The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison describes the chilling story of a young girl's experience with racism after the Great Depression. Although the novel's arc is divided into four seasons, "Autumn," "Winter," "Spring," and "Summer," it is through the characters' experiences that we see its failure to actually meet the traditional expectations of these seasons. . Morrison's structure of time through the use of natural seasons serves as a juxtaposition to illuminate the unnaturalness of his characters' lives. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Morrison begins the novel with the season of "Autumn," a traditional time of crisp, harvested air and beautifully colored leaves falling from tree branches, however these expectations are quickly undermined by his characters' experiences. We can first notice a juxtaposition of the beauty of autumn which, in this case, serves to illuminate the ugliness of the Breedlove family. In a revealing introduction to the Breedlove family, Morrison's primary narrator, Claudia MacTeer, recalls the appearance of the Breedlove house-shop that "imposed itself on the eye of the passer-by in a way that is at once irritating and melancholy" ( 32). Claudia suggests that the storefront was not a temporary place of residence for the Breedloves, but rather a place to stay because "they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly" (38). While the Breedloves' ugliness, overall, is "unique" (38), their lack of beauty is obviously demonstrated through the character of Pecola Breedlove, the youngest member of the Breedlove family, whose self-esteem we can see slowly diminish as the natural cycle of the seasons advances. Pecola's ugliness, and her obsessive desire for blue eyes in the hope that "she herself was different" (46), provide a striking contrast between the expectation of beauty in autumn and the beauty that Pecola so desperately wants, but sorely lacks . In this way, Morrison uses the "Autumn" season not only as a narrative divide, but as a tool to highlight the Breedloves' unnatural lack of beauty, particularly through Pecola, against the expectations of a traditionally beautiful season. continues to deviate from the expectations of what autumn typically symbolizes when Claudia recalls the beginning of Pecola's sexual maturation in which the “ministratina” begins (31). Pecola's coming of age in the "rough October wind" (57) proves somewhat ironic as her newly adopted maturity brings with it the possibility of pregnancy and a new life, characteristics not usually symbolized by 'autumn, but something that leads to the beginning of his loss of innocence and foreshadows his ultimate end. We also notice the discrepancy between what is expected from the autumn and what actually happens through Claudia's illness; “I cough once, hard, through bronchial tubes already full of phlegm” (10). Remembering her mother who cared for her during her illness, Claudia recalls: “When I think of autumn, I think of someone with hands that don't want me to die” (12). Morrison uses Pecola and Claudia's unnatural experiences to draw attention to the discrepancy between what one would typically expect in the natural cycle of autumn versus what actually happens. esteem. As the course study guide discusses, Pecola's gradual “self-rejection” (16) can be seen most clearly through the alienation she experiences from her peers, particularly Maureen Peal, “a childtall yellow dream girl with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes. that hung down her back” (62). Claudia remembers winter as something that “had tightened into a hateful knot that nothing could untie” (62) except Maureen Peal, a “disruptor of the seasons” (62). After befriending Pecola for a very short period of time, Maureen quickly becomes angry at Pecola and the girls, and in one spat calls them "black and ugly black and mos" (73), serving to effectively break down the already weak exterior by Pecola. even more self-confidence and self-esteem. While winter is a season traditionally associated with hibernation and an unchanging state of being, Pecola's ever-changing and declining psychological state is reflected in the snowflakes she sees "falling and dying on the sidewalk" (93) after her leaving Geraldine's house after being called a “bad little black bitch” (92) for a crime she didn't commit. As the snowflakes on the sidewalk die, so too is Pecola's self-esteem. The course study guide confirms Pecola's mental deterioration when it explains that "what the transition from 'Autumn' to 'Winter' means for Pecola is [a] gradual shift to a vision of herself that is as ruthless as the inevitable change of seasons" (17). Morrison uses the change in Pecola's mental state to counteract expectations of a typically unchanging winter season, once again drawing attention to the discrepancy in what is expected of natural seasons by providing the opposite of these expectations through the experiences of her character. While the connotations of spring usually consist of rebirth and renewal, happiness and awakening, the time period of Morrison's "Spring" in the novel deviates greatly from traditional expectations of the season and is severely tainted by a series of horrific events. The reader is first given an idea of ​​Claudia's disposition towards