Lesson9 The Bluest Eye课文分析（课堂PPT）

1、1Lesson Nine 2 “Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes . In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running aw

2、ay. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her.” (Back Cover)345Toni Morrison (2008)67Toni Morrison(1931-) Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best kn

3、own novels areThe Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved. She also was commissioned to write the libretto(歌剧剧本歌剧剧本) for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005. 8Toni Morrison She won the Nobel Prize in 1993 and in 1987 the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. In April 2012 it was announ

4、ced she would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award in the United States). 9Presidential Medal of Freedom10About the Author Toni Morrison: Toni Morrison has a unique stature in American literature. She is the winner of the National Book Critic Circle Award (1977),

5、the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988) and many other literary awards. She was granted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, thus becoming the first African-American writer to receive this honor. She has published 7 novels, a musical, a play, and a collection of critical essays. Her devoted readers

6、 are found all over the world, and they include both sexes and all colors, 11 ages and creeds. A member of both the National Council on the Arts and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Morrison has actively used her influence to encourage the publication of other African-American

7、 writers. Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio in 1931. She came from a family of sharecroppers(小佃农小佃农), who moved from the South to Ohio to escape Southern racism. At the age of 18 Morrison went to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University, the most distinguished black co

8、llege in America, 12 where she became interested in the stage and joined the Howard University Players. After she earned a B.A. in English from Howard she went Cornell University for graduate studies in English literature. Upon receiving a M.A. from Cornell, she began her teaching career. From 1955-

9、1957 she taught English at Texas Southern University, and from 1957-1964 she taught at Howard. In 1965, she became a senior editor at Random House, where she edited a number of African-American writers. 13 In 1958 she married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican(牙买加牙买加) architect and had two sons. In 1964 th

10、ey divorced and she raised the two sons by herself. She began writing in 1962. Her first work was a short story, which would later develop into her first novel The Bluest Eye (1970)(最蓝的眼睛最蓝的眼睛). It tells a story of a little black girl named Pecola Breedlove, who yearned to have the blue eyes of a wh

11、ite girl, she believes she will lead a happy life if she has beautiful blue eyes.14 In 1971 Morrison resumed her teaching career, teaching English at University of New York, serving as a visiting professor at Yale from 1976 to 1978, at the State University of New York at Albany from 1984-1989. Since

12、1989 she has been teaching at Princeton University as a member of the program in African-American studies and of the creative writing department. Meanwhile she continued her writing. Her next novel, Sula (1974) (秀拉秀拉)examines the friendship between two black women Sula and Nel, and depicts how they

13、have grown up together 15 but taken different roads of life in their maturity. The novel won the National Book Critic Award. The Song of Solomon,(所罗门之所罗门之歌歌) published in 1977, was a greater success than her previous novel. Set in Michigan in the early 1930s, the novel is narrated from a male point

14、of view. In his effort to recover his ancestors properties, a sack of gold, Milkman Dead rediscoveries his racial roots and cultural identity. The novel was a Book-of-Month club selection, and it placed Toni Morrison in the first rank of American novelists. 16 Tar Baby (柏油娃娃柏油娃娃)came out in 1981. Un

15、like her previous novels, this book has characters both black and white. By juxtaposing(place side by side) them in the central conflict of the plot, the author dramatizes the racial complexities that characterize the American cultural landscape. Published in 1987, Morrisons next novel Beloved (爱娃爱娃

16、)deals with slavery and infanticide. It was another triumph and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The protagonist Sethe has run away from slavery and is seeking refuge in Ohio. 17 When the slave masters search for her, she kills her baby girl in order to save hr from slavery she has just

17、 escaped. However, the ghost of the baby “Beloved”, a name written on her tombstone, comes back to haunt her. In Jazz (1992)(爵士乐爵士乐), Joe, the unfaithful husband of Violet, kills a girl he loves so much in a fit of passion. The fragmented narrative gradually unfolds, showing how and why this tragedy

18、 happened in Harlem, New York. 18 Paradise (1998) , love (2003) and A mercy (2008) are her most recent works. Paradise is a 1997novel by Morrison and her first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. According to the author, it completes a “trilogy” that begins with Beloved and in

19、cludes Jazz. It was chosen as an Oprahs Book Club selection January 1998 (Oprahs Book Club is a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host19 Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers t

20、o read and discuss each month. Because of the book clubs wide popularity, many obscure titles have become very popular bestsellers, increasing sales in some cases by as many as several million copies; this occurrence is widely known as the Oprah effect.) Interestingly, Morrison wanted to call the no

21、vel War but was overridden by her editor20 The novel tells the story of the tension between the men of Ruby, Oklahoma (an all-black town founded in 1950) and a group of women who lived in a former convent(女修女修道院道院) seventeen miles away. After an opening chapter named after the town, the other chapte

