Before reading this review it is important to have a small amount of background information on Sigmund Freud (the father of psychoanalysis), Karl Marx (communist manifesto), and Cleanth Brooks (the archetypal New Critic). Now you know.

[The scene opens with three men placed about a small round table in a cramped, smoky bar. The ashtray is overflowing, and their movements are impeded by the conglomeration of empty glasses huddled on the table. Seated in the back corner, furthest from the action of the scene is an older man with an intense gaze, a brutal beard, and a crisp ill-fitting suit [FREUD]. To his left is a small, round man with unkempt hair, thick round spectacles, and an overly intense (yet friendly) gaze [BROOKS]. The third man at the table is dressed soberly, but his white hair is a crazed fuzzy mop continuing into a wide messy beard [MARX].]

[FREUD] In the course of my attempt to understand the human mind, I recently read a novel that made me more aware of how to interpret the behaviors of children in calamitous circumstances. It is called The Bluest Eye by an American named Toni Morrison. Have either of you read it?

[BROOKS] Hmm. It sounds familiar, but I need a few reminiscences from the story to remind me.

[MARX] I've read it, too. Cleanth, it discusses the effects of the brutal exploitation of working class Black Americans by the white bourgeoisie.

[BROOKS] Although I still do not recollect the text, Karl, you must remember that a novel "is more than effective rhetoric applied to true ideas-even if we could agree upon a philosophical yardstick for measuring the truth of ideas and even if we could find some way that transcended nose-counting for determining the effectiveness of the rhetoric"! [Brooks, Cleanth. "The Formalist Critics." In Literary Theory: an Anthology, eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. pp. 52-57. Quotation found on page 56.]

[FREUD] (interrupting BROOKS) Mein Gott! Marx, you completely missed the importance of the novel. It explores how the sexual abuse by a father can completely destroy the psyche of a young girl who has not yet separated her desire for her father into the healthy emotions of a mature adult.

[BROOKS] Oh, is that the novel in which a narrator is exploring the events of her childhood . . . um, something about marigolds . . . it's coming to me. Okay, I know what text you are referring to. [pause] Siggy, you must remember that characters in novels are artificial constructs and you cannot apply your crackpot theories to them. They only exist within the framework of the text! They are not real people! And Karl, the economic climate they live in is also only a construct-it cannot be completely representative of real-life situations. [very passionate and animated] You must remember that we cannot bring outside knowledge to the text, we must only look at what is inherently within it through close reading.

[FREUD] Cleanth, Cleanth, you are much too limiting. The novel is obviously exploring the limits of the human psyche . . .

[MARX] [interrupting] Comrades! Please let me speak. Sig, I understand what you are saying, but that type of exploration wouldn't be necessary if the Capitalist Pigs were not controlling all the wealth and barely leaving any scraps for those who actually produce commodities with their labor! The frame of the novel sets up the division of labor in graphic detail to reveal the flaws in the Capitalist system. People of any race can see that poverty breeds misery, and a redistribution of wealth would result in the reduction of violence in the homes of the proletariat!

[BROOKS] Gentlemen, gentlemen. We are obviously looking at this from our own frameworks. Although the Russian Formalists were missing a great deal of the novel, they were right in asserting a need to limit the area of criticism. We are not talking about the work here, only about the possibility of external influences. It is impossible to know what Morrison intended, and every reader is going to look at the text in their own way-have you ever considered the intentional and affective fallacies? [pleading] At least for the sake of this discussion, can we please try to focus on the novel itself?!

[FREUD] [graciously] Thank you, Mr. Brooks. I do think that you take this idea of limitation too far, but perhaps we should come to a greater understanding if we look more closely at the images in the story, and how they are interrelated.

[Marx] [defensively] Okay, you want some specific examples? How about the fact that Pecola's family lives in an old storefront because they cannot afford a real home? That providing food is more important to the adults than caring for their children, because they have no other choice? That Claudia envies not the wealth of the little white girl at the beginning, but something more obscure-her condescending manner that seems to expect preferential treatment because of class? Shall I go on?

[BROOKS] Well, at least now we can all see what you are referring to, by using specific examples.

[FREUD] However, the true importance of these points you have brought up is not that these situations exist or the socio-eco-political framework that causes them, but how these situations are manifested in the characters' consciousness. The questions we should be asking center around why a good home is important? How does a person's living environment impact the manner in which they deal with the world? How does the problem of overworked parents affect the development of otherwise healthy children? Can behavior be rationalized by emotions such as greed? Karl, are you beginning to see my point? I believe I see yours, I just think it is irrelevant. [puffs on his pipe]

[BROOKS] Well, at least the two of you seem to be beginning to understand the object of a close reading. Can you both see why this is important, to center the discussion around the text? [MARX and FREUD grudgingly nod in assent] Unfortunately, you are completely missing the point that a text is a piece of fiction, a work of art. It is not directly representational of situations in the world at large. You cannot use fiction as a handbook for real life. This text really does have a lot to it, but it needs to be studied as literature not as one of Sigmund's patients or the economic climate in the Southern United States-it is an author's interpretations of those things, separate from that artist, standing on its own. I know I am sounding like a formalist here, and that is not my intention. But you do need to realize that whatever claims you make, the argument must be centered around Morrison's text, not the findings of your individual research. Are we all together here?

[FREUD] Cleanth, how am I supposed to talk about the psychology of the characters without referring to my own works? My treatises are the basis for psychoanalytic theory!

