“We had defended ourselves since memory against everything and everybody, considered all speech a code to be broken by us, and all gestures subject to careful analysis; we had become headstrong, devious and arrogant. Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves. Our limitations were not known to us—not then. Our only handicap was our size; people gave us orders because they were bigger and stronger. So it was with confidence, strengthened by pity and pride, that we decided to change the course of events and alter a human life” (Morrison 191).
Let me just say straight up that I may have fallen asleep
once or twice while trying to complete the reading assignments for The Bluest Eye. There have been times
that I have looked back at my sticky-notes to realize that this:
Does not make any sense. However, it is passages like this
one that make me sit up straighter and my handwriting neater. In the novel, Claudia
is nine years old. I don’t remember many specific details of my ninth year of
life except for the fact that I would blackmail my dad to tell me where my mom
hid my Halloween candy, and I somehow was able to fall off the piano bench
while playing piano, causing a nice scar right next to my left eye. Never can I
say that I had to wake up or go to bed with such heart-breakingly beautiful
perspectives as Claudia. Diction such as “defended”, “headstrong”, “limitations”
and “handicap” show that these are not the words of a child, but instead, of a
fighter. Childhood is not defined by an age, but by the protection and nurturing
environment brought by the parents and the community, the innocent and carefree
mindset of an oblivious soul, and the guiltless selfishness that would always
be excusable in the end. Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola have none of this. They
are forced into maturity to “change the course of events and alter a human life”
when they themselves still have to plan out their own course of events.
Morrison continues to prove that even a beautiful and eloquent string of words
such as this passage has the ability to yank my heart through my chest.
