Little Baby Gatsby

One the most unique uses of figurative language that I found in my reading this week occurred in chapter 4 after Nick goes to lunch with Gatsby. After Nick is told of Gatsby's love for Daisy, he notices that Gatsby, "[comes] alive to [him], delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless spendor."

This was a very compelling way to phrase this and describes vividly how Nick's new knowledge of Gatsby has transformed their relationship. By depicting him as an unborn baby, he is portraying the amount of mystery and uncertainty that has surrounded him until this point. When a parent is expecting a child, they know almost nothing about the child. Except for possibly the gender, parents are left guessing the weight, eye color, hair color, blood type, etc. Only when the baby is born can the parents know anything for certain.

The same goes for Jay Gatsby. In the chapters leading up this one, Nick hears countless rumors and speculations about his neighbor. Without ever meeting this man, Nick is left wondering what he did to earn his fortune, what he did for a living, and most of all, why he was reaching for the green light. But after meeting him finally and becoming closer to him, these important details are slowly revealed to him. Nick has now transformed into a proud parent, who slowly learns more and more about his Little Baby Gatsby as their relationship grows and develops.

Flailing Like a Bird

From the moment I started reading The Bluest Eye, I could tell that this wasn't going to be a novel where everything just kind of works out for everybody in the end and the reader is left with all of their questions answered. Clearly, this was a book meant to make people think. And after reading an ending that was so disturbing and so incomplete, all I could do was think. So being in awe of how perfectly Morrison had achieved her purpose through this ending, I was very surprised to hear that many others around me were not as satisfied.

The reason that I think many had trouble with the ending was because they were focused on a question that was really completely irrelevant to the actual meaning of the story. The question, "Who was Pecola talking to?" is not really one that needs to be answered, and here's why:

As everyone knows, Pecola spends the entire novel in pursuit of beauty, specifically in the form of blue eyes. What Toni Morrison is trying to show in the end that this quest for a better life is really what ends up killing her.  Even though she doesn't literally die, she is driven so far past the point of sanity that she is delusional.  This "other person" that she is talking to in the final chapter of the book is a representation of that. Whether this other voice is one that is inside her head or if it's another human being really doesn't matter because Pecola's vision is so clouded that she sees whatever she wants to regardless of what anyone else says. And even though that in her false reality she now has obtained a brand new set of blue eyes, she still is not satisfied, as she tells her herself, "He should have made them bluer." No matter what the other voice says to her, she will never be content, so even this possibly fictional character abandons her. Morrison is clearly using this character to convey how Pecola is now completely and utterly alone, and with the combination of the trauma that her father put her through and her own unrealistic expectations, she is left trapped in a pit of insanity for the rest of her life.

One and the Same

Around the time The Bluest Eye was published, the American Civil Rights Movement was coming to a close and presumably so was the racial injustice that plagued the country since its birth. And after the novel addressed these issues in such a graphic way, one would think that Toni Morrison  successfully shocked her readers into never repeating the events of the past again. But almost 50 years later that discrimination is still very real in society. When Kendrick Lamar released, To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, police brutality and "Black Lives Matter" protests were in full swing, making it the perfect time to release such an intricate and socially conscious album.

Kendrick Lamar does exactly what Morrison did with her novel, in that he sheds light on some of the most controversial topics of the time, like in the song, "Complexion (A Zulu Love)". Here he talks about the unfair beauty standards that African-American women have to deal with and preaches that "complexion don't mean a thing," whether you're "dark as the midnight hour or bright as the mornin' sun." In this song there are times where Kendrick mirrors some of the same exact ideas that Morrison discusses in The Bluest Eye. For example, Pecola feels ugly because she always compares herself to the "blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned dolls [that] every girl treasured." She is told, that "this is beautiful" and that if she is one day "worthy" enough, she could be beautiful like that too. Kendrick also recognizes this desire for this supposed white beauty when he states "You blew me away, you think more beauty in blue, green, and grey."