[BROOKS] To answer this question for both of you. . . . [aside] Don't think I don't see the expression on your face, Karl. Anyway, it seems to me (and this is possibly somewhat related to the amount of alcohol we have all consumed rather than true logic), that all of us are saying something valid. Freud, your interpretations of the psychological functioning of characters do have a great deal of importance. Marx, a person's background and place in a stratified society does impact the rest of their lives. It seems to me that if we use all of our methods of looking at texts we can glean a more holistic understanding of them. Nevertheless, both of you need to be careful not to completely center your arguments on preconceived notions. Look at what is in the book itself foremost, and from there allow yourself to interpret important aspects.

[There is a great deal of uncomfortable laughter, while the three of them attempt to come to terms with what BROOKS has just said. In many ways, they all find that there is a point to all of this, but they are unwilling to admit it. At this moment, the lights that have been slowly rising over a middle-aged black woman sitting at the other end of the bar reach their maximum-ideally the audience would not notice her much before this point in the play.]

[MORRISON] I couldn't help overhearing what you three are sitting here talking about. If you are really curious, I will tell you what I did in that book. "I suppose The Bluest Eye is about one's dependency on the world for identification, self-value, feelings of worth-how to survive whole in a world where we are all of us, in some measure, are victims of something." [http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~mmaynard/Morrison/bluest.html] You can take it or leave it, but this is really what the "text" means. [she walks off with a flip of her white braids]

[MARX] See I was right! Her point is that the exploitation of labor causes victimization of the working class, invalidating a sense of the individual. She is making social commentary, Brooks, not just writing a nice little novel that we sit down, read, and then ignore the implications of what she is saying.

[BROOKS] That doesn't matter! We can't focus our interpretations on what she intended. Whatever she put on the page remains there, but her thoughts during the conception have to be within the text, not superimposed upon it!

[FREUD] Now what I am able to interpret from this is that all of us are finding evidence of the things she states within her own analysis (at least in part). So Mr. Brooks, your idea of the intentional fallacy must be discredited. Mr. Marx, you can't reduce the poetry of Ms. Morrison's words to definitions of labor practices, however. She is talking about how the human mind reacts to the unfair distribution of wealth. I understand your point, but you really must go on. It seems to me that she is taking my ideas about the human mind and expanding on them. She is attempting to do psychoanalysis of a person created exclusively in her head to represent a time, place, and situation and then tries to discover how that influences the individual. Here I recall a passage from her afterword. She said something like: "The extremity of Pecola's case stemmed largely from a crippled and crippling family-unlike the average black family and unlike the narrator's. But singular as Pecola's life was, I believed some aspects of her woundability were lodged in all young girls." To carry on, [eyeing the others so as not to be interrupted] Morrison is trying to comment on a world outside of Pecola. She uses an extreme case to do so to make her point clear, but her analysis can be applied to all young girls.

[BROOKS] [interrupting] Morrison can attempt to comment on society, but she can only make an unsuccessful attempt!

[WAITRESS] [leaning over to speak privately, but emphatically] You three have been sitting here for hours, and although you are buying drinks so I can't ask you to leave, I do need to ask you to keep it down. You are bothering the other customers. [standing up] Can I get you another round? [they all nod in assent]

[BROOKS] As I was saying, Morrison does have an intent as she approaches her work, and she does include an afterword to explain that intent. Yet, the general reader is not going to have the opportunity that we just did to discuss that with her. The critic has to stand over the text and . . .

[MARX] Cleanth, [enunciating every syllable] step down out of your Ivory Tower! The external implications of The Bluest Eye are what makes it important, are what places it beyond the pulp fiction at grocery store check-out stands. She is bringing to the page a reality that we all need to pay attention to, that we all need to be aware of. Reality is not something that you can compartmentalize-the societal structure that is surrounding these characters, these people, is deeply rooted in their every action! The socio-political framework that they exist as an integral part of-the segment that actually produces but reaps no gain from their labor, exiling them to a life of pain and violence-is represented in EVERY WORD of the "text" (as you so pompously like to call it).

[FREUD] I feel that I must join arms with Mr. Marx at this point, Cleanth, however conditionally. I think that by looking deeply into the psyche of the characters, Pecola, Cholly, Soaphead Church, Claudia . . . and all the rest. They have been born into a life, a "socio-political framework," [nodding to MARX] far beyond anything that we sitting here at this table can recognize. External forces directly impact the psyche to react to that environment, and in a world as illogical and irreconcilable as theirs, deviations will definitely occur. The fact that Cholly inverts an abnormality of Oedipal stage-at a point that his daughter has separated herself from him (and in this situation, it must not have been as difficult as most, with the sexual life of the parents in close proximity) shows explicitly how a dysfunctional family (caused by economic factors) can disrupt normal functionality in an individual. I don't know what Toni Morrison's life has been like, but her representation of lives that could very well be like her own is astonishing . . . a veritable wealth . . .

[BROOKS] [interrupting vehemently] OKAY! I see your point. There are OF COURSE implications beyond the text. I am not a formalist! It is my belief that these implications are valid-there would be no reason for criticism without them. Again, I remind you, that you must remain centered on TEXTUAL EVIDENCE to support them. Within this, there are inherent fallacies. Each reader will come away from a text with different interpretations. The role of the critic must be to stand OVER THE TEXT and decipher it, not merely to explain how a culture can create situations in the mind of the author, or how it's historical background comes into play. The critic can only work with the text itself!

[FREUD and MARX] That is all I am saying!!!

[BROOKS] I am just reminding you to do a CLOSE READING!!

[MARX] CLASS!!

[FREUD] PSYCHE!!

[BROOKS] TEXT!!

[FREUD] GENDER!!

[MARX] LABOR!!

[FREUD] SEX!

[The critics shout their catch phrases at each other as the cocktail waitress walks up to send them on their way, or perhaps serve them another round.]
[Curtain]




Recommended: Yes