great that even the angels envied them: But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee— With a love that the wingéd seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me. With this allusion, the narrator is trying to say that the angels were also jealous of his relationship with Lolita. The second element can be found in the last sentence, “Look at this tangle of thorns”, a clear reference to the crown of thorns that Jesus wore through his Passion. We can deduce that Humbert is trying to portray himself as a martyr. In the second chapter Humbert Humbert begins to tell his story of his birth in Paris and his childhood on the Riviera, where a frequently absent father and a kind, yet strict aunt raise him.
His mother had died suddenly when he was very young. In this same chapter, Humbert says that his great grandfather was an expert in aeolian harps. One of the most celebrated poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is titled The Eolian Harp, in it, the poet tries to explain how when he writes he does so with his heart and pays no mind to his brain. The scene described in the poem, where a musical instrument is played by the blowing wind, implies a sexual innuendo between the instrument and the natural element. Furthermore, it implies that the wind must be more violent in order for the harp to sound optimally (one is asking the other to play him harder this next time and repeat the wrong). With that mention, Humbert Humber is trying to find an absolution. He uses words to try to convince us that he is only doing what his nature implies, that is why he provides us with all of those anecdotes from before he met Lolita’s mother (this is not my fault, it is my nature). A lot of jokes are told throughout the first chapters of the novel, this is just a strategy to make the reader lower their guard. Humbert Humbert tries to gain our complicity, to be our friend and to be intimate with us, for us to be benevolent in our final verdict. There are also references to novels like Les Miserables or Don Quixote, they are not arbitrary:
- Les Miserables is a story where the fatherly figure of Jean Valjean takes a little girl named Cosette under his wing right after her mother’s death. Here, Humbert tries to deceive the jury by saying that his only intentions with Lolita were those of taking care of her like a father does with his child.
- Don Quixote, inherently, brings the idea of idealization. Humbert could never fulfill his sexual drive with Annabel Lee, his “dream-girl” (exhibit number one), who died right after the summer they met. In his mind she will always be a twelve-year-old girl.
There is a clear reference to the platonic allegory of the Cave in chapter three. Humbert Humbert explains that what he is going to say about Lolita is partly real and partly imaginary (things were probably more violent, more obscure, more dirty than what it might look). In platonic idea of the archetypes and the memories of both Annabel Lee and Lolita, there is also a connection with Borges (which appears as an anagram later on in the novel): when you tell the same story many times you end up forgetting the real story and you start to remember only the words that you use to tell said story. The beauty of the language used in Lolita is going try to hide what is really going on. Our narrator excuses himself saying that, since he was unable to fulfill his sexual desires with Annabel Lee and eventually this girl died, that became the seed that gave root to his derangement. Humbert actually makes a confession: “was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity?”. Was he so frustrated by this first relationship that it eventually drove him to search in other girls what he could never get from Annabel Lee; or was he already a sick boy from the beginning? This is the most important question of the first fifteen chapters (what came first, Humbert’s sickness or his trauma). Psychologically speaking, this inquiry becomes really relevant because when Humbert starts to describe the nymphets, he says that they are evil beings that hunt him and wonders if Annabel Lee was already one when he met her, or if the fact that he couldn’t accomplish his desires with her that turned her into a nymphet. He states very clearly that, a thirteen year old girl, will never look like a nymphet to a thirteen year old boy. You need to be at least twenty years older in order to perceive a change. The problem comes when he starts quoting US laws and literary arguments inn order to excuse himself for being a 35-year-old man who likes 12-year-old girls. He uses the same law, which he is being judged in order to look for exoneration. In chapter 4, the narrator states: “I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel”. This means that the novel starts with Annabel’s story and that the infatuation of Humbert for Lolita began with his thoughts for Annabel. Throughout the whole novel, our unreliable narrator tries to keep things from us. One of these elements can be noticed when we are reading Humbert’s explanation of Annabel Lee’s childhood and out of the blue, he mentions Lolita. There is no purpose for this random mention other than that of confessing that, in reality, Lolita didn’t love him (“Lolita, had you loved me thus!”). There is a contraposition between Lolita’s erotic scenes which are never described in-depth, and those of Annabel and his younger self, which are so explicit that could be classified as pornography. Humbert Humbert describes the scene as if it had been protagonised by adults, instead of kids, this is done with the sole purpose of turning the jury on, if they feel aroused by his testimony (a sex scene by twelve-year-olds), they won’t be morally authorized to convict him. Our main character has some confessions that he wants to get out of the way from the beginning.
