The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio on February 18, 1931. She graduated from Lorain High School with honors. Morrison lived in an integrated neighborhood and was not aware of racial divisions until her teens. She told a reporter once that she was the only black child in her first grade class and the only one that could read. Morrison loved to read which is how she gained a love for writing. Morrison’s writings produce poetic phases and strong emotions. “So precise,so faithful to speech and so changed with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.” says The New York Times. Her characters try to understand the world that they are living in. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye focuses on race, beauty, society,
love, and home and family life.
Morrison loved the way great authors such as Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, and Gustave Flaubert wrote about things that they were familiar with. It inspired her to write about things going on in life, especially the African American culture. Each of her novels focus on something like good and evil, love and hate, beauty and ugliness, and friendship and death. Morrison began writing The Bluest Eye while working full-time and raising her sons (Slade Morrison and Harold Ford Morrison). She created a highly literary fiction out of the interior lives of poor African American girls in her hometown.
In her novel The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove faces many challenges in life and when you believe things are going to get better, it gets worse. Throughout the story, she wonders about love and beauty. Her family life is not the best. Troubles at home make things worse. Race is also an issue that has to be faced.
In the beginning of the book, there are family issues. Cholly Breedlove burns down the house leaving the family homeless. The family was torn apart as a result of that. Pecola, her brother, Sammy, and Mrs. Breedlove were separated until further notice. As a result, Pecola and her brother belonged to county. Pecola stayed with Claudia and Fredia’s family. They took her in as if she was one of theirs.
Cholly Breedlove and Mrs. Breedlove argue and fight all the time. In the book, it tells us that they constantly fought. “She struggled between an overwhelming desire that one would kill the other…” (pg. 43) Pecola was tired of the constant fussing and fighting. She prayed that one would just die, therefore all the fighting would be over. In the book, Cholly refused to go get coal to keep the house warm and Mrs. Breedlove threaten him that if she got sick, she would knock him out. After sneezing, Mrs. Breedlove gets up and pours a buck of cold water on him. From there they started fist fighting. Sammy helps his mother knock Cholly senseless and screams to his mother to kill him. Even Sammy is tired of the fighting and he is constantly leaving the house to travel.
Cholly Breedlove had a drinking problem, which lead to most family problems.
In the book, Mrs. Breedlove tells us that Cholly was not always like that. After the first child was born, Cholly began to change and he went back to old ways and Mrs. Breedlove became fed up with him. He began to drink everyday and they began to hate each other. She wanted to leave him and claim that he did not need her. Pages 161-163 tells us how one afternoon Cholly comes home drunk. He watched his daughter, Pecola, clean the kitchen. Morrison says that what he felt as he watches her turns in pleasure. He wondered why she was so unhappy and why she loved him so much after all her haunted, loving eyes had seen. He wondered how he could make her happy. He wondered how he could return the love. As Pecola shifts her body, he remember that Mrs. Breedlove did the same thing when he first saw her. He remembered what he did then and he did it now. Cholly crawled on all fours and grabbed Pecola foot, he used his other hand to grab her hip to keep her balance. He nibbled at her leg and dug his fingers into her hips. He got excited. Morrison says that Cholly wanted to freak her tenderly. He made a gigantic thrust into her and provoked he sound she made. There was a hopeless but stubborn struggle to be free or from some emotion but Cholly could not tell. He just wanted to prove to her that he loved her. He loved her enough to give her some of him. Morrison told us about the horror of
family lives that some families have to face. Cholly came home drunk and raped his eleven year old daughter.
Morrison talks about the struggle of beauty for African American girls. Pecola Breedlove believes she is ugly. She wishes for the beauty of a white person. She prays everyday for blue eyes and blond hair. She believes if she has blue eyes and blond hair she would not see some of the things she sees. Pecola was used as in insult in school. Pecola had pretty teeth, good-sized nose, dark-skin, curly hair, small brown eyes, and high cheekbones. Even in today’s world dark-skin girls are called ugly. Throughout the book, she is called ugly by everybody. Because of the world we live in, if we are constantly told something we believe it. Pecola believed she was ugly and the only way she would be beautiful would be to have the features of a little white girl. Most African American women/girls are obsessed with beauty. There are plenty of ways we are obsessed with beauty, whether it be hair, nails, make-up, or clothing. We feel as if we must always look good. Appearances are everything to us.
Morrison talks about love throughout the book also.
