Four Stars for Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is beautifully written with imagery bent on heartbreak lingering in your mind long after you read it. I read it years ago, but revisited it recently because I plan to teach it. At 21, I would have easily rated this book a 5, but now I found the POV jumps jarring. I also found the writing gorgeous, yes but a little disjointed. The premise of the book is about Pecola, a young black girl who thinks blue eyes can make her loveable. Pecola defines herself as ugly and this is as far as her characterization goes. She is every girl, white or black, who desires to be something they are not. Of course, at a younger age I related more to her. I hadn't yet accepted my flaws as part of what makes me unique. Funny, at one point growing up, I wished for blue eyes. So, naturally I wanted Pecola to find her inner beauty and accept her flaws as truth and with grace. Pecola doesn't really tell her own story, instead we understand her through well-developed characters existing in her world. Her mother and father's stories were lined with fear, desire, abandonment, and cruelty so much so they failed to love Pecola. Here you start to see why Pecola wants the blue eyes. Towards the end of the story, Morrison throws in a random character, Soapchurch, a sham mystic. Soap is suppose to grant Pecola her blue eyes, and you have to read several pages of Soap's history before you find out whether or not The Bluest Eye will go all mystic and give Pecola her blue eyes or not. Soap was really a creepy character and I wish Morrison could have left his history out. This is the biggest place this story went sideways for me. The Bluest Eye is a journey of self-discovery, but not only Pecola's journey. Everyone in the story is searching for self-acceptance, too many in fact. In the end, Morrison still deserves the notoriety. Her writing makes you examine, analysis, and accept or not the deeper questions about who we think we are. The Bluest Eye is her first book. Since, she wrote other great novels. Her book, Tar Baby is my absolute favorite, but I wonder if I read it now would it have less allure for me because thematically Tar Baby is about a young woman breaking out of the shackles the world often places on women and their stereotypical roles in society, at least that is how I saw it in my early twenties studying art and religion and searching for my place in the world defining my femininity with a new definition with every new nugget of knowledge. Thinking back now, I think Morrison helped me accept myself without Blue Eyes and the Tar Baby within my white shell. So, despite the disjointed nature of her first book, The Bluest Eye, I still highly recommend her novels. As far as Oprah goes, I don't really care. I was reading Morrison long before I even knew Oprah.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is beautifully written with imagery bent on heartbreak lingering in your mind long after you read it. I read it years ago, but revisited it recently because I plan to teach it. At 21, I would have easily rated this book a 5, but now I found the POV jumps jarring. I also found the writing gorgeous, yes but a little disjointed. The premise of the book is about Pecola, a young black girl who thinks blue eyes can make her loveable. Pecola defines herself as ugly and this is as far as her characterization goes. She is every girl, white or black, who desires to be something they are not. Of course, at a younger age I related more to her. I hadn't yet accepted my flaws as part of what makes me unique. Funny, at one point growing up, I wished for blue eyes. So, naturally I wanted Pecola to find her inner beauty and accept her flaws as truth and with grace. Pecola doesn't really tell her own story, instead we understand her through well-developed characters existing in her world. Her mother and father's stories were lined with fear, desire, abandonment, and cruelty so much so they failed to love Pecola. Here you start to see why Pecola wants the blue eyes. Towards the end of the story, Morrison throws in a random character, Soapchurch, a sham mystic. Soap is suppose to grant Pecola her blue eyes, and you have to read several pages of Soap's history before you find out whether or not The Bluest Eye will go all mystic and give Pecola her blue eyes or not. Soap was really a creepy character and I wish Morrison could have left his history out. This is the biggest place this story went sideways for me. The Bluest Eye is a journey of self-discovery, but not only Pecola's journey. Everyone in the story is searching for self-acceptance, too many in fact. In the end, Morrison still deserves the notoriety. Her writing makes you examine, analysis, and accept or not the deeper questions about who we think we are. The Bluest Eye is her first book. Since, she wrote other great novels. Her book, Tar Baby is my absolute favorite, but I wonder if I read it now would it have less allure for me because thematically Tar Baby is about a young woman breaking out of the shackles the world often places on women and their stereotypical roles in society, at least that is how I saw it in my early twenties studying art and religion and searching for my place in the world defining my femininity with a new definition with every new nugget of knowledge. Thinking back now, I think Morrison helped me accept myself without Blue Eyes and the Tar Baby within my white shell. So, despite the disjointed nature of her first book, The Bluest Eye, I still highly recommend her novels. As far as Oprah goes, I don't really care. I was reading Morrison long before I even knew Oprah.
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