One of these is the fact that he was repeatedly secluded in a mental institution snd the satisfaction that he obtains by knowing that he had deceived his psychiatrist by assuring him that he was impotent and homosexual. H.H. talks denies this impotence and homosexuality several times in the novel, so much so that it might lead the readers to think that they might be true:
- When Humbert is about to kill Quilty he tells him that he had never been able to enjoy Lolita (as if she were an object).
- What H.H. finds most attractive in nymphets is that they have not fully developed their female traits (little girls that have not reached womanhood are just like boys). He actually makes a reference to Ancient Greece, a time where it was common for teenagers to have sexual relationships with older men.
28/10/20 Readings: Lolita In the novel, Humbert Humbert portrays himself as a really handsome man and says that he could have had any woman he wanted. However, we see that the women that he gets involved in are neither particularly smart nor beautiful. He married his first wife because her body was similar to that of a girl, but he describes her as a very ignorant person. His second marriage, after Lolita escapes and he becomes an alcoholic, was no different. This can be seen as a trait of delusion: maybe he was kidding himself, saying that he could get any woman but in reality, we never see him courting intelligent and beautiful women, he always tends to go for the sure prey (women he knows that he is not going to strike out), like Lolita’s mother.mWhen H.H. sees Lolita for the first time, he becomes infatuated with her. He decides to start a relationship with her mother, Charlotte, in order to be closer to her and writes all of his pedophiliac longings with Lolita (who was 12 years old at the time) in a journal, which he secretly kept. When Lolita is sent off to a summer camp, Humbert marries Charlotte and plans to kill her in order to be left alone with her daughter. However, Charlotte finds his diary and, after learning that he hates her but loves her daughter, confronts him. Humbert denies everything, but Charlotte tells him she is leaving him and storms out of the house. At that moment, a car hits her and she dies instantly. H.H., then, picks Lolita from her summer camp (kidnaps her), feeling extremely lucky, as he has achieved his goal without having to carry the feeling of guilt for the death of Charlotte. The journey they will both begin will become very existentialist. The kidnapping situation brings us to a conundrum if we look at it from the point of view of existentialism. If we think about it there are only two eyes (two I), the world is reduced to two people and eventually one of them (H.H.) is going to try to annihilate the other (Lolita). There are two possibilities for this character, to change and accept to be the weak link or to escape, which is what Lolita ends up doing, leaving Humber by himself, wondering what had happened. At the end of chapter five, which recounts what happened the night H.H. kidnaps Lolita, he is looking through the motel window when he sees what seems to be a little girl undressing in her room and he gets so excited that he prepares to masturbate himself. When he looks for a second time he realizes that it was in reality the bare arm of a man who was about to self-validate and he feels embarrassed. This feeling of guilt will be present through the novel. The first ten chapters of the novel deal with the description of Humbert Humbert’s profile as a character, as a good man that went into the life of Charlotte and Lolita. In chapter 29, H.H. spikes Lolita’s drink and when she is almost unconscious he carries decides to carry her to his room to rape her. In that moment, someone at the bar notices them and tells him that it is not an appropriate behavior causing him to become paranoid. He wouldn’t be paranoid if he hadn’t been about to do something disgusting. Apparently the book is a confession written for a jury but H.H. describes every approach to Lolita in such a way that it is impossible to believe that he produced it out of repentance. He describes every foreplay in order to remember it and enjoy it all over again. At the end of that same chapter Humber Humber has Lolita in his bed and is actually uncomfortable about what is going to happen, he says: “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me”. With this he is actually putting down on paper his ultimate victory over Lolita. If we continue on reading he will come to life again and rape her, he can only be stoped if we stop reading. This is why the book must be published, as the editor stated in the foreword, Lolita is trapped inside H.H.’s imagination, the world needs to get to know her story and set her free. After him raping her over and over, he directly addresses to the women of the jury and swears that it was Lolita the one who seduced him. He builds up his character in order to be pitiful throughout the whole novel just to blame her at the end. Humbert eventually gets a job at Beardsley College somewhere in the Northeast, and Lolita enrolls in school.