Peocola wonders about love throughout book after receiving her first menstrual cycle. She asked Frieda what was it, and Frieda just said that it was nothing and it meant she could have babies. Later that night, she asked Frieda how does she have babies and Frieda responded that somebody had to love her in order for her to have a baby. Pecola then asks a question no one has an answer to, “How do you do that? How do you get somebody to love you?” Later in the book, Pecola goes to visit the three whores since they were the only one nice to her. While visiting the whores, Pecola asks Miss Marie about her many boyfriends and how do they all love her. Miss Marie responds that they all loved her because she’s rich, good-looking, and they want to put their toes in her curly hair. Pecola then wondered what did love feel like and how do people act when they love each other. Pecola’s wonders about love does not stop but she only wants to be loved. Because of her ugliness she is not lovable and wishes for white features to be lovable. In the end of the book, it tells us that Pecola was loved. The whores loved her. Cholly loved her enough to do the things he did to her and impregnate her only for her to lose the child. “Love is never any better than the lover.” (206) People will love the way they are. Evil people with love evilly, violent people will love violently, and lovely people will love lovely. She believed she
was not loved but yet she was.
Morrison tells us about Cholly and Pauline Breedlove’s love story and how things were not always bitter with them. “Pauline and Cholly loved each other.” (115) Cholly made it seem like something special was there. He did not hide his feelings for her. After getting married and moving north to Lorain, Ohio , they began to grow distant and had no problem finding other things and people to keep them from feeling lonely. After finding out Pauline was pregnant, Cholly changed his ways. The arguing about money had stopped and he started to drink less. Their relationship started to go back like it was before marriage. Then things took a turn again and Pauline wanted to leave him but when you love someone, you will do anything to make it right. No matter how much they argued Pauline could not really find the courage to leave him.
Morrison also teaches us about society. Society has it own look on things. Society tells us how things should be or should not be. Society has an opinion on everything and does not care about anyone’s feelings.
In the book, they talk about the whores. On pages 55-56 it explains to us what society has to say about the whore or The Maginot Line. They were prostitutes. Society believes that they are ignorant, but these prostitutes did not belong in the category of the prostitutes in books that were innocence girls and something bad happen to them because they were trying to do the “right” thing for the man they loved but everything goes wrong that society thinks really happens. Neither these prostitutes belong in the category of sloppy, unintelligent whores who could not make money doing other things besides selling drugs and having pimps and other things dealing with men to fill the spot of their missing father or a silent mother that society thinks. Society was wrong about these three ladies. Each of them hated men and only abused the men and took everything they had.
Later in the book, after the town found out Pecola was pregnant with her father’s child, society had so much to say about her. The town, the people, everybody had so much to say and not one person but Pecola Breedlove and Cholly Breedlove knew the story. Pages 188-189 tells you what was going around town and Claudia and Frieda just happen to hear about it. People in town were saying that Pecola was to blame for the impregnation. They say she didn’t fight Cholly off but yet during the rape part in the book, it says, “…the fingers clenching, but whether her grip was from a hopeless but stubborn struggle to be free…” (163) , so maybe, just maybe Pecola was trying to fight off Cholly. They also said that her mother beat on her too much. Throughout the book, Pecola does get a few beatings but yet that is not society’s business. They also say that Pecola’s child would come out ugly if it survived because two uglies make something that would be better in the ground. That was such a rude thing to say and just because they were “ugly” does not mean Pecola’s child would have been ugly. Somewhere in their genetics would have been genes for the prettiest child ever even though the child would have birth defects because of the genes being very similar because it was her father’s child.
Society teaches us the wrong thing sometimes. Who says light-skin and straight hair is pretty? Who says that your hair must be long and you must have big lips, big nose or a big forehead to be pretty? Why is dark-skin and curly hair not pretty? Why is little noses and lips not pretty? Why is short hair not pretty? It is not pretty because that is not what society wants. “Girls must be tall and skinny to be a model and to be the cutest girlfriend type, you must be short,” says society. Society also tells us that some groups of people aren’t as good as another but yet that is only what society thinks is not true at all.
“A little black girl yearns for the blues eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.” (204). Morrison makes you think about life as it is and as it was. You can compare current life to life in her novels. Each of novels are so deep. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Bluest Eye was Morrison’s first novel and yet it was so vivid. “A profoundly successful work of fiction… Taut and understated, harsh in its detachment, sympathetic in its truth… it is an experience,” says The Detroit Free Press. This book was banned out of some schools because some parents refused to let their children read the book because it focuses on race, beauty, society, love, and family life.