Very blue eyes

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Very blue eyes is the title of the first novel by the American Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, published in 1970 . The original edition The Bluest Eye was published in New York in 1970, the German translation by Susanna Rademacher in 1979. Using the example of the eleven-year-old Pecola Breedloves and her black family, the author addresses the orientation towards the value system of whites up to internalization and the resulting consequences for the lifestyle of the Second rate.

overview

The story of Pecola and her parents is told from different perspectives, so that in the course of the novel a mosaic of their tragic fate and their environment emerges. Most people belong to the black milieu. Whites appear only at the edge, v. a. as an employer, and do not intervene directly in the action, but their social positions and standards determine people's socialization and self-esteem. The one-year framework story takes place in 1940/41 in the city of Lorain in the state of Ohio and is performed in the stages of the four seasons from the child's point of view by nine-year-old Claudia Mac Teer. Alternately, chapters with headings from the reading primer "Dick and Jane" are displayed, which in ironic contrast to the following content indicate the respective topic (house, family, girlfriend, etc.). In it, an authoritative narrator tells the story of the Breedlove family, other black people (Geraldine), and a multiethnic immigrant from the Caribbean (Micah Elihue Whitcomb), all of whom are people with developmental disorders who contribute to Pecola's disaster .

content

The plot is preceded by two short texts that are referred to over and over again in the course of the novel:

1. A "Dick and Jane" story (This is the house ...) modeled on a US reading primer series. Individual sentences of the text recur as chapter headings.
2. Claudia, the storyline narrator, gives an outlook on the end of the storyline in autumn 1941: twelve-year-old Pecola was pregnant by her father. The child died and the father is dead too. Claudia and her sister, ten-year-old Frieda, feel guilty because their hope of sowing marigolds to conjure up the child's happy birth has not been fulfilled because the seeds did not go on.

autumn

Shirley Temple lookalikes, Newtown, October 2, 1934

In the fall of 1940, eleven-year-old Pecola was taken into their home by Claudia Mac Ter's parents for a few days because the family had become homeless after Mr. Breedlove tried to set fire to the house and was briefly in prison. Mrs. Breedlove is staying with her employers and fourteen-year-old Sammy is staying with another family. With the Mac Teers, Pecola gets her first "ministration" and asks the sisters in horror if she must die now. She is uninformed about sexual and women's issues. Frieda explains to her that if she loves someone she can have a baby now. She then asks: “How do you get someone to love you?” The girls also talk about their everyday lives, their parents and neighbors, the games, about the blonde child star Shirley Temple and thereby provide an insight into their ideas about life and their assessment of the environment.

Claudia reflects, commenting on her memories, about her situation as a child and talks about her blue-eyed baby doll, which she received as a Christmas present and which she could not do anything with. Rather, she wanted security and warmth from “Big Mama”. She disassembled the white doll and transferred this impulse to little white girls: “To find out what I was missing: the secret of the magic that they cast on others. What made people look at her and say 'Ahhh!' to say, but not to me. ”Later, the“ real sadism turned to artificial hatred, to deceitful love ”and she learned to worship Shirley Temple like Pecola and Frieda did.

This is the house. It's green and white. It has a red door. It's very pretty. Pretty pretty hü

The earlier use of the Breedlove apartment in a corner house on Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street reflects the change in the district and the rapid change in its residents: the base of operations for a group of gypsies that showed their decorated wives in the large window, real estate office, bakery, pizza parlor and meeting point young fellows. Now the poor black family lives in the former shop, which is poorly divided into two rooms with hardboard, and three black prostitutes are staying above.

This is the family. Mother, Father, Dick and Jane live in the green and white house. You are lucky

The Breedloves “lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they thought they were ugly. [...] Nobody could have convinced them that they were not unsaved and repulsively ugly. […] They even found it confirmed on every billboard, in every film. […] Mrs. Breedlove used her ugliness like an actor would use a prop: as an expression of her being, as a prop for a role she often thought was hers - martyrdom. [Fourteen year old] Sammy used it as a weapon to inflict pain on others. […] And Pecola. She hid behind it. “Mr. Breedlove reacts with drunkenness and stubbornness. And this is a constant source of argument and brawl between parents. Sammy ran away from home several times. Pecola suffers from nausea and stomach cramps and alternately wishes the death of her parents or her own. She would like to disappear, piece by piece, except for the eyes that she wishes were different, blue like Alice and Jerry's.

