Riley Sansbury
Dr. Brad Telford
English III Honors
December 3, 2018
The Edge of Glory: Disconnection from the Evil to Connect to the Good in The Color
Purple and The Bluest Eye
I discovered that our disconnect was never because of the
insecurities we felt, but rather the emptiness we created
when we failed to make sense of ourselves
R.M Drake
The most important things in life are the
connections you make with others
Tom Ford
Empathy fuels connections; sympathy drives
disconnections.
Brené Brown
Discrimination: a hardship thousands, if not millions of people face today, especially being a woman and told ‘you belong in the kitchen’ or being perceived as less than because you were born the wrong sex. Either way, wrong, but unfortunately still happens. The “#MeToo Moment”, a movement of 2018 that bonds people that are against “sexual misconduct”, for example, not meaning to discriminate against anyone, but “straight men” feel as if they cannot be a part of this movement without “elbowing out female voices” (Proulx, Pepper, Schulten, Victor). The way that discrimination affects everyone, even if unintentional, is prevalent today and in the society of the Mid-1900's. Even though everyone is vulnerable to such a sensitive topic, people seem to be becoming more aware of their susceptibility of becoming a victim to sexual abuse, which can leave them to isolate and dissociate from the world.
Alice Walker and Toni Morrison both explore the idea of how the connections of empowered females bring a sense of self back into the lives of Celie in The Color Purple and Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye. As the protagonists are disconnected from multiple people, they are connected to people they admire, for Celie and Nettie by letters and Pecola to the MacTeer family through her fostering into their family. Celie is separated from her mother by death, her daughter by forced separation by her step-father, and ultimately, the biggest female influence in her life, Nettie, her sister by geographic separation. Similarly, Pecola is separated from her mother, although sometimes not by physical distance like Celie and her mother, but by the verbal abuse Pecola suffers via her mother. Unlike Celie, Pecola does gain a loving motherly figure in her life, Mrs. MacTeer, the narrators’ mother giving Pecola a female connection to reimagine her life to follow Mrs. MacTeer’s lead. Celie and Pecola’s contact to other strong familial females bring the protagonists to a less traumatized state of mind. Both novels show a loss of feminine authority, but reconnections of personal voids of the protagonists fill a familiar feeling that most experience.
‘The Roaring 20’s’ as the 1920’as were addressed as the age of “nightclubs [,] theaters”, flappers, and illegal consumption of alcohol, the common white man was thriving in riches, but for African American’s, this time was not prosperous (Whipps). In August of 1920, the 19th Amendment was approved, giving white women rights, but black women of the South still were exempt of voting and other rights the white man would call common. In 1925, the American Negro Labor Congress was formed, leading to radical movements in fighting “racism and discrimination” (Lewis). Although the twenties were a time of hardship for the common African American, it was also a time of opportunities for improvement, especially seen in Reverend S.S Jones’ clip of African Americans in Oklahoma thriving with “prosperous merchants” working “storefronts” and others working in the “oil barons” (Combs). Although in Oklahoma, these predominant African American towns are on an upswing, soon came the Great Depression, leaving these hardworking communities crumbling and succumbing to the economic depression that everyone was facing.
Alice Walker’s letter narration gives the reader a feeling of connection through writing rather than Toni Morrison’s traditional expository writing giving the narration more of a smooth transition in her story line. Walker offers a typical perspective on African-American literacy with her use of “absence” of education, but semi-illiterate writing gives the audience a truthfulness that Morrison’s more grammatically correct writing does not (Selzer 166). Celie is physically disconnected from most of the people she knows, except for Albert and their family, but through her letters, a connection to God, later distancing herself from Him, and Nettie are formed. The alternate, yet typical form of narration that Morrison uses creates a flow of disconnection and connection that Pecola lives through within her own family and the MacTeer family. The digression of each persons’ “happiness” throughout the novels differs through each storyline (Morrison 16). Especially in Walker’s narrative it becomes blatantly obvious that Celie has hit rock bottom when she “don’t write to God no more” losing the base that she had previously had to lean on (Walker 193). In Morrison’s writing, Pecola tricks herself into believing she has blue eyes, blinding herself from everyone else, disconnecting her from the MacTeer family and generally everyone she ever knew. Pecola isolates herself through her own twisted imagination, leaving her with the blue eyes she ultimately wanted, but Morrison leaves her defenseless against what could come. Unlike Morrison, Walker leaves the novel on an upswing with Celie with her loved ones and in a happier environment, connecting back to her roots. The differing techniques that Walker and Morrison use demonstrate how the narration influences the appearance of connections in the eyes of the audience.
