Use of Comparative Description in The Bluest Eye
Upon reading The Bluest Eye a second time, I noticed something about the nature of Morrison's prose. The term that I have heard to describe the book most frequently is beautiful. The first chapters strike me as both incredibly realistic, and unbelievably beautiful. The fact that Morrison can give a scene where Claudia is actually throwing up on herself a rosy colored, nostalgic tint, and still manage to convey a sense of realism is a testament to Morrison's skill with words. The language certainly is beautiful, a sort of sensual prose, almost bordering on poetry. I also believe that the style of Morrison's descriptions is a key to understanding the major underlying theme of the novel, which is the association of race to beauty.
The language of Morrison in The Bluest Eye could be described best as that of comparison. In order to describe something Morrison compares or associates it with something else. Almost every description in the text is a direct object association or an association with a feeling: "angry faces knotted like dark cauliflowers" (p.73, The Bluest Eye), "massive legs like tree stumps" (p.102, The Bluest Eye), "the unquarrled evening hung like the first note of a dirge in the air" (p. 41, The Bluest Eye)
This style of comparative writing pervades the text. The oddity or aptness of the associations gives the reader pause and contributes to the beauty of the language. The style of descriptive comparison in the novel ties in perfeclty with the theme of associations of race to beauty. Morrison's constant use of associative description is directly linked to the way Pecola's blackness defines her lack of beauty, and how Maureen Peale's whiteness and blue eyes are directly associated with her beauty. Morrison's language is so beautiful because it is at once both accurate and profound, "Nuns go by quiet as lust, ." (p.9, The Bluest Eye) As far as description goes, this line could have been written: "Nuns go by quietly," but with the comparison to lust, the line takes on whole new levels of meaning. The juxtaposition of a nun (chastity) and the idea of lust is enough to make us go back over the line a second time, and places an importance on the line which it could not have with a non-associative description.
I missed this extremely clever use of language in the first reading, but became much more aware of it during the subsequent reading. The comparisons seem like such a small detail at first, but the whole novel is literally made up of them, and they are certainly much more than a trite literary trick. In a world where a passing nun can be defined with the idea of lust, it is not hard to imagine how beauty (or lack thereof) could come to be defined by skin color. My discovery of this excellent use of language has really prompted me to respect Morrison's writing, even if I don't agree at all with her views on art. Partner sites: Labrador Retriever, Study Spanish in Costa Rica, and Free Essays and Term Papers