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Part 1

• 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.

• Claudia looks back on the fall of 1941, and the reader finds 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 2

• In this section, the narrative 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...

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