Part I

The Bluest Eye opens with a short Dick and Jane primary reader story that is repeated three times. The first time the story is written clearly. In the second telling, however, the text loses its capitalization and punctuation. By the third time through, the story has also lost its spacing. The novel then shifts to a short, italicized preface in the voice of Claudia MacTeer as an adult. She looks back on the fall of 1941. We find that this book will be the story of Claudia, her sister Frieda, and their involvement with a young black girl named Pecola, pregnant with her father's child.

Part II: Autumn

In this section, the tense shifts from present to past, indicating shifts between the nine-year-old Claudia and the adult Claudia acting as narrators. The story begins with the arrival of Mr. Henry Washington, a boarder who will live with...