Week 10 Blogpost (missed)

In Class Essay Rewrite:

In Morrison’s prologue to The Bluest Eye, the author utilizes nature as a catalyst to not only prelude the plot, but also to quickly state her themes and focus as well as alert the readers attentions to the “taboo” issues prevalent in Society that It refuses to acknowledge and change. “Fall” (Morrison 6), is the transitional season between summer and winter, the change from the season representing fertility and life to the season representing death and barrenness. In the very first sentence, Morrison sets the story in “the fall of 1941” (Morrison 6). By doing so, readers can infer that the story will be tragic--and with all tragedy, there exists a causation. Based off that, we can assume that Toni Morrison will further explore the causation or causations for such a tragedy and the role that Society plays throughout it. As I had touched on before, “fall” is also a transitional season (Morrison 6). Morrison’s choice to use such a transitional season, instead of a peak season, implies that the story will not only bear continuously development but also enforce a change in mindset. Also, because Morrison decides to employ “fall” (summer to winter) instead of spring (winter to summer) we can predict that the story will take a change for the worse; a tragedy (Morrison 6). Morrison continues this extended metaphor of nature, describing seeds “that did not sprout”, to create a sense of disparity (Morrison 6). This idea of seeds failing to “sprout”(6) because they had been “planted too far down in the earth” hints at the causation of the tragedy (Morrison 6). It seems that the seeds were overwhelmed by the “earth” itself, the “earth” which it will always be a part of (Morrison 6). So if the seeds symbolized the unique individual identities of men and the composition of the identities, the “earth” would represent the collection of humankind--Society (Morrison 6). The seeds’ failure to grow because of the earth serves as a sort of allegory that parallels man’s (specifically minority’s) destruction and oppression by societal standards. By writing such, the novel’s prologue effectively makes use of nature to foreshadow the plot and define her purpose for writing The Bluest Eye.