Her wish to socialize with boys her own age causes a strain in their relationship, and Humbert becomes more restrictive in his rules. Nonetheless, he allows her to appear in a school play. Lolita begins to behave secretively around Humbert, and he accuses her of being unfaithful and takes her away on another road trip. On the road, Humbert suspects that they are being followed. Lolita doesn’t notice anything, and Humbert accuses her of conspiring with their stalker. Lolita becomes ill, and Humbert must take her to the hospital. However, when Humbert returns to get her, the nurses tell him that her uncle has already picked her up. Humbert flies into a rage, but then he calms himself and leaves the hospital, heartbroken and angry. He goes all the way back to the beginning of their journey and he realizes that the stalker had been following them from the very beginning of their journey: Clare Quilty. This character is most probably an imaginary one, created by H.H. to carry his blame and to deviate the attention from the real matter. He is basically Humbert Humbert’s doppelgänger. He is included in the list of authors that are available to read in H.H.’s jail and is the writer The Hunted Hunters, the play that Lolita performs in her school (which is also the name of the motel where Humbert took Lolita in the first night of their journey). H.H. describes him as a very nice man, whom Lolita had always idolized; she even had a poster of him in her room. For the next two years, Humbert searches for Lolita, unearthing clues about her kidnapper in order to exact his revenge. He halfheartedly takes up with a woman named Rita, but then he receives a note from Lolita, now married and pregnant, asking for money. Assuming that Lolita has married the man who had followed them on their travels, Humbert becomes determined to kill him. He finds Lolita, poor and pregnant at seventeen. Humbert realizes that Lolita’s husband is not the man who kidnapped her from the hospital. When pressed, Lolita admits that Clare Quilty, a playwright whose presence has been felt from the beginning of the book, had taken her from the hospital. Lolita loved Quilty, but he kicked her out when she refused to participate in a child pornography orgy. Still devoted to Lolita, Humbert begs her to return to him. Lolita gently refuses. Humbert gives her 4,000 dollars and then departs. He tracks down Quilty at his house and shoots him multiple times, killing him. Humbert is arrested and put in jail, where he continues to write his memoir, stipulating that it can only be published upon Lolita’s death. After Lolita dies in childbirth, Humbert dies of heart failure, and the manuscript is sent to John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.
Postmodernism in Literature
Therefore, now that reason leaves aside everything not reasonable –indeed– but not everything that is unreasonable is necessarily not real the fantastic and the magical acquire a new path. Magic or Fantasy in this case is everything that subverses natural causes. [CHARACTER STANDARDS IN SOUTHERN GOTHIC: PRESENTATION] There can be a whole story based off of nothing at all; “The Nine Mile Walk” seems to be so. Nonetheless, even lacking any kind of plot, the story makes absolute sense. The same way the singular pieces of a closed system make sense between each other while being at contradiction with other systems of logic. To further understand this characteristic postmodern concept, the sentence “A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain” shall be recalled, there is nothing placed randomly within the utterance, its relevance, though, is arbitrary. Therefore, the reader encounters a story about logic but without any trace of logic within the story itself. It goes far 3 beyond, further into the story, once the narrator expresses the idea with preciseness; it seems as if it was expressed also with –false– truthfulness. ℙ→ℚ; in the story ℚ is given before ℙ. Therefore, ℙ is completely constructed. The short story from 1958 “The Magic Barrel” serves as an excellent example of post-war narrative; a story broken and fragmented, with multiple layers –most hidden in the shadows– just like the society it is set in. The story oozes a grey aura, reflecting how society is supported by standards and conventions. From the rabbis trying to follow rather secular standards such encouraging the expansion of the social circles to a matchmaker –a respected member of society– constantly failing; everything in the story seems crafted to beckon magic while maintaining normalcy. Furthermore, the magical element is already in the title, making the reader’s persistent search for magical elements unrewarding but constantly running. Therefore, Malamud builds an updated fairytale set in New York, with elements such as the witch in the woods –the matchmaker– or the love potion. The luck seems to turn into magic also when the matchmaker’s daughter photo comes out of the Magic Barrel. The magic may lay actually in the illusion of choice.
