"The past is not a package one can lay away"

This is a subject I had to work on. I chose The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. I don't know when it was at the "bac". I had a 16,5/20 for this essay. I did not want to correct my mistakes before posting it here.

“The past is not a package one can lay away” (Emily Dickinson). Explore how far this statement is true for characters you have studied in oib.

                Whether in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison or in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the past plays an important role in the protagonists’ life. Thus in reading these works we can understand that in literature and for everyone in general, the past enables to explain why a character has managed to make a success of its life or on the opposite has completely failed. To other terms, we can say that explaining the past is the same than undergoing analysis of a character.  

                First of all, in order to undergo analysis of a character, the author has to appeal to the past of this person. In both The Bluest Eye and in Death of a Salesman, Toni Morrison and Arthur Miller have played with the structure of their work in order to convoke ancient actions.

                Firstly, since the beginning of the two books, the reader or the audience knows that it will be questioned of the past, that the author will search deeply in the past of the characters in order to explain their behavior. Thus, in The Bluest Eye, Morrison already tells us in the prologue the aim of her novel. In saying how the story of Pecola will end, in giving an overview of the principal plot, the woman expecting the reader not to concentrate on the basis of the story but more on questioning about social factors which favored the downfall of the protagonist. Indeed, we know why Morrison wrote the novel: to explain why and how Pecola’s life went on that way as the last words of the prologue tell us that “there is nothing more to say – except why”. Thus, Toni Morrison does not want to discuss about how sad Pecola’s life is – so to discuss about the present – but definitely to search an explanation of this present – so to search deeply into the past, into the events which happened to the previous generation. The same way in Death of a Salesman, in one of the first scenes of the play, the audience can feel a tension between Willy and his two boys Happy and Biff, especially with this last one. Thus, the audience is led to wonder the reason of such a conflict between father and son. And this is completely natural to think that, to explain this, the plot of the play will look into ancient scenes which happened a long time ago. So, in both works, we intend to read or to see the authors doing a kind of psychological approach of their characters through examining their families or their past.

                Secondly, while in The Bluest Eye, the past is showing through different points of view, in Death of a Salesman, we see former scenes through the eyes of Willy himself. Thus the role of the psychoanalyst or the psychologist is quite different in the two works. In the novel, this is not the character himself but others who are linked to him, narrators who are extern to the story. Thus, we have Toni Morrison herself but also Claudia as a child or as an adult, Pauline, Soaphead Church who represent a lot of different points of view. In these conditions, this is difficult for the reader to arrange all the information given by these peoples and this is our job to put all these events together to make a conclusion ourselves, to find Toni Morrison’s message, which is in short that what happened to parents in the past happens to their children in the present and will happen to the next generations in the future. In Death of a Salesman, the past is appealing through a kind of dramatic irony. Indeed this is Willy by his own who is doing his own retrospection of himself through his dreams in order to find why he is so disappointed of Biff, to find if he has missed something with him when the boy was younger. And no one of the present knows what he is thinking about. Since he is dreaming, Willy is the only one on stage who is watching the past. Thus only himself and the audience can understand the important of the past in the play since what happens on stage which belongs to the past is the fruit of Willy’s remembrance of his own past with his children. This is only his questioning which is played, his own psychoanalysis. It concerns himself since he does not tell anyone about this past.

                Thirdly in The Bluest Eye, the work is built in a way in order to emphasize the message of the author, which is that the actions, the education will not change throughout time. Indeed the structure shows the important of the past. The names of the chapters accentuate the notion that life is a full circle which is constantly repeated since the season – Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer – were, are and will be always the same and in the same order. Furthermore the conclusion of the novel shows that Morrison has achieved her main goal, the reader is now enable to understand why and how Pecola had such a misery childhood and life. The last sentence is related, is a response to the beginning of the novel, of the second prologue. So the analysis is over, the aim of the writer has been achieved. Also we see that the last words of the book are linked to the past since the word “late” in the sentence “it’s much, much, much too late” in the present shows that the explanation is combined with facts which had happened before.

