Chapter 24:

Summary

Repetitious Variation: Clark opens up with praise for Toni Morrison, especially for The Bluest Eye. Part of Morrison's excellence comes from a stand-out feature in she includes in her work. Clark continues that "...I will call it repetition, which we have discussed more than once in this book. I don’t mean repetition in its common sense—using a word or phrase over and over again until it gets tedious or meaningless. Morrison’s texts might look like that at first glance, but upon X-ray inspection it turns out that each signature word changes with repetition, like an echo in a valley." A background of The Bluest Eye is provided for readers, informing them that it was written in the early 1940s about a young African American girl who dreamed of having white features.

Right Words in the Right Order: The sentence "Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes" is broken down very specifically into four separate parts, where Clark identifies Morrison's craft within her work.

Titles to Focus: Clark preaches that every work needs a central theme, and Morrison accomplishes this with the title (The Bluest Eye). Repetition, again, brings emphasis on multiple aspects of a single word or phrase.

The Same, But Different: Repetition must be done in a way that does not exhaust the reader.

Writing Lessons

1. Embrace the distinction between repetition and redundancy. Use the first to establish a pattern in the work, whether of language or imagery. Redundancy is not always a bad thing. (Redundant systems on an airplane keep it in the air, even if one system breaks down.) For the reader, you may want to create a variety of entry points to a single destination.

2. When you repeat a word, phrase, or other element of language or narrative, make sure it is worth repeating. Make sure that each repetition advances the story in some way. Ineffective repetition slows down a narrative. Effective repetition helps it gain traction. Each reappearance of a character or repetition of a phrase can add meaning, suspense, mystery, or energy to a story.

3. Use strategies such as variation and parallelism to link key elements and to make each repetition memorable.

4. Good stories have a focus, a theme, a central idea, a governing metaphor—such as “the bluest eye.” The eyes are the windows to the soul; the focus is the window to the soul of the story. If you find a powerful governing idea, it is almost impossible to make too much of it. The key, according to writer and editor William Blundell, is to repeat the focus but express it in different ways: through a character detail, a scene, a bit of dialogue.

Critique

This chapter is repetitive, even though the content of it includes the sentiment of not abusing repetition. In "Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing," engagement is a necessary part of the eight habits of mind. This encourages students to "find meanings new to them or build on existing meanings as a result of new connections." (4) Although the repetition in this chapter, and throughout the book, may bore students, it is important for them to recognize the author's purpose and build on prior knowledge to expand their literacy and understanding of the text.