Holiday: Acercamiento al Almotásim: This short story is a short story which isn’t an actual short story; but resembles a review without being one while being a note on a note on the review on a novel. As complex as it is, the characteristic fixation of the text makes prominently important its structure; it is composed by two different notes. It is a platonic structure, based off of perfect copies of the real world – sometimes copies of copies even. Due to the subsequent editions and translations to the original novel being reviewed, it is noted that the copies won’t resemble the original anymore, each slightly change from the previous one. The reader has access only to this extremely distorted last one. The structure is therefore part of the narration. Hence, the reader may both sense a real feeling to the fictional, and an unreal feeling to the real. Additionally, the structure is used to expose a unified principle as a form of expressing the pantheistic idea that anything is all things. Accordingly, at times, the narrator shows great knowledge of detailed information, but at other times he cannot grasp the most basic concepts. His narrative is uncertain and inconstant. His confusion serves to emphasize the main character’s incomprehension of the fictitious book as he goes on his pilgrimage. Postmodern stories and narrators care not for reaching an ultimate truth or virtue, no Holy Grail. Therefore, the stories fall on despair, lacking elements of hope, and in which the characters are often unable to reach their goals. In this sense, Borges’ endings seem like an inspiration for many postmodern American authors.
The Crying of Lot 49: The novel may, at first, seem short; its pages unravel in a very complex way nonetheless. From the beginning, the text already seems like a closed system, such as a game or a joke prepared by Pynchon. The first element that gives this away is the character’s names, very meaningful from Oedipa to Mucho Maas. Furthermore, the narration pretends to be a detective or Noir story lacking though a real crime. The novel then becomes a series of absurdities, mimicking a reality that eludes global and fixed sense. Likewise, while having sense by itself, the play within the novel lacks an actual connection to the rest of the plot. Nonetheless, it constantly seems to be central to the narration. As the importance of W.A.S.T.E. and a trumpet-like symbol seem important to the main plot, only to end up as a postal fraud, something traditionally considered too dull to fill a whole plot. Conversely, the novel plants the seed of doubt on the readers’ head. The actual consequences of the mail plot are never reached and somehow the possibilities of it being real and it being just an invention seem both farfetched and extreme. The confusion and distinct randomness that take place and reign all over the novel may relate to the reader to the experiment of Maxwell’s Demon. Developed by physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, it is a thought experiment that tries to find an exception to the Second Rule of Thermodynamics1 in which a Demon controls a valve between two compartments filled with gas bodies at the same temperature and isolated from the rest of the universe.