African Americans have unreliable resources in the government at the time of the setting of each novel, especially the women. The connections between the men and women of these novels shows a stereotypical lifestyle of African American’s during the early 1900’s, an abusive and insecure male figure and a submissive female figure. “Sexual oppression… [a] painful and sometimes dangerous” action can cause a chain effect in impressionable females lives (Moss and Wilson). The abuse these protagonists suffer creates a further disconnection from the antagonists, and people in general. Each protagonist was robbed of their “innocence and faith”, whether in God or in humanity, through their disconnection internally and externally (Morrison 10). The way females in these novels have internal disconnections that “don’t [get] notice[d]” affects the way they interact with others (Walker 167). Pecola “could not find the source” of ugliness her mom would refer to, she saw how little white girls were praised for their “uncomprehending eyes”, and desired to be like them, resulting in an internal conflict that needed nurturing that was left untouched (Morrison 39, 92). The character of the protagonists is compromised by the insufficient care they receive. Since a “woman’ primary purpose” was to take care of the household, Celie never got time to take care of herself leaving her susceptible to the lack of self-discovery she continues to struggle with throughout the novel (Selzer). Pecola, being a child, had no means to take care of herself at this stage of her life. Her coming of age reveals an “absence of love” and nurturing in her life, that is vital to pubescent girl (Telgen 73). The fundamental needs that these characters, particularly Pecola, lack cause a giant disconnection from their potential internal growth. The society that the protagonists are growing up in causes them to create a barrier between themselves and the rest of the world.
Celie and Pecola’s insecurities from the sexual and emotional trauma they have suffered make their internal and external connections more vital to their integration back into life. Both “endure society’s racial prejudices” and with that they are already at a disadvantage in their community, but the “psychological erosion” that occurs within their households causes their identities to deteriorate (Telgen 70, Gillspie). The pain that they are put through causes them to break away from themselves and mostly anyone they used to interact with. The fact that both heroines need to “git used to” being viewed as nothing more than “a man’s helpmate” causes their souls to deteriorate to nothing more than just a shell of a human (Walker (), Selzer). In the case of Pecola, she never grows to satisfy her full potential as a girl in such an influential time period. If she had been “love[d]” by a “better…lover” than her abusive and absent mother, like the MacTeer Family, she could have had a different destiny than to reimagine her life, and blind herself (Morrison 206). Unlike Pecola, Celie is built up to have “survival strategies” and “survive [the] adversity” she has had to deal with throughout her life (Selzer 87, Gillespie). When she finds letters from her sister, she “chok[es] on [her] own heart” and some of what she formerly knew comes back to fill a gap that she needed to build up courage to build a life of her own (Walker 130). The way each protagonist approaches their struggles
The protagonists' damaged identities lead to a dissociative state, without being aware, leading to mental and physical isolation. Celie and Pecola both suffer from a loss of identity when abused and become deficient at self-care.
Both protagonists have an innocence in the beginning of the novels that is take away from them in a sudden fashion through rape, both leaving them broken and vulnerable, but through Celie’s disconnecting from sources of evilness, such as her step-father, and connecting to outlets of purity, Nettie and Shug, she is brought back to a sense of wholeness. On the contrary, Pecola never recovers from being raped, leaving her with a broken and underdeveloped personality.
Societal norms of this time create a feeling of anxiety in the lives of Celie and Pecola, breaking away from that and connecting to uplifting supporting characters reveal the underlying victorious protagonist
The use of relationships in each novel supports the idea of feminism and how an empowered female, such as Shug or Mrs. MacTeer, can uplift formerly weakened protagonists.