The Bluest Eye Synopsis
The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison
Summary and Analysis of Prologue and Autumn
The Bluest Eye opens with two short untitled and unnumbered sections. The first section is a version of the classic Dick and Jane stories found in grade school reading primers. There is a pretty house, Mother, Father, Dick, Jane, a cat, a dog, and, at the end, a friend for Jane to play with. The same story appears three times in succession, repeated verbatim each time. The first time the text appears with full punctuation and normal spacing. The second time the same story appears without any punctuation or capitalization, but with a space between each of the words. The third time the text has no capitalization, no punctuation, and no spaces between the words.
The second section is a short passage narrated by Claudia MacTeer. Claudia tells us that "quiet as it's kept," in the fall of 1941, when she was a young girl, no marigolds bloomed. She reveals that at the time she and her sister Frieda thought the marigolds did not bloom because Pecola was having her father's baby. …show more content…
Henry, greets them and gives them money to go buy ice cream. The girls decide to go get candy‹because of Frieda's fear that Maureen might be at the ice cream shop‹and so they arrive home earlier than Mr. Henry expected. Playing outside, the girls look in through one of the windows and see Mr. Henry nibbling on the fingers of China and the Maginot Line (Marie). Frieda and Claudia recognize them, but wait until the prostitutes are gone to go back into the house. They ask Mr. Henry who the women were, and he tells the girls that the women are members of his Bible study class. He also asks the girls not to tell their mother. When the girls are alone and Claudia asks what they should do, Frieda decides that they don't need to tell their mother, because no plates have been used, and Mrs. MacTeer once said that she wouldn't let the Maginot Line eat off of one of her
Summary and Analysis of Prologue and Autumn
The Bluest Eye opens with two short untitled and unnumbered sections. The first section is a version of the classic Dick and Jane stories found in grade school reading primers. There is a pretty house, Mother, Father, Dick, Jane, a cat, a dog, and, at the end, a friend for Jane to play with. The same story appears three times in succession, repeated verbatim each time. The first time the text appears with full punctuation and normal spacing. The second time the same story appears without any punctuation or capitalization, but with a space between each of the words. The third time the text has no capitalization, no punctuation, and no spaces between the words.
The second section is a short passage narrated by Claudia MacTeer. Claudia tells us that "quiet as it's kept," in the fall of 1941, when she was a young girl, no marigolds bloomed. She reveals that at the time she and her sister Frieda thought the marigolds did not bloom because Pecola was having her father's baby. …show more content…
Henry, greets them and gives them money to go buy ice cream. The girls decide to go get candy‹because of Frieda's fear that Maureen might be at the ice cream shop‹and so they arrive home earlier than Mr. Henry expected. Playing outside, the girls look in through one of the windows and see Mr. Henry nibbling on the fingers of China and the Maginot Line (Marie). Frieda and Claudia recognize them, but wait until the prostitutes are gone to go back into the house. They ask Mr. Henry who the women were, and he tells the girls that the women are members of his Bible study class. He also asks the girls not to tell their mother. When the girls are alone and Claudia asks what they should do, Frieda decides that they don't need to tell their mother, because no plates have been used, and Mrs. MacTeer once said that she wouldn't let the Maginot Line eat off of one of her