Student Question
What do the reading primer passages represent in The Bluest Eye?
Quick answer:
The reading primer passages in The Bluest Eye symbolize the contrast between the idealized, white, middle-class family life and the harsh realities faced by the African American characters. The "Dick and Jane" primers highlight Pecola's longing for beauty and happiness, embodied by blue eyes, and reflect societal standards that exclude her. Through variations of the primer text, Morrison contrasts the stable MacTeer family with the dysfunctional Breedloves, underscoring themes of identity and self-worth.
The passage from the child's primer also symbolizes that which is slowly destroying Pecola's sanity, primarily the fact that her life is not happy and as "perfect" as that of a child with blue eyes, or more specifically, a white child. The characters Dick and Jane in the children's primer were beautiful according to that time period's standards because of their blonde hair and blue eyes (the latter being that which Pecola desperately wants). Furthermore, they seemed to live a perfect life in the illustrations, having a mom and dad that loved them and cared for them, a beautiful home with a white picket fence, and even a dog named Spot. These were all the things that Pecola longed for. Her desire for the blue eyes is symbolic of her desire for the things she believed a child with blue eyes would have, i.e. Dick and Jane's life. Not only does...
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Morrison's way of using the primer symbolize the different kinds of familly, but it also stands as a sharp contrast to Pecola's reality. Dick and Jane's lives were her fantasy.
What do the reading primer passages represent in The Bluest Eye?
Morrison uses selections from the "Dick and Jane" reader to represent the three lifestyles presented in the novel. The book opens with three excerpts from the "Dick and Jane" reader, which was the standard textbook used to teach children to read from the 1940s through the 1960s. Each version reflects one family's lifestyle and situation.
The text of the first version is the standard text, with correct capitalization and punctuation, representing the ideal white family (in the novel, the Fishers). The second version contains the same words as the first but contains no punctuation or capitalization. This version symbolizes the MacTeer family, which is stable and loving, but much poorer than the Fishers. The final version, however, has completely destroyed the proper grammar, containing no punctuation or capitalization-not even spaces between words. This version, of course, represents the dysfunctional Breedlove family, and Pecola's eventual insanity.
Although the life presented in the "Dick and Jane" series was very different from the life many children lived in the 1940s, the intent was for children to lose themselves in stories about Dick, Jane, and Sally, and live for a time with these happy storybook characters. But Morrison, on the other hand, recognized what others have not: that being inundated with a fantasy world that your family can never achieve does not provide release but leads to self-hatred, misanthropy, and insanity.