Reviews with content warning for Rape - The Bluest Eye

Reviews tagging 'Rape'

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

1010 reviews

jasminejayne's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

beautifully written, but a hard read in terms of themes. it’s good to read books that make you uncomfortable and this was one of them. it’s a powerful insight into the effects of racism / internalised racism within family, school, work, community and friendships. how such a deep seeded hatred for yourself and others within your community can lead you down a destructive, dark path. so so heartbreaking

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ariehen_'s review against another edition

5.0

dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

noraaron1312's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

nelle_mrl's review against another edition

4.0

dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

The story behind Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye could be summarised as such:

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.

One major element in the plot is revealed by children at the very beginning of the novel, casting doubt on their discourse as children. The narrative follows three black girls, Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola. The latter becomes the source of their questioning around beauty. Pecola is portrayed as lacking conventional beauty and, when she looks around her, she comes to believe that beauty is defined by having blue eyes. Their absence denies her any recognition:

She looks up at him and sees the vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge. And something more. The total absence of human recognition— the glazed separateness.

The novel deconstructs this idealisation of blue eyes by presenting characters who possess them, yet whose behaviour is disturbing. It is associated with cruelty and leads to Pecola's tragic descent. Geraldine, for instance, has internalised standards of femininity and consequently suppresses her black identity. She makes a classist difference between 'colored people' and 'negroes'.

Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions.

Later on, the novel focuses also on Soaphead Church, whose nickname alludes to his desire for both physical as well as moral cleanliness. His family history is marked by efforts to 'whiten' the bloodline:

They were industrious, orderly, and energetic, hoping to prove beyond a doubt De Gobineau’s hypothesis that "all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it."

All in all, I was deeply engaged in Morrison's exploration of beauty standards shaped by racist ideologies. I applaud her ability to portray morally disturbing characters that angered me, namely Cholly and Soaphead Church (whose inner thoughts as pedophiles are revealed to the reader). Her prose is equally compelling, shifting between registers with remarquable ease.

Content Warnings

ebj5's review against another edition

4.25

challenging emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

Content Warnings

smerika's review against another edition

4.25

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

As someone who usually gravitates toward fantasy and horror, with a preference for dark, adventurous, and often longer reads, The Bluest Eye isn't a book I would typically choose. My decision to read it stemmed from becoming acutely aware of the increase in book bans, especially here in Texas. I began researching and exploring, and I realized that the most abhorrent thing about people calling for these bans is that they often haven't read the books themselves. So, before I went around demonizing book bans, I wanted to read some of the top banned ones that I had never read, and this was at the top of the list.

I was honestly conflicted after finishing it, as I absolutely see why you might ban this until at least high school. However, it was truly amazing. I have never read anything that got this close to what the experiences of being a little Black girl would be like, living in true poverty in a different era.

I find that many authors are split into areas of strength; it's not often you have someone who is good at world-building and strong character development at the same time. But to add true emotional intelligence, such raw deepness, while also writing so well from a child's perspective, was eerie. The things within the child's experience were both beautiful and horrific, yet described with lush vocabulary and detail, which also made them beautiful in another way.

I loved how the main character asks questions, thinks, and assesses people, which made me feel validated. The blunt way she asks questions, the details she notices, and the ways she is 'hypervigilant' in assessing others goes beyond the skills (at least consciously) of many people I talk to, and I usually feel alone in that.

The horrors. Feeling stuck. Dealing with alcoholic adults. I have never read something so blunt but without feeling like it's trying too hard to shock or sicken you – it felt like surgical precision, laying bare the truth without resorting to sensationalism for shock value.

Like I felt like I could finally glimpse some of what the experience of child sexual abuse does to a little girl. I have an adult in my life who helped raise me who experienced poverty, child abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. Over the years, I have come to realize that I cannot truly relate to their experience. It's like when I got a chronic condition diagnosis and I realized what I didn't previously know about the hardships of that, to be able to be supportive to others in my life who had gone through similar health things before me. Morrison's descriptions and the main character being a child offered an in-depth perspective that was unavailable to me elsewhere, and it felt like a similar epiphany to my health analogy. My eyes felt opened, and it gave me an understanding I didn't know that I wanted into why someone close to me has the relics of that same kind of abuse in the ways they do. Especially the self-delusion. I found myself weeping for Pecola and the adult in my life I referenced.
The external factors were overwhelming too: The way they were treated because of race. Because of being female. Because of being young. How much more stuck could you be? None of those aspects was in their control.

I finished it in the Target parking lot after a drive-up order. And I stayed parked, weeping. Incredibly powerful without flexing. I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it. I did have to put it down several times because it was triggering.

Content Warnings