THEWHITEANDGREENHOUSE

As I continued reading The Bluest Eye I noticed something unusual about the titles of the chapters. The titles are composed of a complete sentence, all the letters are capitalized, and there is no space between the words. Why would Toni Morrison do this? On my previous blog I talked about the introduction of the book and I concluded that it was written like that to demonstrate that a little girl was going to tell her story. Not only are the titles written the same way as the introduction, but they make part of it. Morrison grabs a portion of that paragraph and puts it as a title.

The second chapter is titled as, “HERISTHEHOUSEITISGREENANDWHITEITHASAREDDOORITISVERYPRETTYITISVERYPRETTYPRETTYPRETTYP” (33). Honestly, it took me quite a while to read it correctly. Why would someone put such a long and confusing titles? Titles are supposed to be clear and straight to the point. At the same time they should contain a message. In this case it does. It might not be clear as other titles but it does relate of what it is being said on that chapter. On this chapter Toni Morrison is describing Pecola´s house. He states, “No one had given birth in one of the beds…. No thrifty child had tucked wad of gum under the table. No happy drunk…” (35). After reading this chapter I realized that Pecola had no memories of her childhood. The house is being described as any other house. I believe that no good memories were lived there because the family was never together. He states, “Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality--- collecting fragments of experiences here, pieces of information there” (34). If you ask me, those are not the characteristics of a family. They all lived independently without worrying about each other. The only thing Pecola´s family had in common was that they all lived under the same roof.

At first it seemed that this chapter was useless and I did not understand why Toni Morrison would waste a complete chapter describing a house that clearly has no importance to anyone. Then after trying to understand his reasoning behind this I concluded that he wanted to show what a miserable life Pecola had. Since the beginning of the book Pecola has demonstrated to be the shy and the follower of Freida and Claudia. I also thought that she had bad luck on having to be sent to such house where the mother mistreats her kids. But after seeing the conditions in which she used to life, her new house seems like a paradise. A little background of a character helps us understand certain of their behaviors.