The Demon’s job is to open and close the valve in order to let all the fast moving particles into one space; hence heating a compartment and keeping the other cool, defying the second rule of Thermodynamics. In the novel, Inverarity acts just as Maxwell’s demon; it is an element external to the closed system that is the novel and nonetheless acts as a valve to increase and decrease pressure, to modify the entropy of the story. Moreover, Oedipa constantly falls on accidental connections and false clues, trying to fill her system and build a consistent plot. Despite that, the plot ends up building by itself; and even when it does, neither Oedipa, nor the reader, can make sense out of it. The casual connections keep appearing along the novel and only once it is finished one can start to foresee which signals were useful and which were untrustworthy. On the whole, we encounter a broken system, so cluttered with elements that it is almost impossible to have a sense in its traditional conception. This idea has to do with the language used during the novel. Just as the novel, language is a system that works and properly functions but also a system that constantly brings to the forefront its own flaws. Language is the only tool one may have to connect to reality, whereas the connection is often weak or false or just fails. The concept that language is broken would bring up metalanguage to the point, that metalanguage would need a metametalanguage and so on and so forth. And all these elements would coincide all in the postmodern point of view, language made the novel to be what it is but what it is, also defined the language within it.
Elements to Analyze
- Radio KCUF read from back to back is FUCK.
- “Lot” is first used as parking lot, then as auction lot.
- The usage of the word “nymphets” gives the clue that Mucho abuses children, as a reference to Humbert Humbert in Lolita.
The Soft Machine: Butterflies vs Mudman: Appearance: how I am perceived. The space is perfect for what’s to happen. There are no obstacles. Unreliable narrator; he’s always justifying and asking the reader what other option there was. The fault is to the need: I had to. (Abuser). The abuser only apologizes to do it again, and there is always a “but”. The voices of the characters are almost invisible, the colors, the noises, distant Dream-like atmosphere. If it had been an accident, he would have walked into the shop with her, there wouldn’t have been a problem in being seen together. In his mind, with the ice-cream, she is seducing him. The narrator says she’s going to protect her, that’s why he doesn’t let her go even if she wants to when they’re at the canal. But he’s actually just protecting himself. That’s self-denial. Do they see reality in another way or are the abusers building up a narrative for justification? If language is ambiguous, unreliable, imperfect, how can we rely on the reality it represents? But we do not have another option, even if it’s faulty. We talk in metaphors. We are disconnected from reality. The purpose of the Cabalistic endeavor is to look for that original language, the one which was not separated from reality but was and created reality. We cannot define nor justify what is rational. Neither can we define then what is true. Therefore, not every notion can be contained in rationality, while having the possibility of being true. That’s what the Cabala proposed, to insinuate God within words. The world then must be a name that contains God, which becomes an infinite loop. The Creation is then a Linguistic process. To create, language is needed. But language needs to be created. But the Golem cannot speak he cannot create. Like human beings, we lack the language of God so we cannot create what he can, just a mud man. The rabbi created other Golem, who was imperfect. So the creator had to be imperfect too. Then, God, our creator has to be imperfect too and looking for his own God. But in “Mudman”, the creature becomes stronger than the creator and has the power to destroy. For the protagonist of the short story, all sins are equally punishable. No middle ground. For him, murdering his wife and her being unfaithful is the same. Does the Mudman exist or not? Either way, the wife dies. We do not know for sure if she’s being unfaithful. But he believes so and acts in consequence just in case.
Analyzing Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye: The postmodernism reflected on this novel is marked by destruction; lacking connection between the word and its meaning. Therefore, language appears as a central piece of the text itself. Despite this focus on language, the novel has a light narration, easy to follow; with a peculiar structure nonetheless. The novel takes off with alliteration, giving away a sense of disconnection; the text exposes the lack of sense in words when they start repeating. The words traditionally relate to images and concepts; during the novel, however, the connection is lost, reality usually differs from language or concepts related to it. The main connection broken between these elements is that of children’s books and references, which usually portray happiness solely as whiteness and economic status –the American Dream. This kind of miscommunication gets to build a story that denounces trauma and establishes writing and storytelling as a way to dealing with it. The reconstruction of the character’s past is her way to deal with the trauma that caused it. Throughout, The Bluest Eye seems to emanate from its very title the idea of perception and the reality that comes from spoken and written word; the reality that in the novel then may create frustration. In the novel, whiteness is associated with beauty and cleanliness (particularly according to Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove), but also with sterility. In contrast, color is associated with happiness, most clearly in the rainbow of yellow, green, and purple memories Pauline Breedlove sees when making love with Cholly.