Two typical situations show Pecola's situation: She wants cheap sugar in Mr. Yacobowski's vegetable meat and the like. General store and look forward to the goodies. The fifty-year-old white emigrant reacts impatiently to her shy attempts to show him the desired “Mary Janes” in the display case. He barely looks at her and hesitates to touch her hand, which is holding out the pennies. “Outside, Pecola feels an inexplicable shame ebbing away.” She shows her lack of information about sexual processes when visiting the apartment of the “[d] rei whores above the Breedloves' shop. China, Poland and Miss Marie. Pecola loved her, visited her, and ran errands for her. They, in turn, did not despise them. ”In her childish naivete, she does not understand the ironic-funny answers to her frank questions about the many friends of women and the slippery allusions. The prostitutes hide their profession from the girl, but “the protection of youthful innocence was not important to them. In retrospect, their own youth appeared to them to be a time of ignorance that, regrettably, they had not made more of. [...] If Pecola had expressed the intention to live like her, they would not have asked to dissuade or warn her. "

winter

In this chapter Claudia tells about the school and the ranking of the students. When the dark-skinned, fashionably dressed Maureen Peal comes into the class, she becomes the focus of the girls at the same time; even the white children accept her in group work and have respect for her, especially since she appears to be well informed about women's issues. At first she holds back when Pecola is ridiculed as "Black Maa" by a gang of black boys on their way home. After Frieda and Claudia intervene and force the boys to retreat, Maureen takes care of Pecola in a friendly manner and invites them to an ice cream. The sisters, feeling neglected, who previously disliked Maureen's righteousness and dominance, soon got into an argument with her. She flees to the other side of the street and shouts: “I'm cute! And you are ugly! Black and ugly black maa. I'm cute. "When they get home, their tenant, Mr. Henry, gives them money for ice cream to protect themselves from their observations. But on the quick return from the candy store, they discover that he had two prostitutes, China and Maginotlinie, in his room.

There is the cat. She does meow-meow. Come and play. Come and play with Jane. The kitten does not want to play play spat

This chapter is about the pretty milk-brown Geraldine, who is perfectly adapted to the norms of white society and is married to the rich Louis. While she emotionally neglects her son Louis Junior and disciplines him in white behaviors, she loves the cat. Junior reacts aggressively and annoys v. a. Girl. One day he lures the pecola, who happens to pass by, into the beautiful house to play, then throws the cat at her, which scratches her face, tears her dress and injures itself when it falls. When his mother arrives, he blames the girl. Geraldine is appalled by Pecola's dirty dress and matted hair and tells her out of the house: "" You hideous little black piece of dirt "[...] Outside the March wind blew through the crack in her dress. With her head bowed she fought against the cold. "

spring

Claudia talks about her visit to Pecola. The cause is Frieda's harassment by the tenant Mr. Henry, who touched her breasts and was beaten up by Mr. Mac Teer for it. Frieda now fears that like the prostitutes she will be “ruined” and become fat. On the other hand, whiskey could help, which they suspect in Pecola's household because the father is an alcoholic. So they make their way, first to the gray building on Broadway, then, because the girlfriend is not at home, to the white, lake-side house of the Fishers, where Pecola's mother works. Both places are typical of the contrast between white and black life. While Pecola lives in a former shop and under the apartment of three prostitutes and transports the Fishers' dirty laundry with the handcart for washing, the little white girl is looked after and pampered by Pecola's mother in a beautiful atmosphere.

