significance of prefatory chapter in bluest eye

The prefatory chapter of the novel, which traces a cliche "watch jane" story into its unraveling, sets up one of the many themes of the novel. The first is the corruption of innocence. The story that winds itself down to repetition is the type of chant a child would sing, but by the end of this preface, it's gotten sinister, repeated until its lost all meaning and seeming to have obsessed the speaker. The second main theme is suggests is the perversion of normal family values. The innocence of the repeated chant is tied in which the "cookie cutter" nature of Jane and her cat, and suggests that Jane is interested in certain common American values. In the novel, Pecola undergoes a serious loss of innocence at the hands of both her father and a society that spurns her for her strangeness, and all the while she wants so badly to be a part of that society. Pecola wants blue eyes to be like the white girls she emulates (basically, she wants to live the "Jane" life) but in repeating the chant of a Jane-life to herself over and over, she only makes worse the pain that comes from having a life diametrically opposed to it.