February is nationally known as Black
History Month and coincidentally our selected read, The Bluest Eye was
written by Toni Morrison, the first female African American to win a Nobel
Prize in Literature. Morrison who
celebrated her 87th birthday on February 18 is also recipient of a
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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| Toni Morrison |
Morrison recalls a childhood friend's
desire for blue eyes as a memory that inspired her novel. The Bluest Eye published in 1970 was,
according to the author, written to remind us about the damaging effects of
racism. The book has been a subject of
controversy and is frequently challenged for reasons concerning language,
explicit sex and racism. It was banned
from required high school reading twice in North Carolina (Wake and Buncombe
counties).
The story is set in Lorain, Ohio
(Morrison's hometown) during the early years of WWII. It is about a young black girl named Pecola
who believes she is ugly and wishes she had blue eyes. Pecola comes from a poor family and is
terribly abused by her alcoholic father.
Her mother is no comfort, only reinforcing her low self-worth.
In the story's beginning, readers are
immediately aware of secret gossip ... that Pecola is having her father's
baby. After revealing this scandal,
Morrison uses a flashback technique to tell of events leading up to and
following Pecola's loss of innocence. Sisters Claudia and Frieda, Pecola's
classmates and friends, direct the story's narration. The idea that blonde hair and blue eyes are
standards for beauty is examined by the girls, who are obsessed with Shirley
Temple. Their lives are a stark contrast to the unrelatable perfection of Dick
and Jane's in their school readers.
When further analyzing racism in The
Bluest Eye, there are not only implications of Eurocentric beauty, but
there are also discriminations within the same race based on shade of skin
color. The Bluest Eye is a
caricature of inequity. Though a tragic and hopeless story, Pecola captured my
heart. She only wanted to be loved and accepted. In this short passage from the book I am
reminded of the universal need for love, even by those who are hard to
love.
Love
is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people
love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the
love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover
alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen
in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.
Though I was most sympathetic
for all that Pecola endured, I was also saddened and felt sorry for the ones
who mistreated her. Love can take many
forms, but the kind of love we need most is the unconditional kind.
Not meaning to discourage those who consider
reading this story I highly recommend a box of tissues. I am quite sure that
reactions to this book are varied depending on each reader's personal
background. But I am just as confident that the magic of Morrison’s lyrical
writing style compensates for the story's harsh reality.
Marna Napoleon, a fellow ‘reading
adventurer,’ sums her experience with reading The Bluest Eye:
This is a difficult book to
read because of the oppression and hopelessness that fills it, but the
language, and the way the book comes together make it impossible to put down. I
finished it on Martin Luther King Day, which was appropriate, in that it
reminded me of the ease with which I have been able to live my life, not
because I am gifted, nor because I have made stellar choices, and certainly not
because I was born into money. Life has been relatively smooth, forgiving, and
pretty much always hopeful because I was born white (which apparently also
trumps being female, short and left-handed) in America.
My reading selection for children seemed to connect with
local news in a surprisingly odd way.
Purely by chance, based on the birthday of Geoffrey Willans (b. February
4, 1911), I found myself reading Down with Skool, the first in a series
of books about Nigel Molesworth the terror of St.
Custard's Boys School.
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| Geoffrey Willans |
Geoffrey Willans and illustrator Roger Searle worked together
on a comic diary of Molesworth's school escapades for Punch magazine from 1939
to 1942. Down with Skool was their first published book (1953), which became
so popular that several books followed before Willans died suddenly of a heart
attack. Willans a former headmaster, and
quite possibly a young prankster in his early years, most likely based Molesworth
on his own experiences and memories. I
thought Searle’s illustrations were brilliant and without them Molesworth
probably wouldn’t have become so well-known.
Nigel Molesworth shares his cynical and quirky philosophies
on life at an English boarding school with this guide for students. One hilarious example of both Willans and
Searle’s collaboration is an invention that Molesworth has (patnt pnding.) of THE Molesworth-Peason Lines Machine. This machine was created by Nigel and his
best friend in response to write-offs punishment. The drawing shows Molesworth pedaling a tall
bicycle that is rigged with paper, an inkpot, and over half-a-dozen pens. The
pedaling puts in motion the pens, which simultaneously complete multiple
sentences of “I must be good,” expediting written punishment in a most
enjoyable way.
While reading this book, I even found connections to the
Harry Potter series, taking place at another school for boys, and I’m pretty
sure J.K. Rowling was a Geoffrey Willans fan.
Molesworth calls his favorite jokes “wizard wheeses,” he fears brainy
and athletic “gurls” with names like Hermione and Millicent, and he was once
forced to perform in a Latin play entitled “The Hogwarts.” And, though dated, I
can see how these books may have inspired the popular comic series Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney.
Molesworth is famous for his horrendous spelling and use of
slang. I’m not entirely sure, but I
think that ‘chiz’ (used rather frequently) is the British way of saying
‘geez.’ Molesworth refers to himself as Molesworth
1, since he has a younger (less intelligent) brother who is known as Molesworth
2. Getting adjusted to the character’s phonetic
way of spelling takes a bit of time. But after reading along, I soon found
myself using a cockney accent with an ‘inside-my-head voice.’ I also made a cool discovery about an
expression that Molesworth is famous for: “Any fule kno that.” This became the catchphrase and title of a
rockin’ Deep Purple song!
Nigel Molesworth isn’t to be taken seriously, but the cartoon
cover of Down with Skool does show
the prankster with a missile launcher labeled “Skool Eliminater” and that got
me thinking …
In light of recent student-initiated threats to Ashe County’s
Middle School, I reflected back on my own years as a student and later as a
former teacher. Growing up during the
1970s I remember boys driving their pickup trucks with gun racks and hunting
rifles in the back windows. Graffiti and
smoking in school bathrooms were ordinary acts of rebellion, but fear of
violence never occurred to us. Several
top-rock songs came to mind having to do with the idea of hating school … Pink
Floyd’s anthem “We Don’t Need No Education” and Alice Cooper’s soundtrack song
“School’s Out” from the movie Rock-n-Roll High School. Later as a mom and middle-school teacher
things changed drastically. Where once the worst we imagined was practiced with
a fire drill, now active shooter drills became routine.
I applaud our school system on taking all precautions to keep
students safe. Parents and teachers have a hard job these days. Still like the Luke Bryan song says “I
believe most people are good.”
In March my book club reads Boris Vlan’s novel Froth on the Daydream, a.k.a. Mood Indigo. We plan to view a film based on the book at
The Blue Ridge Movie Lounge in West Jefferson on March 14 (1:00 p.m.) Anyone interested is welcome to join us! Email me for details: SMoore@arlibrary.org
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