spring when she remembers the tree branches that "beat us differently in spring" (97); “Instead of the dull ache of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping ended” (97). Claudia describes the negativity that still remains in her memory of spring when she states, "Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered pain of the changes of season, and forsythia has no joy" (97). The negativity doesn't end there; Morrison's interpretation of Spring proves to be full of disappointment, corruption, and death for her characters. In the chapters chronicling Cholly Breedlove's childhood, we see him remember the death of his Aunt Jimmy: "It was in the spring, a very cold spring, that Aunt Jimmy died of peach cobbler" (135). Cholly also experiences disappointment when, after traveling to Macon to find his father, he is ultimately rejected and treated hostilely during their only meeting. Pecola also feels disappointment when, after accidentally spilling the berry tart, “Mrs. Breedlove pulled her up by the arm, slapped her again, and, in a thin voice of anger, directly insulted Pecola” (109), in which “he could hear Mrs. Breedlove shushing and calming the tears of the little pink and yellow baby girl” (109). Events that take place in "Spring" are significant because their negative nature serves to highlight their unnaturalness in correlation with the expected characteristics of the season. The corruption of "Spring" manifests itself first in the character of Soaphead Church, a former priest who practices perversion by touching young girls, and the corruption continues only when Frieda, Claudia's sister, is touched inappropriately by their hosthome, Mr. Henry. However, the most unnatural act that occurs in the entire novel is when Pecola is raped by her father, Cholly, "one Sunday afternoon, in the dim spring light, [after] he staggered home drunk and saw his daughter in the kitchen ” (161) We later learn that this is the first of two times that she will be assaulted by her father and as a result become pregnant with her father's child although Pecola's pregnancy actually follows the pattern of the spring season through expectations of rebirth and renewal, the act itself still functions as a deviation from the norm because it is tainted by the unnaturalness of the act. In this case, what is expected from “Spring” is completely opposite to what happens. Morrison creates a juxtaposition to highlight the horrible and unnatural events that occur simultaneously with the natural cycle of the seasons. The final season of the novel, "Summer", concludes the one-year span of the story and serves to represent the exact opposite of what the season would typically characterize. Expectations of a fruitful land, growth and fulfillment are denied by the land's unyielding nature and unexpected death. Claudia's introduction of the season foreshadows the negativity that will follow: “Just enter the rigidity of a strawberry and I see summer, its dust and dark sky. It remains a season of storms for me. The dry days and sultry nights are indistinct in my mind, but the storm, the sudden violent storms, frightened me and turned me off” (187). While “the earth itself may have been unyielding” (introduction) in the case of Claudia and Frieda's marigolds that stopped growing, so was Pecola's “plot of black earth” where Cholly Breedlove “dropped the its seeds” (introduction). Claudia recalls that although “the baby was born too early and died” (204), it was Cholly “who loved [Pecola] enough to touch her, to envelop her, to give her something of himself. But his touch was fatal, and that something he gave her filled the matrix of her agony with death” (206). The unnaturalness of the unyielding earth, paralleling the death of Pecola's baby, is followed by her final loss of sanity in which she "spent her days, her sap-green days, walking up and down, up and down, with her head which shot downwards." beating of a drum so distant that only she could hear” (204). A critic of the novel, Sharon Gravett, provides an interesting perspective when she explains that Claudia “sees the cycle of the year shift from the dying season of autumn to fall again, which serves as an ironic counterpoint to the story of Pecola Breedlove, who comes of age, she is raped and impregnated by her father Cholly, goes mad and loses her baby. [Morrison] uses the seasons with their patterns and changes to comment on similar or ironic developments within the human community” (89). Gravett also comments on the unsuccessful nature of the season and its departure from what one would expect of summer, explaining that the novel “ends with the shattered hopes of a life that has failed to blossom. Focus on the death of life and hope rather than rebirth” (94). Through the symbolism of the marigolds' resistance to growth and the death of Pecola's child, Morrison almost suggests the signs of an upheaval in the natural order of the seasons. It is through these unnatural events and the characters' subsequent experiences that we see Morrison's juxtaposition of the natural cycle of the seasons. While the seasons follow one another in an unchanging and predictable pattern, the lives of Morrison's characters do not seem to follow the same linear order of predictability. The four main sections of the novel, “Autumn”, “Winter”,.