22、rs are named after some of the female characters, but are not simply about the women. Each chapter includes flashbacks to crucial events from the towns history in addition to the back story of the titular (有名无实的有名无实的)character. 21 The focus on the women characters highlights the ways the novel portr

23、ays the gender differences between the patriarchal rigidity of the townsmen and the clandestine(秘密的秘密的,暗中的暗中的) connections between the townswomen and the women at the Convent. The narration serves as an alternative voice to the actions in which the townsmen provide. Love is the eighth novel by Morri

24、son. In her non-liner style, the lives of several women and their relationships to the late Bill Cosey unfold.22 Love is the story of Bill Cosey, a charismatic but dead hotel owner. Or rather, it is about the people around him, all affected by his life even long after his death. The main characters

25、are Christine, his granddaughter and Heed, his widow. The two are the same age and used to be friends but some forty years after Coseys death they are sworn enemies(不共戴天的仇敌不共戴天的仇敌), and yet share his mansion. Again Morrison used split narrative and jumps back and forth throughout the story, not full

26、y unfolding23 until the very end. The characters in the novel all have some relation to the infamous Bill Cosey. Similar to the concept of communication between the living and the dead in Beloved , Morrison introduced a character named Junior; she was the medium to connect the dead Bill Cosey to the

27、 world of the living. The storytelling techniques in Love, namely the split narrative, suggest a recent trend in Morrisons literature that divides the plot among different time periods.24 A Mercy is Tono Morrisons 9th novel. It was first published in 2008. A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surfa

28、ce of slavery in early America. It is both the story of mothers and daughters and the story of a primitive America. It made the New York Times Book Review list of “10 Best Books of 2008” as chosen by the papers editors. Florens, a slave, lives and works on Jacob Vaarks rural New York farm. Lina, a N

29、ative American and fellow laborer on the Vaark farm, relates in a parallel narrative how she25 became one of a handful of survivors of a smallpox plague that destroyed her tribe. Vaarks wife Rebekkah describes leaving England on a ship for the new world to be married to a man she has never seen. The

30、 deaths of their subsequent children are devastating, and Vaark accepts a young Florens from a debtor in the hopes that this new addition to the farm will help alleviate(缓解缓解) Rebekkahs loneliness. Vaark, himself an orphan and poorhouse survivor, describes his journeys from New York to Maryland26and

31、 Virginia, commenting on the role of religion in the culture of the different colonies, along with their attitudes toward slavery. All these characters are bereft(失去失去) of their roots, struggling to survive in a new and alien environment filled with danger and disease. When smallpox threatens Rebekk

32、ahs life in 1692, Florens, now sixteen, is sent to find a black freedman who has some knowledge of herbal medicines. Her journey is dangerous, ultimately proving to be the turning point in her life.27 Morrison examines the roots of racism going back to slaverys earliest days, providing glimpses of t

33、he various religious practices of the time, and showing the relationship between men and women in early America that often ended in female victimization. They are “of and for men,” people who “never shape the world, The world shapes us.” As the women journey toward self-enlightenment, Morrison often

34、 describes their progress in Biblical cadences(节奏节奏,韵律韵律), and by the end of this novel, the reader understands the significance of the title, “a mercy.” 28 Morrisons novels are most set in a black community in the thirties or forties, but they dont merely tell stories about a particular community d

35、uring a particular period. She does far more than just tell good stories. When talking about the novel, she says, “ It should be beautiful, and powerful, but it should also work. It should have something in it that enlightens; something in it that opens the door and points the way29 Something in it

36、that suggests what conflicts are, what the problems are. But it need not solve those problems because it is not a case study, it is not a recipe if anything I do, in the way of writing (or whatever I write) is not about a village or the community or about you, then it is not about anything. I am not

37、 interested in indulging myself in some private, closed exercise of my imagination30 that fulfills only the obligation of my personal dreamswhich is to say yes, the work must be political it seems to me that the best art is political and you ought to be able to make the unquestionably political and

38、irrevocably(unalterably) beautiful at the same time”. The Nobel Prize presentation speech point out, “ in her depiction of the world of the black people, in life as in legend, Toni Morrison has given the Afro-American people their history back, piece by piece”. 31 Yet , at the same time, her work is

39、 always symbolic of the shared human condition, transcending lines of gender, race, and class. The most enduring impression her novels leave is of “empathy(感情移入感情移入), of compassion with ones fellow human beings.” 32Toni Morrisons Novels /wiki/The_Bluest_Eye (1970)Sula (1974)Song of S

40、olomon (1977)Tar Baby (1981)Beloved (1987)Jazz (1992)Paradise (1997)Love (2003)A Mercy (2008)Home (2012)33Themes of The Bluest Eye Whiteness is beauty In this book whiteness stands for beauty. This is a standard that the black girls can not meet, especially Pecola, who has darker skin than the other