Morrison uses this imagery to emphasize the destructiveness of the black community’s privileging of whiteness and to suggest that vibrant color, rather than the pure absence of color, is a stronger image of happiness and freedom. The novel, though, has another strong pillar to it; that of sexuality –more specifically, sexual violence. In the novel, parents carry much of the blame for their children’s often traumatic sexual coming-of-age. The most blatant case is Cholly’s rape of his own daughter, Pecola, which is, in a sense, a repetition of the sexual humiliation Cholly experienced under the gaze of two racist whites. Frieda’s experience is portrayed somehow less painful than Pecola’s because her parents immediately come to her rescue, playing the appropriate protector and underlining, by way of contrast, the extent of Cholly’s crime against his daughter.
But Frieda is not given information that lets her understand what has happened to her. Instead, she lives with a vague fear of being “ruined” like the local prostitutes. The prevalence of sexual violence in the novel suggests that racism may not be the only agression distorting black girlhoods. The Bluest Eye provides an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards deform the lives of black girls and women. Implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, including the white baby doll given to Claudia, the idealization of Shirley Temple, the consensus that light-skinned Maureen is cuter than the other black girls, the idealization of white beauty in the movies, and Pauline Breedlove’s preference for the little white girl she works for over her daughter. Adult women, having learned to hate the blackness of their own bodies, take this hatred out on their children—Mrs. Breedlove shares the conviction that Pecola is ugly, and lighter-skinned Geraldine curses Pecola’s blackness. Claudia remains free from this worship of whiteness, imagining Pecola’s unborn baby as beautiful in its blackness. But it is hinted that once Claudia reaches adolescence, she too will learn to hate herself, as if racial self-loathing were a necessary part of maturation. The person who suffers most from white beauty standards is, of course, Pecola. She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. This hopeless desire leads ultimately to madness, suggesting that the fulfillment of the wish for white beauty may be even more tragic than the wish impulse itself. Pecola’s desire for blue eyes, while highly unrealistic, is based on one correct insight into her world: she
believes that the cruelty she witnesses and experiences is connected to how she is seen. If she had beautiful blue eyes, Pecola imagines, people would not want to do ugly things in front of her or to her. The accuracy of this insight is affirmed by her experience of being teased by the boys—when Maureen comes to her rescue, it seems that they no longer want to behave badly under Maureen’s attractive gaze. In a more basic sense, Pecola and her family are mistreated in part because they happen to have black skin. By wishing for blue eyes rather than lighter skin, Pecola indicates that she wishes to see things differently as much as she wishes to be seen differently. She can only receive this wish, in effect, by blinding herself. Pecola is then able to see herself as beautiful, but only at the cost of her ability to see accurately both herself and the world around her. The connection between how one is seen and what one sees has a uniquely tragic outcome for her. The Bluest Eye is not one story, but multiple, sometimes contradictory, interlocking stories. Characters tell stories to make sense of their lives, and these stories have tremendous power for both good and evil. Claudia’s stories, in particular, stand out for their affirmative power. First and foremost, she tells Pecola’s story, and though she questions the accuracy and meaning of her version, to some degree her attention and care redeem the ugliness of Pecola’s life. Furthermore, when the adults describe Pecola’s pregnancy and hope that the baby dies, Claudia and Frieda attempt to rewrite this story as a hopeful one, casting themselves as saviors. Finally, Claudia resists the premise of white superiority, writing her own story about the beauty of blackness. Stories by other characters are often destructive to themselves and others. The story Pauline Breedlove tells herself about her own ugliness reinforces her self-hatred, and the story she tells herself about her own martyrdom reinforces her cruelty toward her family. Soaphead Church’s personal narratives about his good intentions and his special relationship with God are pure hypocrisy. Stories are as likely to distort the truth as they are to reveal it. While Morrison apparently believes that stories can be redeeming, she is no blind optimist and refuses to let us rest comfortably in any one version of what happens. To a large degree, The Bluest Eye is about both the pleasures and the perils of sexual initiation. Early in the novel, Pecola has her first menstrual period, and toward the novel’s end she has her first sexual experience, which is violent. Frieda knows about and anticipates menstruating, and she is initiated into sexual experience when she is fondled by Henry Washington. We are told the story of Cholly’s first sexual experience, which ends when two white men force him to finish having sex while they watch. The fact that all of these experiences are humiliating and hurtful indicates that sexual coming-of-age is fraught with peril, especially in an abusive environment.
