Review by ashlightgrayson - The Bluest Eye

ashlightgrayson 's review for:

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

5.0

dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was Toni Morrison's first novel and all I can say is, what an important piece of work this is. The story's main character is Pecola, but the story mostly explores how other characters interact with Pecola. We don't get as much of an introspection of her character as I was expecting. Pecola is a dark-skinned girl growing up in the 1940 Ohio, so there are very strong social implications. I participated in book discussion for this book. Enjoyable is not a word I would use to describe it, because it would be innacurate. Despite that, it is still an amazing book that tackles difficult themes and makes you think critically about race relations and how self-hatred is taught, specifically in the context of racial identity.

My biggest takeaway from this book was just how internalized racialized self-hatred is. I've met so many black women that don't like themselves and have adopted "ugliness" as an adjective for themselves. Children are not born knowing prejudice, but they model the prejudice present in the society around them. In turn, those directly put down by that prejudice can grow up with so much insecurity. This is illustrated in the book by Pecola's mother, Polly (Pauline). She has a foot deformity and internalizes "ugly" into her identity. She ends up taking out her bitterness on Pecola. There are multiple examples in the book of her treating the white family she works for better than her own child. The internalized self-hatred is something that she is passing down to Pecola with her actions. This is a message that unfortunately, is still so relevant. Additionally, it reveals that we have not come as far as we could have by now.

Morrison adopts multiple points of view in the story. I think that her intent with this was to tell a story that mirrors the experience of a spectator looking from the outside in. This makes it a lot easier for the reader to understand that the discrimination and poor treatment Pecola receives, especially from other black people, comes from a place of trauma. I don't think that would have been as easily understood if it was mostly Pecola's point of view. Pecola is a very young child and doesn't understand a lot of what happens to her, including her

sexual assault

. I think hearing events from Cholly's (Pecola's father) point of view, for example, made that scene much more horrific, memorable, and impactful. Understanding that the actions of Pecola's parents come from a place of trauma made all the building blocks for the story make sense. Pecola's mother specifically treats her poorly because she has an inferiority complex. Her rejection of Pecola comes from the rejection of her own blackness. That message would not have been as clear if there was only one point-of-view.

Patricia Breedlove makes for an interesting character study. My initial thoughts were that she was particularly harsh with Pecola. She is a disapproving parent that never thinks that Pecola is good enough. As the story evolves, we obtain more information about Mrs. Breedlove's past. While this does not excuse her actions, but it does provide context. This is a woman who married a man she thought she would be happy with. However, she entered the relationship with deep rooted insecurity and false beliefs about the world. The main one being that only pretty people are allowed pretty lives. Ugly people deserve ugly lives. Blackness to her equates to ugliness and unhappiness, while whiteness equates to beauty and happiness. Since she thinks that her blackness makes her ugly, just like it makes her daughter ugly, she inadvertently ends up contributing to Pecola's misery. By the end of the story, I can't help but feel sadness and pity for the woman Patricia was and the woman she ends up becoming. She was a woman that once was young and hopeful. A woman who ends up angry, bitter, unhappy, and a believer in the lies a racist world has told her about herself.

It's reasonably clear based on this work that Morrison was aware that society is focused on a Eurocentric beauty standard. Proximity to whiteness is coveted. For example, on page 72, for example, Pecola has the following internal dialogue:

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.

Patricia Breedlove expresses a similar sentiment, but through her actions. She treats Pecola worse than the white children she serves for her employer. She sees her proximity to them as a proximity to whiteness, and therefore a proximity to beauty.

There are passages in the story referring to the white children Mrs. Breedlove cares for, Dick and Jane. The passages serve as a contrast to Pecola's dysfunctional family. We don't acutally get to see the details of Dick and Jane's family life. We only see an outside perspective of how they are perceived by the black characters in the story. They are seen as something to aspire to in contrast to Pecola's dysfunctional and broken family. The fact that they are white just reinforces the false ideas people like Pecola and her mother have about blackness. If only they were whiteer they would be happier, prettier, and more functional. Obviously, these things are not true, but they are unable to see that because of the message society has made them internalize so deeply.

Cholly, Pecola's father, also has his backstory explored. This helps give context to the person Cholly becomes (in a similar way to Patricia Breedlove). He is a black man that has been humiliated throughout his early life and made to feel like less than. His violation of Pecola, I believe, is his way of exercising agency in a world he feels has denied it to him his entire life. It helps the reader understand the character better and fives him more dimension. He is still just as vile for doing what he did to Pecola, but having his backstory makes him more than just a one-dimensional villain. It allows readers to understand that to some extent Cholly is a victim too. He is just, unfortunately, a victim that also became a perpetrator of abuse. It makes me wonder how different Cholly and Pecola's lives could be if he had made different choices. Maybe if he had chosen to exercise his agency in a healthier way the consequences wouldn't have been so damning. I also think it speaks to how often black men in fiction and media are just relegated to the deadbeat father trope. Toni Morisson's exploration of Cholly's past grants the character the time a lot of white characters in media are granted automatically and black characters rarely get.

The content of this book is something that I think should be vetted by an adult before being presented to younger readers. There has been a lot of discussion recently about book banning and this book is often included in those banned book lists. A lot of the messages and triggering scenes are not gratuitious by any means, but they are uncomfortable. They are written in a way that isn't sexy, funny, or glorifying of the actions. A lot of the text is also implied, so there is no sexually explicit content in the story at all. I can see a mindful teacher guiding a class through this books successfully. I remember reading books like Night by Eli Wiesel in high school, and that book also has very difficult content to get through. If a parent believes that content in a book is not appropriate for their child, they should be allowed to prohibit it in their household, but not the household of other parents. At the end of the day, each parent should be responsible for their own child and what they consume. That does not give them agency over what books other children read.

Content Warnings