There is mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, do you want to play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, mother laugh

The family story of Pauline Williams, Pecola's mother, with faded-in memories in first-person form, begins in Alabama , where she suffered a slight mobility impairment as a two-year-old due to a foot injury and was treated gently by the parents Ada and Fowler. After World War I, the family moved to Kentucky for better job opportunities . Since her mother accepted a job as a cook, Pauline ran the household with many children and dreamed of the love for a man while singing in the church, which she thought she had found with the Cholly Breedlove, who had appeared from abroad. The two moved to Lorain, where Cholly worked in a steel factory. At first they got along well and Pauline was happy, but in the less homogeneous society and the daily confrontation with the standards of whites and conformist blacks, she felt increasingly lonely, and her husband could not or would not make up for this deficit. She became dissatisfied and took a job as a housemaid with the bright, fine, and warm-hearted Fishers with her little yellow-haired girl. "Here she found beauty, order and cleanliness and praise." She looked for her dream images of absolute beauty in the cinema and returned to church. Every day she experienced the different treatment of white and black women, also in the delivery room during childbirth, where the doctors expected a black woman to have an easier birth with less pain and therefore spoke and helped her less. At the same time, tensions with her husband increased and led to more and more verbal and physical arguments. Sometimes she thinks back to the happy time and a fulfilling sexual act about which she talks in detail.

There is father. He is big and strong. Father, do you want to play with Jane? Father smiles. Smile, father smile

Pecola's father, Charles (Cholly) Breedlove, repeats his own traumatized childhood with his children. He grew up without parents in Georgia with his great-aunt Jimmy. His father, Samson Fuller, disappeared before he was born. The mother abandoned the baby and then went into hiding. After finishing school he became an assistant in a feed and grain store. On the day of Jimmi's funeral, the fourteen-year-old had a humiliating sexual act with Darlene, a girl from the mourning party. Fearing that she might be pregnant, he ran away and made his way as a migrant worker in search of his father in Macon . The latter did not let him have a say in his advances and turned away from him. So Cholly moved on and met Pauline Williams in Kentucky. They married and moved to Lorain. Increasingly the affection of the two waned, they beat each other and he became an alcoholic. Pauline had to maintain the family as a housemaid. Cholly's lack of interest in his wife spread to the two children Sammy and Pecola. As he himself learned in his youth, he could not develop fatherly relationships with children. After trying to set the house on fire while drunk, he was arrested. The situation worsened after he returned to his family. One day he comes into the kitchen drunk and abuses the 11-year-old daughter. Pauline doesn't believe Pecola's testimony and soon afterwards the sexual assault repeats itself.

There is the dog. The dog makes woof. Do you want to play with jane See how the dog runs

To get blue eyes, Pecola visits the healer, Micah Elihue Whitcomb. He is described as a misanthrope who hates all carnal touch except for young girls' nipples. He immigrated from an island in the Greater Antilles and has multiethnic roots. After several attempts at training in psychiatry, sociology and physiotherapy, he became a guest preacher, receptionist in a hotel and representative. Because of his curly hair treated with soap foam and because he poses as a priest, Lorain calls him "soap head pastor". He earns his money as a deceitful advisor in all problems, dream interpreters and those who pray for health. In the hope of a miracle, the now twelve-year-old and pregnant Pecola comes to his practice and asks for blue eyes. He promises her that the wish will come true if a sacrifice is made, i.e. H. if she feeds his landlady's dog, which he hates, and the animal then behaves strangely. This happens because he poisoned the piece of meat and the animal twitches and falls over. Pecola believes in a sign and goes home full of hope. After the crime, Micah wrote in a letter to God that he had performed a miracle in his place and turned eyes: "I did what you did not do, could not do, did not want to do: I looked at this ugly black girl, and i loved her. I played you And I did it very well! "

summer

Claudia and Frieda sell seed packets in town to save for a new bike. They hear people talking about Pecola's pregnancy and the act of her "mean" father, that "dirty nigger [s]" who disappeared from town. The girl, many believe, should be taken out of school and the best thing would be if the child did not survive. The sisters, on the other hand, hope that it will stay alive and they want to support Pecola and her baby with their savings, planting flower seeds and magic spells.

