The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Title: The Bluest Eye
Author: Toni Morrison
Published: 1970
Type: Fiction
Pages: 206
Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.\
In Brief:
Reading this book felt like being torn to pieces. It’s relentless, emotional, exhausting. Morrison focuses on Black girlhood in a way that’s rarely done (especially at the time of writing), delving fearlessly into issues of racism, colorism, internalized hatred, and sexual abuse.
Rating: 4.4
Synopsis:
The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl in Lorain, Ohio. In the beginning of the book, she temporarily moves in with MacTeer family, after her father burned down their home. She is poor and quiet, with abusive parents – she’s reminded repeatedly, from family, strangers, and classmates, that she’s ugly. Pecola is desperate to have blue eyes – she prays every night for them, believing that it’s important, that blue eyes will free her, make her loved.
Pecola returns home to her family – her father is an alcoholic, her mother cares only for the white family who she works for, her brother frequently runs away. In flashbacks, the reader learns the story of Pecola’s parents, their struggles as Black people in a largely white community, during the early-mid twentieth century. In the present time, her father comes home one day and rapes her, before running away. Pecola is beaten by her mother, and goes to a mystic to ask, again, for blue eyes. As a payment, the mystic gets her to kill a dog he doesn’t like.
Pecola is impregnated from her father’s rape, shamed by the community. Only the MacTeer daughters hope for the baby to be born, planting marigolds based on a superstition that if they live, so will the baby. The marigolds never bloom, and Pecola gives birth prematurely, the baby dying. By the end of the book, Pecola’s been driven crazy, convinced that she finally has… the bluest eyes.
Where I’m At:
I’m behind again. I read this book back in early July, when I was still behind, and then other things came up that kept me from writing. Blah blah blah, excuses.
As I’m writing this now, protests are re-igniting over the senseless, brutal shooting of Jacob Blake. To be more accurate, they never stopped – they’re just getting attention, again, nearly at the cost of another Black man’s life. Two more protesters have died, at the hands of Kyle Rittenhouse, a white man who was able to walk freely by the police and go home just after the murders. It’s a tragedy and a reminder that we cannot lose interest in the state of this country, in the horrible system that literally kills our Black citizens. Just like the pandemic isn’t over just because we’re over quarantine, the system isn’t fixed just because we’re tired of trying. It is exhausting. But it’s also important – so we push on.
On a lighter note. Around when I was reading The Bluest Eye I also read this article in the New York Times, from the Modern Love section. It’s about a Black woman who works for a dating app, looking for love. She recounts stories of being told she was ugly from a young age, told she’d be prettier if her skin was lighter, being rejected outright based on her Blackness. This section stood out to me, made me go back and re-read the article several times:
How would it feel to know you are naturally someone’s type or even a lot of people’s type? How would it feel to know you are desired? I kept wondering these things until my wonder hardened in the back of my throat — sharp, thick, burning.
I know that. This isn’t meant to be bragging – I know I’m not particularly attractive, or anything special to look at. But I superficially fall into a lot of broad, generic categories that American society has largely declared beautiful, or at least acceptable, meaning that I know many men will automatically “swipe right” on me in their romantic/hook-up endeavors. I’m around the “right” height and weight. I’m young. I have long, blonde hair (even if it’s dyed). I have clear skin. I have white skin.
For me, going on dating apps is a confidence boost – right now, I’m opening Hinge. Since the last time I checked, 152 people have liked my profile. I close it, feeling zero interest in looking at or talking to these strangers. I tried briefly after my break-up, but who has the energy for small talk and men who will inevitably prove disappointing? There’s a pandemic, I’m not meeting up with strangers. But, as expected, it’s fed my ego.
Anyway. What am I getting at here? Though this book goes into much more, there’s a level of it that’s getting at what is considered beautiful in our society, and what effects that has on those who are left out, how racism is such an integral part of the equation. Reading that article and this book, thinking about these issues, have given me another lens to think about my privilege as a white woman, made me recognize another benefit I receive without any merit.
Getting Into it:
I am in no way capable of critiquing the great Toni Morrison. I’m also in no way critiquing the issues she raises that affect the Black community in the United States. Like I said before, I’m here to humbly learn, so won’t spend too much time on my own thoughts.
So if you haven’t already, I’ll just say: read this book. Read it to learn about the unbearable agony inflicted on Black people in this country. The internalized hatred. Learn about colorism, twisted standards of beauty, the vulnerability of children, particularly Black girls. This is not a space for me to distill it down or teach it to you. Read this book.
Along the way, you’ll also learn what a brilliant writer Morrison is. I was astonished to learn that this was her first book – you would expect something of this caliber, something so fearless, would come after years of publishing, of practice. She gives space for reflection within the scope of the novel, lingering on its themes in a way that is heavy-handed, but in a way that’s necessary and not preachy (looking at you, Tolstoy). She opens chapters with a repeated excerpt from Dick and Jane, in a way that could be gimmicky but is instead absolutely gut-wrenching, a direct comparison of the ideal, white American family and Pecola’s own painful, increasingly nonsensical experience. She writes vivid descriptions in a way that flows, lavishing without interrupting the narrative, giving a mood as well as an image –
A mountain of flesh, she lay rather than sat in a rocking chair. She had no shoes on, and each foot was poked between a railing: tiny baby toes at the tip of puffy feet; swollen ankles smoothed and tightened the skin; massive legs like tree stumps parted wide at the knees, over which spread two roads of soft flabby inner thigh that kissed each other deep in the shade of her dress and closed. A dark-brown root-beer bottle, like a burned limb, grew out of her dimpled hand. She looked at us down through the porch railings and emitted a low, long belchl. Her eyes were as clean as rain, and again I remembered the waterfall.
It’s a beautiful, powerful book, not for the faint of heart. I cannot recommend it enough – even fifty years after it was published, it stands up. Tragically, it stands up.
