The ability to be both print and oral literature; to combine those aspects so that the stories can be read in silence, of course, but one should be able to hear them as well. To make a story appear oral, meandering, effortless, spoken. To have the reader work with the author
             in construction of the book- is what's important"(Bakerman 122).In all of Morrison's novels it is easy to see her use of African- American folklore along with traditional fiction. In the novels The Bluest Eye and Sula, Morrison creates settings and characters that produce an aura of unreality, that which is directly borrowed from African- American folklore. With the aura of unreality in Morrison's characters and settings, her plots scream with real life themes such as murder, war, poverty, sexual abuse, and racism. In The Bluest Eye and Sula, Morrison combines fiction and folklore to create two chilling stories about black communities struggling to define themselves.
             The Bluest Eye is not just a story about young impressionable black girls in the Midwest; it is also the story of African- American folk culture in process. The character Claudia MacTeer is the narrator for this folk tale. Claudia gives a voice to Pecola Breedlove's story and to the community. The story is shaped from the beginning with the expectation of reader involvement and with the presumption of an audience. The brief preface that begins "Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941", serves to establish Claudia as the communal rehearser of tragedy. Her first person narration establishes a close relationship between herself and the reader. Like many of Morrison's novels, The Bluest Eye shows the heroic and failed efforts of a struggling black community. With the use of a first person narrator, Morrison is able to make the story seem oral and it also requires the reader to participate with her in the making of the story. Morrison has commented "My writing expects, demands p...