They are everywhere and therefore nowhere

They either

a) come from Mobile, Aiken, Newport News, Marietta, or Meridian.

Or

b) are everywhere.

There is no middle ground in this presentation, no room reserved for the outliers and the eccentrics. A dichotomy is clearly outlined and a mental fence constructed between the A’s and the B’s. The A’s are grounded in location and are lucky enough to belong. The B’s on the other hand, belong nowhere by chance of being everywhere. Morrison uses generalization as a means of examining the great intra-racial divide between middle and lower class African Americans. The middle class—or the A’s—she portrays as leading shallow, disconnected lives. Conversely, the lower class—or the B’s—is exposed leading dirty and unnecessary lives. Or, at least that is the message that the generalization conveys, which is basically a literary method of exposing how generalizing an entire race through stereotypes is ineffective, yet also how it colors people’s personal cultural understandings.

There is an almost unreal aspect to the “cat” chapter found in the Winter section in Morrison’s novel. The very vagueness that generalizing lends to the structure of the piece is convoluted by the fact that there is such specificity as to what sort of actions these women take. The perfect house, the joyless sexual acts, the child named Junior. The sterility of it all is almost grotesque, a different sort of grotesqueness from what is presented of the poor Blacks. Instead of, “their pee mixing together in the night as they wet their beds”, we are given, “She hopes he will not sweat –the damp may get into her hair; and that she will remain dry between her legs –she hates the glucking sound when she is moist” (92, 84). I don’t know which is more disgusting; an unseemly accident or a purposeful denial of pleasure.

Adding to the sense of detachment from reality is the structure of the writing itself, not simply the content. This line: “For she does bear a child—easily, and painlessly. But only one. A son. Named Junior”(86). The short syntax seems very cartoonish to me. Then there is the fact that even the name Junior is vague in of itself. Who is a Junior? Junior is not a name alone but is instead a placeholder because the official name is already taken.

I think that the almost dreamlike quality that the generalizations give the chapter prepare the reader for Pecola’s reaction to Junior’s mother’s harsh recriminations. The structure connects the piece together, opening with the overview of the middle class woman, meeting in the middle by simplifying the poor girls of everywhere, and ending by allowing Pecola’s muddled view to come to the forefront.

Pecola backed out of the room, staring at the pretty milk-brown lady in the pretty gold–and-green house who was talking to her through the cats fur. The pretty lady’s words made the cats fur move; the breath of each word parted the fur. 92

The feeling of the above passage is very dreamlike, ironic after such a nightmarish event (the cruelty of Junior, the cat abuse, being called a bitch by the mother). The pain of what Pecola has just experienced makes coherent, clear thought impossible as well as the fact that she is a young child. And to connect it all back stylistically, simplistic thought is very much connected to childhood. So, Morrison seems to be using the trope of generalization to show that such shallow thinking is childish in nature and is an impediment to development, whether for an individual or a collective group.