Beyond the idea of beauty standards, To Pimp a Butterfly is most similar to Morrison's novel in the way that it addresses the same over-arching theme: that blacks are held back by the institutions of race, wealth, and social class. In Kendrick's song, "Institutionalized," he describes that even though he has achieved a great deal of wealth and success, he still is trapped in the mindset of a poor kid from Compton. In one part of the song he states:

If I was the president
I'd pay my mama's rent
Free my homies and them
Bulletproof my Chevy doors
Lay in the White House and get high, Lord
Who ever thought?
Master take the chains off me

This may seem odd to the listener that he would think on such a small scale, but he is so confined by society to this way of thinking, that this is all he knows. He can't even imagine a world outside of Compton, where he turned to drugs to cope with the constant fear that he could be shot at any moment.

Kendrick Lamar addresses more of the stereotypes and gets into his own internal conflict in the song, "The Blacker the Berry," starting every verse with the line, "I'm the biggest hypocrite of 2015." At the close of the song he concludes:

So don't matter how much I say I like to preach with the Panthers
Or tell Georgia State "Marcus Garvey got all the answers"
Or try to celebrate February like it's my B-Day
Or eat watermelon, chicken and Kool-Aid on weekdays
Or jump high enough to get Michael Jordan endorsements
Or watch BET cause urban support is important
So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?
When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?
Hypocrite!

One after another he lists off an endless stream black stereotypes along with movements that he feels that he is obligated to support as a member of the black community but all of this means nothing because he too is part of the problem. Kendrick can do everything in his power to represent his race properly, but if blacks are still violent towards each other, then no progress is being made. All of their attempts at equality are pointless if there is no unity on their end to begin with.

The poem that closes the album perfectly summarizes the main points of both The Bluest Eye and To Pimp a Butterfly. In it he concludes:

The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it
Its only job is to eat or consume everything around it, in order to protect itself from this mad city
While consuming its environment the caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive
One thing it noticed is how much the world shuns him, but praises the butterfly
The butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness, and the beauty within the caterpillar
But having a harsh outlook on life the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak
And figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits
Already surrounded by this mad city
The caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon which institutionalizes him
He can no longer see past his own thoughts
He’s trapped
When trapped inside these walls certain ideas start to take roots
Such as going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city
The result?
Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant
Finally free, the butterfly sheds light on situations
That the caterpillar never considered, ending the eternal struggle
Although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different
They are one and the same

Through the Eyes of a Hooker

One of the most compelling things about The Bluest Eye, is the way that Toni Morrison switches between a third-person omniscient point of view and Claudia's first-person point of view. The third-person narrative especially allows the reader to have a unique insight on the thoughts and feelings of almost every character in the story, including the most controversial group of characters: The Prostitutes.

Society has and always will have an extremely negative opinion of sex those who trade sex for money. We often quick to judge anyone who makes a living in that field without really getting to know them for who they are. To be fair, I do believe that prostitution is degrading to women and is honestly just downright disgusting, but to label anyone just based their profession is ignorant and really almost as shameful prostitution itself.

Pecola, being young and innocent, has no reason to judge the prostitutes and befriends them, which allows the reader to also look past their profession and see who they truly are.  To the surprise of most, they prove to be very kind and good-natured towards Pecola, even telling her about they quite ironically turned a man into the FBI for "killing more men than TB."

This unique point of view that Morrison has created also depicts how they feel about the career they have chosen, a side of the issue that most have never considered.  Their feelings are pretty accurately summed up in a song that one of the hookers, Poland, is heard singing as the reader is first introduced to her. She sings:

I got blues in my mealbarrel

Blues up on the shelf

I got blues in my mealbarrel

Blues up on the shelf

Blues in the bedroom

'Cause I'm sleepin' by myself

Here Poland paints a very bleak picture of her life as prostitute, which is honestly not surprising. But the most captivating part of this song, the part that sums up her life the best, is the very last phrase (lines 5 and 6). As a hooker, she spends day in and day out in the bedroom, to the point where the emotion and intimacy of sex is entirely lost. So for her making "love" becomes no less monotonous than working a 9 to 5 job in an office somewhere. And despite the fact that she makes her living off of sleeping with other people, she still could not feel more alone.