Trauma and Narrative Strategies in The Bluest Eye:The Political Meaning in Toni Morrison’s Novel

• Main Authors: Ching-hui Weng, 翁菁徽
• Other Authors: 朱崇儀
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99827813763523278873

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系所 === 95 === In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison represents Afro-American’s traumatic experiences in American society. The cultural trauma, which is the consequence of the white culture’s domination, penetrates the black’s collective experiences. As an Afro-American writer, Morrison is aware of the black’s subordinate position in America and the negative characteristics of black stereotype rooting in the public’s conception. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison selects “beauty” as the motif to disclose the complicated and ambivalent social context underneath the black’s collective experience. While the inescapable consequence for the black to reproduce their history of subordination actually results from the inaccessible trauma, Morrison knows the need to re-examine the black’s history by retelling the black’s story and expects the possibility to awaken the black’s consciousness and to reclaim their position in American history. The thesis is divided into two chapters to respectively discuss the story and the form in The Bluest Eye and further look for the political meaning in Morrison’s narrative. In the story, Morrison represents the black’s collective experience of subjecting to the white values and being confined to the cultural trauma which results in the black’s shame and guilt. Every protagonist in the story projects his/her shame on Pecola, who eventually becomes the scapegoat of the black community, and determines Pecola’s madness. However, in the form of the novel, Morrison shows her protest against the dominant power by challenging the traditional literary form, such as the juxtapositions of different narratives, texts and genres in the novel. By combining the content and form in the novel, Morrison displays the potential of the black writing which never asserts its entire separation from the white culture but rather accepts the influence of the white’s ideological domination in the black’s history. The political meaning in the novel lies in its exposition of the black’s ambivalence of being an American with the black skin and its attempt to challenge the white’s domination by the formal devices. By juxtaposing the different narratives in the story, Morrison tries to emphasize that every black’s personal experience is enwound with their cultural trauma and results in different personal meaning. It is Morrison’s strategy to challenge the black’s history is collective and unchangeable.