Research Question:

What psychological theories are present in The Bluest Eye that help examine and explain the behaviors of some of the characters? What theorists can be used to explain the dynamics that affect and shape the characters’ lives and moral conduct?

Theory – Trauma theory

Characters – Pecola and Cholly

Bibliography

“Traumatic Awakenings (Freud, Lacan, and the Ethics of Memory).” Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, by Cathy Caruth, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 91–112.

Balaev, Michelle. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 41, no. 2, 2008, pp. 149–166. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44029500.

Brooks Bouson , J. “Quiet as It’s Kept: Shame and Trauma in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.’” Scenes of Shame: Psychoanalysis, Shame and Writing, by Joseph Adamson and Hilary Anne Clark, State University of New York Press, 1999, pp. 207–236.

Ramírez, M. L. (2013). “The Theme of the Shattered Self in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye And A Mercy”. Miscelánea, 48, 75-91. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/docview/1497043922?accountid=27495

Vickroy, L. (1996). “The politics of abuse: The traumatized child in Toni Morrison and Marguerite Duras”. Mosaic, 29(2), 91. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1300043843?accountid=27495

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.