In the novel, parents carry much of the blame for their children’s often traumatic sexual comingof-age. The most blatant case is Cholly’s rape of his own daughter, Pecola, which is, in a sense, a repetition of the sexual humiliation Cholly experienced under the gaze of two racist whites. Frieda’s experience is less painful than Pecola’s because her parents immediately come to her rescue, playing the appropriate protector and underlining, by way of contrast, the extent of Cholly’s crime against his daughter. But Frieda is not given information that lets her understand what has happened to her. Instead, she lives with a vague fear of being “ruined” like the local prostitutes. The prevalence of sexual violence in the novel suggests that racism is not the only thing that distorts black girlhoods. There is also a pervasive assumption that women’s bodies are available for abuse. The refusal on the part of parents to teach their girls about sexuality makes the girls’ transition into sexual maturity difficult.
How does the use of colours works as a narrative device in the Bluest Eye? From the tile itself, the novel puts colours in a paramount role for the narration. Colours acquire adjacent meanings. And those meanings transform and evolve over the novel, giving a more complex sense even to some of them. Indeed given the nature of the book and the gaze of the author over racial issues, the main colours to appear and to provoke deep connotation are black and white. Nonetheless there is also a profound focus on other colours such as –deep– purple, yellow, green or blue even; colours that may paint over a white canvas –make it even brighter– but that would mean nothing over a black hemp cloth. Regardless of how plain may appear the meanings of both black and white, in the novel, these colours are usually repurposed –by characters and narrator– in various occasions and ways. They appoint races, that for sure, however the characteristics of both races get often tangled in the very designation that comprehends them. Broadly, whiteness is associated with cleanness and order, while black is nearer to dirt, havoc and messiness. For instance, in the book, “plot of black dirt” (Morrison, 6) is used to refer to Pecola, more specifically to Pecola’s vulva being raped. On the other hand, confidence is found in Claudia’s fanciness on her own disorder, showing. These two points of view –Pecola’s and Claudia’s– are often confronted against each other on the meaning of blackness. As a case in point, Pecola accepts black as an insult –she as her mother thinks that she is ugly–while being bullied by other black kids. Furthermore, blackness seems often like a stain, the wound of their Wasteland that is tried to be cleansed over and over again. Likewise, both colours, black and white are closely related –in the most sexual way– to purity and filthiness respectively. White seems to relate to unexplored, innocent bodies; dolls are white, Dick and Jane are deeply white, they are the aim to get to. Nonetheless, it is impossible to get rid of the black impureness –dirtiness, sexual abuses, poverty, stigma–, which seems the main reason for Pecola’s final fate, flood with frustration. Conversely, colours other than black and white mean a wide variety of things in a wide variety of scenarios. Nonetheless, most of these colours can only be achievedthrough whiteness, or in the worst case scenarios, through giving up blackness. Color blue, for instance, present in the title itself, has typically a wide range of implications. Not all are positive. Although, during the novel blue eyes mean the objective; blue eyes like most dolls have are the step to whiteness, a step towards an unreachable happiness. Ironically, the other acceptation of blue applies too in this case; the bluest I is Pecola. Wanting to reach the unreachable ends up being her tombstone. And, then again, in some twisted sense, her relief. Other colours such as purple are also recurring in the novel, in a much less appealing way. Claudia’s sister sings to her to relieve her sickness. Nevertheless, the chant may refer to Claudia’s sexual awakening, the menstruation – deep purple– which later is compared with vomit –also described in colour as “dark as Alaga syrup” (Morrison, 12)– in its dirtiness and messiness. In contrast, the rainbow, takes an important role for Pecola’s mother, Polly, who after –and while– having sex sees its colours. These colours are a reflection of light on almost invisible particles, indeed, but they are also the reflection of every romantic movie Polly is fond of. On the whole, the role of colours along the novel is indeed of utmost importance. As it is of importance the language used along the novel. As postmodern as it is considered, the book’s format is essential in order to analyze its narrative features, as its language and linguistic games are. Inside the closed system that Morrison proposes, colours play an important part, being carriers of huge sense. White and black, the colors and their deeper and lighter shades are frequently reamed to include every possible connotation Morrison –or the society she may reflect– shall include within them.
