A Book for all Seasons: Archetypes in The Bluest Eye

‘The Masque of the Four Seasons’, Walter Crane

        In this post, I'll talk about the novel The Bluest Eye from an archetypal perspective. By definition, an archetype is "an original pattern or model" (Guerin et al) and in literary analysis, an archetypal approach looks for patterns in a text that are similar in many other texts. In the novel, a very prominent archetype is that of the four seasons.        

           

Autumn:

Taken from ReikiInfiiteHealer.com

 First of all, the book is divided into four parts and each part is named after each season, starting from autumn and ending with summer. The archetype of autumn has a symbolism of tragedy and the first section of the book is definitely tragic. Morrison highlights the development of self-hatred in the young Black girls in the book, Freida (10 years old), Claudia (her sister and main character, 9 years old) and Pecola, a 12-year-old girl who was even poorer than Freida and Claudia and came to live with them after losing her family home when her father raped and impregnated her. 

             

Winter:

From ABCnews.com

In part two, winter, this tragedy culminates with a complete death of the girls' self-esteem and self-love. As the archetype winter is strongly associated with death, this all makes sense. A new student came to their school, Maureen Peal, who came from a rich "coloured" family. She was an embodiment of all the seasons: 

"There was a hint of spring in her sloe green eyes, something summery in her complexion, and a rich autumn ripeness in her walk." (Morrison, 62)

              Her winter coldness came when she, after pretending to befriend all three girls, declared that they were "black and ugly" and she was "cute"(73). This coldness shocked the poor girls and basically led them to settle into the idea that truly, they were worthless. 
             
             The winter coldness of The Bluest Eye is so heartbreaking, but what is even worse is that this is not even the most traumatic section of the book. In spring, the girls continue to face hardship. Spring is supposed to represent birth and new life. Spring is when the flowers grow. What seemed to grow instead was self-hatred, self-awareness that they would always be seen as inferior. 

Spring:          

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Spring begins with Freida going through puberty, "springing" new body parts and as such becoming a victim of sexual abuse. (99) It also showed the blossoming of Pauline and Cholly's love, as well as its tragic end. Morrison used the concept of spring to show that yes, children will grow, but they will grow the way they are nurtured. From the abuse Pecola's parents suffered and were "watered with", they too grew and bore the same fruit: an unwanted, unloved child with no concept of how to love herself. 

Summer:           

Art by Aaron Reed

Finally, in summer, which represents new life and romance, Pecola is found out to be pregnant and the timing of the novel catches up to its beginning. Freida and Claudia, in a desperate attempt to save Pecola's baby, plant seeds in their yard and hope with the growth of the seeds, Pecola's baby will have a chance at life. However, Claudia reveals:

 "...we had failed her. Our flowers never grew...I had planted them too deeply...so we avoided Pecola Breedlove---forever." (Morrison, 205).

She does not find a new life or love. Instead, she loses the baby as it is born prematurely, has a mental breakdown, and envisions herself with the blue eyes she has wanted for so long. 

        The powerful archetypes of the seasons in this novel really showed me how racism and hatred are taught. They are a cyclical system, like the seasons that come and go every year, and it is only by planting new seeds of love and acceptance, and nurturing those seeds, that any change can come. 

Feminism in Obasan

Taken from Goodreads.com

Obasan; a novel about the power of words and the depth of silence. This novel, an autobiographical one written by Canadian author Joy Kogawa, details the trauma faced by a Japanese-Canadian family, the Katos and Nakanes, during World War II. From a feminist perspective, the novel also focuses on how oftentimes it is the matriarch in a family that holds it together, as well as on the concept of the "strength of a woman" when faced with extreme hardship.

The novel begins with the protagonist and narrator, Naomi Nakane, detailing her seemingly mundane life as a school teacher in British Columbia. She is 36 years old, unmarried and somehow unsatisfied with her life. She is the lens through which we are told the story her family's survival. Naomi, or Nomi as her family calls her, recalls how her life was riddled with trauma at the hands of the Canadian government, and other Canadians who were too close to home.

Naomi, at age 4, is raped by her neighbour, Old Man Gower. Naomi suggests that Gower takes advantage of her infantile and feminine meekness in the lines: "He begins to undress me. I do not resist. One does not resist adults." (Kogawa 61). On top of that, "it is not an isolated event" (59). Gower is described as powerful, commanding, a predator in his natural state. Naomi is contrasted as small, defenseless and powerless because not only is she a child, "she does not know what it is to struggle" (59).

She suffered in silence for her entire life. Is this strength? It could be. It could also be seen as weakness. However for me, it takes strength for any woman to go on to lead a "normal" life after enduring something so traumatic by withdrawing within herself and finding an inner motivation to keep going.

Naomi's aunt Emily also represents strength in the text, as Emily Kato, also unmarried, is the voice of resistance against the horrors of the work camps, torture, murder and decimation of the Japanese-Canadians in Canada. While Naomi's sufferings went unknown, Emily faced her own suffering along with other members of the Japanese-Canadian community, and turned to writing letters and journals as a means of fighting back.

In detailing what the Canadian government did, such as forcibly taking property from Japanese-Canadians, removing them from their homes, separating families in inhumane conditions, and forcing men to work under concentration-camp conditions, Emily continued to be a voice for the Nisei and the Isei, the second and third-generations children of immigrants who made their home in Japan decades before the war. While Naomi and Obasan used silence and retreat as a means of strengthening themselves, Emily used her words. This lead to Naomi learning the truth about her past. It also lead to a resistance by other women. 

Overall, the novel provides an in-depth look at things many other writers have never done before, especially through the lens of a woman. The message is clear: women will not always be silenced.

Literary Analysis Reader Response Theory on Snow White

When examining “Snow White” from a reader response perspective, it becomes clear that Snow White serves as a warning to children (specifically girls) about the dangers of vanity. Although Snow White's goodness is tied to her beauty, her desire for beautiful things nearly kills her.

I read many fairy tales as a little girl, and the one message that I received over and over was that good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, so when I read “Snow White,” even as an adult, I expect that in fairy tales, the beautiful people are good and the ugly people are bad. However, in this story, the queen is both evil and beautiful, but her vanity, and desire to be “fairest of all” turns her into a hateful would-be murderer and cannibal, as is evident when she thinks she is eating Snow White's heart and lungs.

Snow White herself, is depicted as a good girl because she is willing to be a good housekeeper for the dwarves. I tend to balk at this estimation of goodness because as a modern woman, I don't like the idea that women are only valued for their domestic skills, and think the dwarves should be willing to protect her even if she is not a good housekeeper. However, although she is “good” she is also vain. When the wicked queen tries to trick her, she doesn't tempt her with goods that will make her housekeeping job easier; she tempts her with trinkets: pretty silk bodice laces, a comb, and a “beautiful apple.” In spite of the dwarves warnings, she falls for the queen's tricks and “dies” from eating the poisoned apple. It appears to me that she is being punished for her vanity and desire for things that are not “domestic.”

After the prince rescues Snow White, they punish her evil step mother by forcing her to dance to death in hot iron shoes. I am of course horrified by how gruesome this punishment is. I realize that children in the time of the Brothers Grimm would be more accustomed to death, pain, and the general brutality of life, but I still find the punishment shocking given the fact that I was raised to believe that children should be sheltered from violence. This suggests to me that the evil queen's punishment is not just a horrifying lesson for children about the dangers of vanity, but a warning for Snow White as well.