Part I: Bibliographic information
Type: Fiction
Title: The Bluest Eye
Writer: Tony Morrison
Originally Publication Date/Publisher: 1970/Holt, Rinehard and Winston
Genre/subgenre: Domestic/Girls
Interest Age: 15+
Reading Level: Upper Grades (UG 9-12)
Pages: 215
ISBN: 9780452273054
Awards: Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993; The Bluest Eye (1970) was her first novel.
Part I: Reader’s Annotation, Plot Summary, Critical Evaluation
Reader’s Annotation -- The story of two African American sisters who comes of age in a family that struggles for the basics and employs a heavy-hand in disciplining the girls. The family briefly fosters a child from a broken home named Pecola who dreams of having blue eyes as an escape from her disturbing and tragic reality.
Plot Summary -- The beginning opens as a play on the Dick and Jane reading books many of us who grew up in the 1960s read. This introduces the idea of an idealized family unit with mother and father but in this version no one will play with or smile at the girl.
The novel then moves to being narrated by a young girl, Claudia, though later the story becomes from an all-seeing narrator. Claudia and Frieda return to school for the fall. They get new socks but that’s about it. As they walk from school, they sometimes gather coal chunks along the railroad track in burlap sacks. She describes her house as “old, cold and green.” The have light at night only by kerosene -- and the adults don’t interact with them except in a cold and contemptuous fashion. Her mother does seems preoccupied with surviving and keeping her girls from taking the wrong path in life. But she shows her essential kindness when she takes in Pecola, a girl whose family is challenged by alcoholism and abuse.
Pecola feels she is ugly and is teased at school. She starts to think about if she looked different -- if she were different -- she would be “Pretty-eyed Pecola” and not the target of the more fortunate children. Her mother is a maid who escapes into her work with another family and her father is a very troubled man who was abandoned by his mother as a child.
At school, the sisters dislike another girl at school named Maureen who has everything they would like. Sometimes she fantasies about kicking or scratching those she is jealous of but she does not act on it by and large. They start calling her “bear-tooth six-finger Meringue Pie” but the girl tries befriending them -- only it ends with a fight after Maureen brags about having a dollar and ice cream while they have none.
The girls come home one day and their parents are away to work their garden leaving
Mr. Henry, a boarder, in the house. He brings in two less-than-reputable women with whom he is carrying on. The girls are frightened but he gives them money for ice cream. Later Mr. Henry attempts to molest Freida but she goes to her parents and her father nearly kills them man as he’s chased off with a gun.
The girls live in constant fear of ‘nasty’ things and people, and when they see one of Mr. Henry’s women later as they visit Pecola’s apartment house they refuse to associated with her. Pecola explains that the woman is actually kind to her. We start to see the girls questioning their parent’s view to some degree as they begin to be curious about sexual things and more aware of the world and its unfairnesses and complexity. The see that Pecola’s world is not so simple and they feel sorry for her.
Much of this foreshadows the horrible rape of Pecola by her father. Pecola’s mother does not believe her story and beats her. The girl turns to a neighborhood spiritualist -- a strange man from the West Indies. She seeks him out in order to change her eyes to blue. He pretends to help through prayer but uses her to carry out a killing of a dog he dislikes. She becomes socially ostracized and is pregnant by her father. The sisters Claudia and Frieda want to help her keep the child and make a plan to save money for the child’s care. But Pecola loses the baby. And, after a second rape, she begins to fall into insanity as she goes further into her fantasies of having blue eyes.
Critical Evaluation -- This remarkable work of fiction has appeal to all ages. Qs a coming-of-age novel, it has particular appeal to young adults who are grappling with the reality that life and people do not always meet expectation. The themes of deep-seated racial prejudice -- and self-loathing -- as well as sexual exploitation are mature in nature and this novel has been one targeted for ban in some school libraries. However, the sexual content is overtly crude and introduced with thoughtfulness as she mixes curiosity with sheer dread on the part of the children.