41、s. Pecola connects beauty with being loved and believes that if only she had blue eyes, all the bad things in her life would be replaced with love and affection. This hopeless desire leads her to madness by the end of the novel.34Themes of The Bluest Eye Love is never any better than the lover The n

42、ovel contains several relationships, and the relationships never end pleasantly. Morrison sees love as a dynamic force that can be extremely damaging depending on who is doing the loving. The biggest example of this is the relationship between Cholly and his daughter, Pecola. Cholly is the only char

43、acter who can see past Pecolas supposedly revolting shell enough to touch her. While that sounds like a beautiful thing, it leads to the violent35Themes of The Bluest Eye rape that serves as the climax of the story. As Claudia points out in the final chapter, “Love is never any better than the lover

44、. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly.” While Cholly definitely loves, he manifests this love in violent ways. Because he had extremely damaging experiences as a child, his love is extremely tainted(玷污玷污). 36Themes of The B

45、luest Eye The reader can look at this in two ways. The pessimistic view claims that true love can be achieved only if the lover is a good, honest person. However, the reader can also see this as uplifting. Even though love can be distorted, Morrison makes the point that everyone can in fact love. Ev

46、en evil persons who love in an evil manner can still love.37Themes of The Bluest Eye Gender disparity The Bluest Eye is based on the lives of black women as it is written by a black woman. Toni Morrison has described the worldwide gender disparity by her characters like Pecola, Frieda, Pauline and t

47、he narrator Claudia, who once mentions in the novel that three things have greatly affected her life: being a child, being black, and being a girl. All the women characters are abused by both white women and men and by black men.38About the Novel The Bluest Eye The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is

48、the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel has its setting in the black community in Lorain, Ohio, in 1944, long before the Civil Rights Movement. In those days, blackness was synonymous with ugliness. The dominant white culture exercised its he

49、gemony(leadership统治统治;势力范围势力范围) and dictated standards of beauty.39 Many black people accepted and internalized white values and developed self-contempt and self-hatred for themselves or other black people, making some of their own people victims and scapegoats. To overthrow white cultural hegemony

50、and liberate themselves from oppression and self-oppression, the black people raised the political slogan in the 1960s: “Black is beautiful.” Morrisons novel The Bluest Eyes depicts the pernicious(destructive, ruinous恶恶性的性的;很有害的很有害的) psychological impact that40 the dominant white cultural values hav

51、e on black people. The story centers around the tragic life of a little black girl named Pecola Breedlove. The Breedloves are the poorest family in town. They lived in a storehouse of an abandoned store. The place is so ugly that “visitors who drive to this tiny town wonder why it has not been torn

52、down, while pedestrians, who are residents of the neighborhood, simply look away when they pass it.” 41 Pecola, eleven years old, is black and ugly. Her father, Cholly Breedlove, is driven to alcoholism by a life of appalling racial oppression. Once he burnt up his house and turned his family outdoo

53、rs. Her mother, Pauline, is driven by her husbands rage and the unbearable misery of her life. She tries to escape from life and find peace only in working as a servant in a white home. She gives more care and attention to her masters children than her own little girl. The poverty-stricken and frust

54、rated couple is constantly quarreling and fighting. 42 They totally ignore their daughter Pecola. At school other children bully and ridicule her, calling her ugly. Imprisoned by dire(dreadful)poverty and extreme misery, Pecola wishes for lighter skin, blond hair and especially blue eyes like movie

55、star Shirley Temple and other white girls. Everyday she prays for a miracle to happen so that she is given a pair of the bluest eyes . She believes that her ugliness is the source of all her misery and that having blue eyes would be the key to happiness. 43 She is convinced that if she had blue eyes

56、, she would become pretty and happy and that all her problems would be gone. Finally, through madness, she thinks that her eyes have become blue. In her imagination she has been transformed into a pretty girl. As she is waiting for love and happiness to come to her, ironically her drunk father gets

57、home, and gives “love” to his daughter by raping her. The little girl becomes pregnant, she gives birth to a stillborn child.44 She sinks deeper into despair and madness. In the end of the novel, “ She was so sad to see. Grown people looked away; children those who were not frightened by her, laughe

58、d outright (openly) the damage done was total. Pecolas father dies in the workhouse; her mother still does housework. Pecola and her mother move to a little house on the edge on town. The black little girl is often seen picking her way “between the tire rims and the sunflowers, among all the waste a

59、nd beauty of the world-which is what herself was.” 45 The narrator planted some marigold in the spring that year, but they never came out. Using the dead seeds of marigolds as a metaphor, the narrator observes in conclusion, “ I even think now that the land of the entire county was hostile to marigo

60、lds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruits it will not bear, 46 And when the land kills its own volition(power of willing), we acquiesce(to agree unwillingly默许默许;勉强同意勉强同意) and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of c