The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

You know that feeling you get when you pick up a book and realize that you are reading something brilliant and important? That's the feeling I got immediately after starting The Bluest Eye. This is Toni Morrison's first novel and it follows Pecola Breedlove, a black child growing up in the 1940s in Lorain, Ohio. Pecola is not a beautiful child, and the constant stream of racism she is exposed to from other children and adults in her neighborhood has decimated her self esteem and sense of worth. She is bullied by her classmates at school and abused by her alcoholic father at home. As a result, she lives her life as quietly as possible, tries to avoid anyone's notice. Her deepest and most secret wish is for her eyes to turn blue, the color she believes to be prettiest. She believes that if she could only have beautiful blue eyes, her problems would fade away and everyone would treat her better.

Pecola's story is told out of order in a few different narrative styles. Several of the chapters are from the point of view of Claudia Mac Teer, a little girl that Pecola stays with temporarily after her father burns their house down in an alcoholic rage. Claudia witnesses a lot of the ugliness directed at Pecola and forms a small friendship with her. Her narration conveys the difficulty of growing up poor and black in this time period, especially for a fragile, abused child. Other chapters include flashbacks to the early lives of Cholly and Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's parents, and chapters following Pecola herself. All of the pieces together tell a harrowing story of a young girl crushed under the weight of a brutal, uncaring world.

The Bluest Eye is not an easy read. It takes on tough, heartbreaking topics and deals in complex themes. Morrison masterfully weaves together the sections of the novel to explore difficult concepts about racism, sexism, and how people calculate their own self worth. A character like Pecola, who is sensitive, young, female, black, and living in a dysfunctional home, doesn't stand a chance. She is so desperately unhappy that she becomes obsessed with white ideas of beauty. She sees how loved little white girls are and comes to think that if only she could have blue eyes like they do, people would love her more too. What she is not capable of realizing is that it is not her appearance that is the true root of her problems, it is the ugliness of the world around her, and she is powerless to change that.

Everything about this novel was excellent and thought-provoking. It's about some of the worst ideas and impulses present in our society today, and while the book is very dark, it is very necessary too. Pecola's tragic story reminds us that our ideas of beauty and who is allowed to be considered beautiful are deeply rooted in sexist and racist ideas and affect our lives in ways we don't even realize. These ideas can intentionally or accidentally destroy people who aren't born to privilege. It's quite a weighty concept to think about. 

I remember that when I read Morrison's Beloved several years ago, I was very challenged by the complexity in the text. I enjoyed that story, but felt somewhat lost while reading it. I did not find The Bluest Eye difficult to follow and could more fully appreciate the skillful storytelling. Part of that is likely because this was Morrison's first book, and is less complicated than her later works, and another part of that is because I am a more experienced reader now and better able to understand these kinds of ideas. In any case, this was both a very good and a very sad read and Toni Morrison is a deeply gifted writer. 

Content warnings: domestic violence, rape, pedophilia, incest, racial slurs

Challenge Tally
Classics Club (#15 on my list): 76/100 books completed

Total Books Read in 2020: 55