Just see, see. Here comes a friend. The girlfriend is going to play with Jane. You will play a nice game. Game, Jane, sp

In a kind of split personality, Pecola talks to herself with her blue-eyed reflection. She has withdrawn into her dream world, but remembers events from the past: Sammy and Cholly are no longer there. She knows about her father's sexual assault, but evades the specific questions of her alter ego and is reluctant to admit her ambivalent feelings when her father was abused the second time. She told her mother about the first incident, but she didn't believe her. With “Mr. She is not entirely satisfied with Seifkopf's “magic, her eyes are not blue enough, she wants the bluest eyes in the whole world.

That's how it went

Claudia sums up the situation for the next few years: Cholly died in the workhouse . Pecola lives with her mother, who still works as a maid, in a small house on the outskirts. She is totally damaged and walks up and down with twitches and wild, bird-like arm movements, crooked aimlessly. The narrator comments on this tragic development: “But she stepped over into the madness […] that protected her from us, simply because it ultimately bored us. Oh, some of us' 'loved' '' her. [...] And Cholly loved her. […] In any case, he was the one who loved her enough to touch her, to hug her, to give her something. But his touch was fatal, and what he gave her filled the topsoil of her agony with death. [...] Only the lover owns his gift of love. The beloved is shorn, neutralized, frozen to death in the glaring light of the lover's inner eye. " Following on from the previous text, Claudia concludes her consideration with a social criticism: “This soil is bad for certain types of flowers. He does not feed certain seeds, he does not want to bear certain fruits, and if the soil kills of its own accord, we accept it and say that the victim had no right to life. We're wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It is too late."

reception

Morrison's first work received little media attention after its publication. That changed when the novel was put on the university reading lists of some black studies departments. As a result, the feature section and the public dealt more closely with Morrison, v. a. their access to a difficult topic for American society. The critic Haskel Frankel praises the author for her talent in creating scenes that demand the best of a writer. The extremely positive review in the New York Times in November 1970 was also decisive for the following reception.

In addition to the explosive content, the language of the characters was also focused, which broke with the usual novels from this time. On the one hand, it was positively assessed that this new style picks up on the language of the black subculture in the 1940s and appeals to a wider audience. With this in mind, the Afro-American critic, civil rights activist and actress Ruby Dee wrote : "Toni Morrison did not actually write a story, but a series of painfully precise impressions." The portrayal of Pecola's path to madness and the distorted perception of hers are particularly emphasized Father. Other critics saw the language as too simple for the reader or expressed negatively about the portrayal of black women as an object in society with few individual traits.

The discussion about the question of whether the reading is suitable for children and young people was controversial. There have been many complaints from parents and demands that the novel be removed from reading lists and removed from the libraries. For example, in March 1999, "The Bluest Eye" was removed from the language arts program at Baker High School in Baker City, Oregon, following multiple complaints from parents about the book's contents. In 1999, parents of students at Stevens High School in Claremont, New Hampshire, declined to read the book in lower grades. The most controversial issues were the portrayal of the sexual scenes between Cholly Breedlove and his wife or daughter, Whitcomb's pedophile acts on young girls, and the prostitutes' conversations about their business. As a result of this public debate, The Bluest Eye ranks 15th on the America Library Association's list of the 100 most controversial novels of the past decade. In 2006, the novel landed fifth on the list, second in 2013, and fourth in 2014. The ALA cites "offensive language, detailed depictions of sex and violence, unsuitable for school groups" as reasons.

At many schools, complaints from individual parents have been rejected or mitigated by agreeing on a higher age group and on parents' involvement in class selection. As a rule, the novel was allowed to stay in the libraries and be borrowed. Despite initial controversy, The Bluest Eye was recognized as part of Morrison's oeuvre when it received the Nobel Prize in 1993, more than 20 years after the first novel was published.

