The Bluest Eye is written by Toni Morrison in the 60s, published first in 1970. It is a harsh story about a year in the life of a poor black girl, Pecola, in the American Midwest after the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Bluest Eye is Morrison's first published work. The narrator in the book varies from another young black girl, Claudia MacTeer, who reminisces about the happenings, to an omniscient third-person viewpoint.
The book deals with racism, incest and child molestation. The view of physical beauty is brought into focus by Pecola's wish and dream to have blue eyes, like the white girls. In the book whiteness is the standard of beauty; the whiter you are, the more beautiful the society sees you. These black girls, Pecola and Claudia, can never meet, especially Pecola as she is darker than the other. Childlishly, Pecola believes that if only she had the beautiful blue eyes, everyone would finally love her and all the bad things in her life would just disappear.
The carrying forces in this book are the different relationships, and those relationships never end pleasantly. Morrison treats love as a dynamic force that can be either damaging or healing depending on who is doing the loving. The clearest instance of this is the relationship between Pecola and her father, Cholly Breedlove. Cholly is the only one who loves Pecola enough to see past Pecola's supposed ugliness. He is the only one "who loved her enough to touch her, envelop her, give something of himself to her". Although this might sound like a beautiful thing, Cholly realises his love in the most violent way possible; he rapes his twelve year old daughter. He himself was raised very negligently and he can only show his love in tainted ways.
"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."
- The Bluest Eye, p 163 (in the Vintage, 1999 edition)This quote can actually be viewed in two ways. The more pessimistic view is that true love can only be achieved if the lover is a good, honest person. However, the section can also be seen as more uplifting. Morrison makes a point that, even though the love can be distorted, everyone can love.
The Bluest Eye tells of black women, based on the lives of black women, and written by a black woman. All the women in the book, Pecola, her mother Pauline, Claudia and her sister Frieda, point out the gender disparity of the time. Claudia, the narrator, once mentions that there are three things that affected her life; being a child, being black and being a girl. All these women characters are abused by both white men, women and even children, and also by black men. They are the lowest of the low, children even lower than women.
The book is strongly told and well written. The characters, while not well rounded, are striking and well described. The only thing that almost put me off the book was the difficulty of reading. The language was non-standard English, Morrison used short sentences and sometimes the story seemed disjointed. All things considered, I still think the good point of the book over weigh the bad ones, and I am able to warmly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in racial injustices and the position of women.
