The Bluest Eye: Genre 1 key example

As a coming-of-age story, The Bluest Eye is uncharacteristically grim. Typical coming-of-age stories focus on the maturation of their young protagonists, exploring the ways in which children learn, grow, and come into adulthood. Adolescent characters must contend with life's grievances as they age, but most Buildungsroman narratives conclude on a hopeful note. Why should they not, when most children are optimistic about their futures?

Contrary to its genre peers, The Bluest Eye begins, unfolds, and concludes in tragedy. Rather than centering her narrative around a positive growth process, Morrison explores her young protagonist's failure to grow. This failure is not Pecola's fault—quite the opposite. Morrison's tragic protagonist cannot flourish because her environment is inhospitable. The Bluest Eye deconstructs this harsh reality, meditating on the social and psychological forces that undermine young Black girls' sense of agency and self-worth.

In this aspect of deconstruction, The Bluest Eye is as much a postmodernist novel as it is a Buildungsroman. Many postmodernist narratives dismantle existing paradigms, breaking them down to evaluate their constituent parts. Morrison practices this extensively in The Bluest Eye, deconstructing the binary categories of "beauty" and "ugliness" and evaluating their place in the rhetoric of racist oppression.