I read the Vintage edition that included an afterword where Morrison discusses the problems she sees in her first novel, and while I enjoyed Beloved and Song of Solomon more, this book in spite of Morrison's complaints is an amazing debut.

 

We can see in the text the seeds of the author's immense talent and beautiful use of language that come to fruition in later works. Its a book full of heart, narrated by children who have not yet been crushed by the concepts of beauty and ugliness and connect the lack of marigolds with the tragedy of their friend.

 

"It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, 'You are ugly people.' They had looked about themselves saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance.

 

It rages at a standard of beauty that excludes blackness. A school system that elevates whiteness, and a society that accepts as normal male cruelty and dominance. The prose is rich and poetic and the characters are gritty and flawed.

Wow.

 

Just wow.

 

This was...haunting is the best I can come up with.  

Born as Chloe Ardelia Wofford, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist famous for her rich use of language and unforgettable African-American characters. From her first novel, “The Bluest Eye”, she continued penning great works such as “Sula”, “Song of Solomon”, and the critically-acclaimed “Beloved”. She also taught at Princeton University and held workshops for aspiring writers.

 

 

 

 

...and then the last two pages happened. At first I was terribly disappointed—because obviously this unnecessary explanation of the brilliance before had been tacked on specially for thick white people like me—but no. Those last paragraphs were there to deliver the final punch in the last five sentences.

 

I could say the last two, but the context matters for thick white people like me.

Please note that this book deals with rape and incest.

This book has left me thinking over certain themes for days. I think the best thing I can say about any book is that I can't stop thinking about it. "The Bluest Eye" was so hard to read in parts that I honestly was surprised when I got to the ending because even though it was hard to read, I wanted it to keep going and going. I wanted to read my happy ending damn it, and sadly there was no happy ending at all, just reality.

The novel focuses for the most part on two young girls, Claudia MacTeer and Pecola Breedlove. Claudia and Pecola go to school together, but Claudia gets to know Pecola more when Pecola temporarily is housed with the MacTeer family after Pecola's father burns their home down.

Besides the story weaving back and forth between Claudia and Pecola. We also have POVs from Pecola's mother (Pauline), father (Cholly) and even a young boy who ends up harassing Pecola. Claudia is at times portrayed as the narrator of Pecola's story and other times she is narrating what is going on with her and her sister Frieda.

What made this book interesting to me is the differences between Claudia and Pecola. Claudia is growing up starting to despise anything that is different than her and particularly hates the white baby dolls she is given. She wants to take them apart, open them up, and squash them. Claudia hates these things because they are showing her that she is not enough, her blackness, her brown eyes are all wrong/ugly. We don't really get many details about what Claudia looks like, but it seems to me that she is at least more attractive than what Pecola and her family look like.

Pecola who is called ugly even by her own mother longs to become white and have blue eyes. To her, being white with blue eyes would make her beautiful and would make everything in her world right. Pecola's entire history is tragic from beginning to end and all I wanted to do was hug this fictional girl and tell her it's going to be okay. Pauline's character I could sympathize with at times, but she was as part of the problem as was Cholly. Pauline and Pecola actually had a lot in common, both of them dreaming of better things, though in Pauline's case she ends up seeing her job as a maid, babysitter, housekeeper to a rich white family as the best thing in her life.

The character of Cholly was so hard to sympathize with though Morrison shows you the layers to this character as well. You get to see his start in life and see how for him everything turned out wrong. In his case though, it was easier to drink, get in fights, and lash out at others instead of taking a hard look at himself.

Morrison's book really takes a hard look at how not only do the way that whites perceive African Americans has a cause and effect, but the way that other African Americans perceive each other can have a negative cause and effect.

I am fairly light skinned and I got crapped on all of the time as a kid for being "yellow". Girls got crapped on for being dark-skinned though dark-skinned boys did not. Apparently being a neutral brown skinned African American was the best bet for you. I didn't think at the time as a kid how we were segregating ourselves into what we consider most beautiful and least attractive, but as kids we did that. I am wondering now if were doing this based on what the adults around us were doing as well.

Claudia who is a tough little thing already seemed wise to the world. Pecola was fragile and needed defending. I was hoping for a time that Claudia would swoop in and be Pecola's friend, but once again, kids are loathe to go and attract any unwanted negative attention to themselves and once again I applaud Morrison for highlighting that.

I said it one of my updates that Morrison's writing at times reminded me of what I would call the "inner" chapters of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." Morrison's writing took on an almost haunting, singing quality when she would break down the African American community (children, girls, boys, women, men) and use that to introduce a POV that would play into what she was going to be introducing.

This books takes place sometime after the Great Depression in Ohio. Reading about the differences between neighborhoods (black and white) and even between black people themselves made me think back about my hometown. It was set up pretty much the same way. My parents were actually in a fairly affluent racially diverse neighborhood. It wasn't until I was in college that I saw that for the most part that many of our formerly white neighbors had been replaced by other African Americans and even some of the older African Americans I had known had left.

The ending was pretty much a foregone conclusion before you get there. I do like how Claudia wraps up the narration with her acknowledging how she and the community as a whole had failed Pecola.