                In short through the way the two authors have written their stories, it is sure that they will combine the past in the present in order to explain the actions of a character.

                After seeing that the structure was significant for the writers in developing the idea that the past had an importance through looking in one’s mind, we can now study that the content of a work and the way the yesteryear is convoked also show that the past is something a person has to deal with in order to understand the sense of his life.

                To begin with, in order to convoke the past, the two authors have used two different ways. Firstly, in the Bluest Eye, to make the psychoanalysis of Pecola, Morrison chose to resort, to insert flash backs which relate Cholly and Pauline’s lives. Thus in appealing the past we can discover the reasons why these parents are so indifferent or hateful to their children. Indeed if someone has only known one way of education, we can assume that this person cannot invent his own way of raising a child. Plus, all the difficulties, all the pains, all the sufferings they had to face to have developed in them the fact that they will later hate everyone for having let these brutalities to happen, even their own kids. Furthermore there are much more stories about the past of the parents than stories about present, about Pecola’s own life, which is the main subject of the novel. So, at first sight, it can seem to be a paradox, and yet it is totally logical since the main goal of the novel is to wonder why Pecola is living in such conditions. And the answer to this question is to be found in the past, in events the girl’s parents had to deal with. Secondly, in Death of a Salesman, the returns in the past when Willy is thinking about when his boys were young are shown by theatrical techniques, unlike in The Bluest Eye. Thus, in the play, the change of the chronological order in shown by the crossing of the imaginary wall, but also by the lights and by the presence of young Biff, young Happy and young Ben. And these returns into the past are surely the cause of another return: Biff’s one. Indeed, the thing which provokes the dreams is the reflect Willy has of himself through his son’s failure in his professional and sentimental life. So Willy wonders, looks why he has failed in making his son the other man he did not manage to become himself.

                Finally both Toni Morrison and Arthur Miller inserted in their stories a scene which shows how an author can manage to make an episode in the present linked with the past and vice versa.

                In The Bluest Eye, we see that actions of the past can be repeated in the present. Thus, the rape of Pecola finds its explanation in a former event. Indeed her father was also raped, but mentally. Thus the unforgivable act Cholly did to his daughter can be explicated in the fact that when he was the victim of the same action, Cholly felt extremely humiliated and a feeling of hatred sprang up against the other victim of the rape, Darlene instead of against their perpetrator. Moreover, when reading the extract of Pecola’s rape, the reader’s attention is then called to the scene of the incident when Cholly and Darlene were having sex. We can find similar expressions that Toni Morrison used in order to define the father’s mind. Indeed, in both extracts, he wants to kill either Darlene or Pecola. Thus he desires “to strangle” Darlene and later desires “to break” Pecola’s “neck”. So the author put forward the view that Cholly has projected his hatred for Darlene on every weak young girl, and maybe even on virgin ones, just like Pecola. This is why, in this novel, we see that the past cannot be laid away in order to explain the present. As well in Death of a Salesman, the central episode which is the mistress scene in Boston is the answer of a question asked by Bernard to Willy “What happened in Boston, Willy?” since Biff’s life began to go down right after he saw his father after he failed at his maths graduation. Thus in discovering that his father was unfaithful to his mother, the boy gave up his entire project for his future, like going to university. But this scene also explains why the son does not trust his father, why he does not respect him anymore. Thus, while at the beginning of the play, the audience could not understand the behavior of Billy toward Willy, through seeing the past of these two characters, we are now enable to understand and maybe to accept this disrespect.

                To conclude, because when the author looks into the past of his characters, he can find the deep roots of their personality, the deep reasons of their behavior, or the deep origin of their trauma, he shares his conclusion of the psychoanalysis of his characters with the reader. Thus we – the readers – debrief that the past is, as Emily Dickinson said, “not a package one can lay away”. In short, someone must never forget his past or he will not be able to find himself.