Define “style”…

Objectives

BTEOTL, SWBAT Discuss and analyze stylistic elements that reveal

Toni Morrison’s style of writing. Interpret a text in order to discuss characterization

and themes in The Bluest Eye. Comment on African American identity and standards

of beauty through the work of Toni Morrison and the video clip experiment of “The Doll Test” in order to grasp the effect of racial inequality and segregation of African Americans in the 1940s and 50s.

http://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/the-clark-doll-experiment/

Style…

Style is what makes something unique and personal to an individual.

What elements do we need to analyze when discussing author’s style?

DIDLS Diction Imagery Detail Language Syntax

DICK AND JANEAn American Story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_and_Jane

http://www.amazon.com/Dick-Jane-Fun/dp/0448434113

http://www.homeschoolreviews.com/reviews/curriculum/reviews.aspx?id=222

Context

Used to teach kids to read

Taught readers what is right and wrong

Gave readers a context about society

Socialized young readers (influenced their ideas about society and their place in society)

Symbolism

The Dick and Jane series was used years ago to teach children to read. In the series, the siblings were members of a happy, loving family. They lived with both parents and an adorable dog in a beautiful house. Morrison opens the book and each chapter with a paragraph from the series.

Continued…

By beginning the novel this way, Morrison is setting up the house as a symbol. A symbol is something in a story that stands for or suggest another thing. In The Bluest Eye, the type and condition of a family’s home is a symbol of its social or financial status.

The Breedlove Home

Dick and Jane live in a beautiful house. The Breedloves, however, live in a decaying apartment. It is a symbol of their poverty. It may also hint at the declining nature of the family’s interpersonal relations.

Morrison contrasts the life of the Breedloves with the idyllic life of the white middle-class society with its economic stability and ideals of beauty and happiness by referencing the grade school primer. This was the earliest introduction of the African American child to the status quo.

Negative Change

The Dick-and-Jane series also symbolizes the negative change in the characters’ lives. Morrison distorts the paragraphs as the novel progresses. It becomes impossible to decipher where sentences begin and end. Like the words, Pecola’s life becomes squeezed. She is forced into maturity. She is boxed into impossible situations. Her life hardly resembles that of the young girl introduced in chapter 1.

Pecola’s Conflict

Bitter. Hostile. Cold. Dysfunctional. This is Pecola’s introduction to life. This is what prompts her to pray for blue eyes that would make not only her family, but the world as she knows it, accept and love her.

Group Work

In your groups, reread and ANNOTATE for STYLE the first section of the novel (handout).

As a group, complete the DIDLS sheet for the excerpt.

The Doll Test

Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted psychological experiments on African American children. In one test, The Doll Test, young children were given brown dolls and white dolls (these dolls were the same make and style – just different in color). In the experiment, the Clarks found that most of the black children viewed the black dolls negatively and the white dolls positively. This study was cited in Brown vs. Board of Education as support for the idea that damage was being done to African American children because of school segregation. Recently (2005), Kiri Davis re-conducted the Clark’s Doll Test and the results are quite similar.

Independent Practice

Answer questions in complete sentences.

Complete the Quick Write.