Morrison has the ability to paint with words the feelings that go along with the events that are transpiring. She introduces shame associated with sexuality early in the work when Pecola, the fostered girl, get her firms menstrual cycle. The girls feel they are going to be beaten. Another reality the girls face is that they are beaten regularly. Their parents are strict and indifferent to the girl’s feelings -- and though the fight and have jealous the two sisters really only have each other for emotional support.
The novel is complex thematically and cannot be boiled down to one moral message. In part, the reader sees the family’s experience in the shadow of slavery. Their economic and social plight is connected to their role as subservient to those with resources -- who are by and large white. The two male characters are almost scary in their coldness toward the woman. Their father is stern and we feel the distance between them. The guest male who attempts to molest Freida has other demons -- mostly his sexual desires are not in check and he crosses the line with the girls.
Their mother is overburdened and almost seems to dislike the girls. Her love for the girls has little warmth to it though they overcome the toughness of their circumstance largely because of their parent’s protective if not callous ways. In the end, the reader is left with the fact that the survival in economically and socially challenged circumstance involves no small amount of brutality -- violence is common, sexual exploitation skirts the edges of their world and emotional needs take a backseat to more pressing matters.
Part III: Author Info
Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, in 1931. Among her influences are James Baldwin, William Faulkner, Doris Lessing and Herman Melville, according to her Goodread biographical profile.
Her Goodreads profile also states: “Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford), is an American author, editor, and professor who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature for being an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
Goodreads has this about her works: “Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed African American characters; among the best known are her novels The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. In 2001 she was named one of "The 30 Most Powerful Women in America" by Ladies' Home Journal.” Some of her othe works include which include Sula (1973), Tar Baby (1981), A Mercy (2008) and, most recently, Home (2012).
Part IV: Curriculum Ties, Diversity, Booktalk Ideas, Challenge Issues
Curriculum Ties, if any -- Toni Morrison’s work is among the most literary of her generation. The Bluest Eye (1970) belongs alongside the English language coming-of-age classics and would be a strong candidates for high school English courses. The work could also be used in a course on race and gender studies.
Diversity of Cultures -- Morrison is considered a maverick of literature dealing with the issues of race and gender. She has taught at Howard University, the nation’s leading institution of higher learning for African Americans. Her other works also address themes of race in the historical context of post-slavery social and economic realities.
Booktalking Ideas -- Ohio was part of ‘the North’ during the Civil War. Yet we see a great deal of prejudice in this novel -- and the family is barely able to feed, cloth and keep itself warm during the harsh Midwestern winter. Discuss the migration of African Americans from the South to the industrial north and the social impact of these moves on their communities.
Challenge Issues -- Most of Morrison’s works include the realities of life during the pos-depression era in full color -- incest and alcoholism are addressed in this work. Several of her books have made the ALA’s most banned books lists over the years. It is in part because of her unadulterated portrayals of life that she has become an award-winning author who is highly respected for within the world of writing. While most will find this work disturbing, it remains a ground-breaking piece of literature that does not filter realty to appease our sensibilities.
Part V: Reasons chosen
There are certain classics in literature that never leave you. The Bluest Eyes (1970) has this quality. It offers an uncleansed version of the reality faced by generations of African American in the post-slavery era. This work -- and its author -- are simply powerful and yet thought provoking in ways that much of today’s literature comes up short. The tempo and descriptive poignancy bring the reader to that time and place that was post-depression Ohio. The novel has been challenged for its content -- sexual violence, mainly -- yet the work is more complex than that single issue. The themes of racial discrimination and the socio-psychological impact of that paradigm on the African Americans are explored. Morrison was still teaching at Howard University, one of the leading African-American colleges and a center of intellectual exploration of race issues then (and now). The novel takes on many of the threads in that dialogue in a sophisticated yet poetic way. For young adults, this work offers a broad overview of some of the race issues that are still being discussed in America. I highly recommend it to readers age 15 or older as part of a well-rounded exposure to significant works (and authors) in American literature.
Part VI: Citations
Toni Morrison. (n.d.) Goodreads [webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3534.Toni_Morrison
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