Describe the main aspects (statements and intentions), of the countercultural movement of the sixties in the United States. The sixties were a time for change for the most part of the world. The children born during or just after the Second World were already creating and consuming culture and its impact would create a new branch of America. Counterculture –rather Countercultures– took place in a world with plenty of reasons for discontent amongst this younger generation. Hence occurred the accidental miracle; the Civil Rights Movement, hippies, mods –imported from England– and the Psychedelic Movement. All in a world darkened by an enormous shadow, that of another war, a silent one this time. The Cold War took a grip out of most of the world’s population minds for more than three decades. More specifically, the decade of the Sixties was opened and closed –and characterized all along its years– by rather more physical tensions, rooted on the bigger hushed war; the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the Vietnam War ending 1972. The decade was in consequence planted with ideas and ideals; beginning with the British invasion. The mods and the rockers that were all around England by the Sixties started importing their culture. The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks and many other cultural referents traveled over to America, bringing with them their style and, many times, their thoughts. Thoughts of blossoming against the dark war aftermath their oldergenerations seem to only be blind with. Thoughts of freedom. These thoughts spread all along the country thanks to the appearance and growth of mass media such as TV. Hence enriching its –already rich– flavor with other cultures such as the Ancient Greeks (The Cynics), the Wandervögel, other religions such as Buddhism and recent historyfigures like Ghandi; who deeply influenced the passive and pacific resistance in many of the U.S. protests. These protests had two main focuses with two associated social movements being considered both countercultural. One focus was race, the inequalities and injustice overcame by the black and destitute population of America; being fought by the Civil Rights Movement and characters as crucial as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. The other main focus was war, being countered–in the most pacific sense of the word– by the Hippie movement, backed culturally by the Beat Generation in poetry and literature with poets such as Williams Burroughs, Allen Gingsberg –allegedly attending multiple protest, being mentioned even multiple times during the media inclined Conspiracy Seven and Chicago Riots trial– or Jack Kerouac. The Civil Rights Movement started out of raw necessity of the black population of the United States. The Movement and –after the Summer of Love of 1967 and the sexual revolution it meant for the world– the subsequent Free Speech Campaign meant change for America. A change that would have been done, in most cases, in a peaceful manner. The Movement went on achieving many legal and social advances for the most of the population –many times not even black population. After Martin Luther King’s and Kennedy’s assassinations, two of the biggest political figures of change disappeared and the social climate escalated to more violent groups. The Black Panthers, for instance, are often considered a rather radical left political party that defended anti- fascist ideas for America; following thus, Malcolm X’s philosophical viewpoint over racial injustice. On the other hand, the hippies conformed –with what was left from the movement– another extremely theatrical political party the Youth International Party, or the Yippies. This group often did street performances and cared deeply about pop culture such as The Doors, Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin. Most party members had been deeply rooted in the Psychedelic Movement, after the discovery and experimentation with LSD or Peyote and tried to legalize these drugs. Throughout, the Sixties was a decade of change and revolution, the consequences of the Second World War were completely fading out and the cries for cultural, social and political innovation started to reach higher spheres of power. Counterculture, as a movement, is now without the shadow of a doubt one of the most revolutionary cultural currents over the 20 th Century.