In the German literary criticism of the last few years, “Very Blue Eyes” has been recognized as the author's introduction to her racial issues, for which she received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The representation of sexual acts in novels and the inclusion of class-specific language patterns are no longer considered breaking taboos, especially since the boundaries between trivial and high-level literature have become permeable. Rather, one praises the highly condensed and complex narrative structure, which places special demands on the reader's attention, and the topic of racial hatred that turns into self-hatred. The aspect of internalized racism is at the center of most of the reviews: Toni Morrison deals with racial relations on all levels, and she starts with internalized trauma, the desire for blue eyes in order to correspond to the ideal of beauty prescribed by whites. The author is holding up the black mirror to America. With her first album she opened doors and opened up new dimensions. The author's reluctance is also emphasized, as she herself emphasized in an interview in 1998: “The strange, the puzzling thing is that I actually don't speak in my books. I don't want to teach anyone, preach to anyone, neither hate nor love. I want to tell. ”She succeeded so well in“ Very Blue Eyes ”that it irritated the reader for a long time. At first glance, Pecola's father is just a monster who abuses his little daughter. But then Morrison change perspective and tell from his point of view. And suddenly this monster becomes human for the reader.

Adaptations

  • In the USA, the novel was adapted for the stage and performed by various theaters. Lydia R. Diamond wrote a stage production in 2005 for the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, Illinois. In February 2005 the play celebrated its world premiere in Chicago and in November 2006 at the New Victory Theater the off-Broadway premiere. Further performances followed in 2010 by the Phantom Projects Educational Theater Group at the La Mirada Theater for the Performing Arts in La Mirada , California, and in 2017 by the Guthrie Theater, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.
  • Morrison's novel was the inspiration for the rapper Talib Kweli for his song "Thieves in the Night" with Mos Def on their 1998 "Black Star" album.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Dick and Jane" or the book "Fun with Dick and Jane" from the same series. The reading primers were used from the 1930s to the 1970s.
  2. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 42.
  3. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 32.
  4. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, pp. 48–49.
  5. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 61.
  6. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 62.
  7. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 69.
  8. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 84.
  9. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 105.
  10. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 139.
  11. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 202.
  12. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 224 ff.
  13. ↑ Toni Morrison: "Very blue eyes". Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 225.
  14. ↑ Roynon, Tessa ". The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison," Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012th
  15. ↑ a b c ANALYSIS: The Bluest Eye .
  16. ^ A b Leroy Staggers: "The critical reception of Toni Morrison: 1970 to 1988" (1989). ETD Collection for AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library. Paper 1944.
  17. ^ Gary Dielman, Baker County Library District, June 2015.
  18. ↑ "English in the News". The English Journal. 89 (4): 113-117. 2000.
  19. ↑ admin (March 26, 2013). "Top 100 Banned / Challenged Books: 2000-2009".
  20. ↑ Top Ten Frequently Challenged Books Lists . American Library Association. nd.
  21. ^ The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993
  22. ↑ "Very Blue Eyes by Toni Morrison" by Bories vom Berg, literaturzeitschrift, April 28, 2017.
  23. ↑ "On the Death of Toni Morrison: America's Conscience". By Paul Ingendaay, FAZ August 6, 2019.
  24. ↑ Angela Schader, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 6, 2019.
  25. ↑ " Hearing the Tales of the Monsters". By Fokke Joel, Zeit-online August 2019.
  26. ^ Charles Isherwood, "Toni Morrison - The Bluest Eye - Theater - Review," The New York Times, Nov. 7, 2006.
  27. ↑ Lorraine Hansberry: "Theater to stage 'The Bluest Eye'". sfgate.com.
  28. ↑ Steven Suskin: The Bluest Eye . In: Variety , November 6, 2006. 
  29. ^ "Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye". plays411.com.
  30. ^ The Bluest Eye | Guthrie Theater .
  31. ↑ Rohan Preston: Guthrie brings Toni Morrison's 'Bluest Eye' from page to stage with poetic power . In: Star Tribune . April 25, 2017.
  32. ↑ Dominic P. Papatola: Stagecraft of Guthrie Theater's 'The Bluest Eye' sometimes dilutes storytelling . In: Twin Cities , April 25, 2017. 
  33. ↑ Mary Aalgaard: Review of The Bluest Eye at The Guthrie Theater . In: Play Off The Page , April 25, 2017. 
  34. ↑ Sam Adler Bookish: Music and Literature: Books that inspired rap and hip-hop . In: USA TODAY , March 7, 2014.