Change of seasons

The changing of seasons in the Bluest Eye is significant. For me the seasons represent different things from different view points. When thinking of the actual Christian calendar the four seasons represent a life cycle. Spring is a birth, Summer is growth, Autumn is change and Winter is death. The second way I view the seasons is by the school year. I view Autumn as the beginning, Winter still has death, Spring as rebirth and Summer as growth.

In the book Toni Morrison uses the seasons to represent chapters. The seasons are like a foreshadow of what will happen in the next chapter. In Autumn, Peccola, Frieda and Claudia are becoming best friends and are starting the school year together. This is Morrison showing us the start of something new. For Winter things turn for a sour note when we realize just how horrible Peccola's life is. We are taken into her loneliness, abandonment and the hatred just about everyone has towards her. In Spring things turn ever more sour. This could be Morrison's way of saying there won't be a change that things will just get worse. Spring should be a happy feeling for everyone but it just brings more pain and sorrow to the story. In Summer Morrison's theme of things just keep getting worse and worse progresses. Peccola starts going insane in believing that she actually has blue eyes and she's talking to a non existent character. At the every end Claudia and Frieda are discussing the fact that none of the flowers are growing which to them represents something bad is gonna happen.

Morrison's start of the story starts off in a season that is on the fence of good and bad. She tips the story towards the bad and keeps it at that pace defining the story from the first season used. If she had started with Spring there probably will be a change in the story's tone and maybe Peccola would have had a better life.