"Dick-and-Jane Primer" in Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" as an Aesthetic Device

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject American Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: The focus of this paper is the narrative mechanism of employing a paragraph of "Dick and Jane" Reader, which was popular in children schools in 1940s in the American United States. It educates children how to read and they hear it from the very beginning of their lives. Through such an educational system, the white dominant culture exerts its authority in oppressing black people. In her novel "The Bluest Eye", the African-American writer Toni Morrison cuts an expert of "Dick and Jane" narrative and uses it as a prologue. She repeats the paragraph three times which are highly different from each other, then dismembers it into pieces that appear as headings to some chapters of the novel. The study reveals the aesthetic purpose beyond such reproducing and dismembering of "Dick and Jane" narrative. Morrison sends a message of moral content to blacks as well as whites: On the one hand, blacks, particularly those who immersed in the white ideology, have to wake up and realize the value of their culture, heritage and language in protecting their black identity. On the other hand, whites should respect and admit the cultural and humane existence of the other and realize the merit of the black culture.