Child's Perspective

The first thing that struck me about the Bluest Eye was the use of children’s perspectives in the novel. In the beginning segment before the book, it is so new and different how Morrison wrote a summery paragraph with really basic sentences and concepts and then repeated it twice with less spacing each time. I took this to represent the adult perception of how children write and think, and how they are often underestimated. As the rest of the book so far seems to be told from a child’s perspective, it seems like Morrison is out to prove the assumption wrong, which is made so interesting with Claudia as the speaker. I think the paradox of the narrator’s perspective creates this interesting. She offers incredible insight, yet admits to not fully grasping the things she’s commentating on. “The edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me. We do not, cannot, know the meaning of all their words, for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in timbre.” (Morrison, 15). Claudia’s knowledge increases as she grows throughout the book, yet this paradox has remained as far as I’ve read, and it lends a very different aspect to the entire story.