The
Bluest Eye is the first novel by American author Toni Morrison. It is
set in 1941 in the small town of Lorain, Ohio, and tells the story of
an 11-year-old Negro girl, Pecola Breedlove, who becomes pregnant to
her father Cholly. Pecola’s family and environment is such that she
is certain she is ugly; so convinced of this is she, that she wishes
for blue eyes, believing this is the only thing that will relieve her
ugliness. Narrated in part by a 9-year-old neighbourhood girl,
Claudia, the perspective of young girls in this situation is novel.
Some chapters detail the history of Cholly and Mrs Breedlove, giving
some clues as to how this crippled and crippling family evolved. This
reissue of Morrison’s first novel includes a new Forward by the
author wherein she explains what she was trying to achieve. Some of
the prose is quite stunning: “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. There is no gift for the beloved.” The
prose may be beautiful, but as a Dutch-born Caucasian living in
Australia with a limited experience of the Negro, I found it
difficult to relate to this book.
In
this section the narrator returns for the first time to the events
that were sketched in the second, italicized Prologue-the marigold
seeds that were planted in the summer of 1941 by Claudia and Frieda.
The narrative reveals the innocent good nature of Claudia and Frieda.
They are too young to absorb the cynicism and hatred of the adults,
and they feel a simple love for the unborn baby, although this is
mixed with defiance. They are prepared to make a real sacrifice to
enable it to live in order to affirm their own power. They are
children pushed around in an adult world, and it is with "pity
and pride" that they decide "to change the course of events
and alter a human life" (p. 191). They have a nave faith that
the seeds will grow and everything will be all right, but Claudia
discovers that it is not so easy to change fate. How things turns out
rests not only on what individuals want but on the entire culture and
the norms and prejudices it possesses.
Nor can the world be different just because one little black girl longs for blue eyes. The fate suffered by Pecola is to be barely seen by her own mother in her own home. This recalls the episode in the candy store when Mr. Yacobowski looked right through her. Pecola, the weakest and most vulnerable character in the book, has finally become almost invisible. She is locked in her own world because she cannot possibly survive in the real world. Like a tender flower blown down in a storm, she has become the most pitiable example of the devastating effects of a racist society in which oppressed black people internalize the values of white culture and sink into self-hatred.
Nor can the world be different just because one little black girl longs for blue eyes. The fate suffered by Pecola is to be barely seen by her own mother in her own home. This recalls the episode in the candy store when Mr. Yacobowski looked right through her. Pecola, the weakest and most vulnerable character in the book, has finally become almost invisible. She is locked in her own world because she cannot possibly survive in the real world. Like a tender flower blown down in a storm, she has become the most pitiable example of the devastating effects of a racist society in which oppressed black people internalize the values of white culture and sink into self-hatred.
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