Switch-A-Roo and Furniture

Sometimes, to keep things interesting, authors like to skip around like gazelles out in the middle of nowhere. They like to keep the reader on their toes so they can be accusatory and have an "Aha! So you were paying attention moment". This has happened once again in The Bluest Eyes. The reader can understand that the present is when Claudia is the main focus of the narrator, but when there is a switch to Pecolas' life before she became an outsider, it is the past.

I am sure there is a name for this fancy-pancy switch in time in a story but right now I can't remember what it is. You know, trying to keep it real. I kid. I will google it right now:

Prolepsis: When the author goes forward in the storyline.
Analepsis: When the author goes back in the storyline

BAM! You have been googled.

When writing about Claudia, the narrator does not make it sound like the best of things in the world, but these flashbacks to Pecolas' old life, are even more darker. The descriptions of the characters are abundant as well as their setting. From the descriptions to the setting, Morrison is using a condemnatory tone (yes, I did look at my tone sheet) all the time she describes these characters and their lifestyle. As shown in this part, the simple description on the furniture is dark and well, condemnatory:

"There is nothing more to say about the furnishings. They were anything but describable, having been conceived, manufactured, shipped, and sol in various states of thoughtlessness, greed and indifference. The furniture had aged without ever having become familiar. People had owned it, but never known it." (pg 35)

We are all familiar with our furniture and in a sense the fact that here it is acknowledged as practically invisible says a lot about how the characters are portrayed. Not just that, but the fact that furniture, which is something we humans buy to appease the esthetic perfectionist inside all of us, is given no sense of importance. Pardon the weird thought but it is like an unwanted cat. It's there but gives you no sense of satisfaction with its meowing and hairballs. Same as the furniture, not even its basic uses of a place to sit or lean against is acknowledged.

If I was a chair in this place, I would have been a sad chair. But life made me a human girl with a bunch of work to get done. So the next time you sit on your sofa, think about its meaning to you.