Archive: The Bluest Eye



The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison in New York from 1962 to 1965. The Novel takes place in Lorain Ohio in the early 1940's during the Great Depression. The novel is about one particular black girl coming of age. As she get's older she begins to realize the the differences between the white and black people during this time period. The young girl wishes nothing more but to have blue eyes. Throughout this violent story she believes that if she had beautiful blue eyes then people would not treat her as badly and no one would want to do terrible things in front of her blue eyes. Toni Morrison was born on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. After graduating from Lorain High School in 1949, she attended Howard University in Washington DC. There, she majored in English with a minor in English with a minor in classics. Since then, she has received her master’s in English and has written many novels such as Sula, Beloved, and the Bluest Eye. Because of her many great achievements she became the first African American women to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Lorain, Ohio, is where this novel takes place and is also where the author was born and raised. This city is home to over 70 different nationalities, including African American. Many were originally attracted to come to this part of the state due to much work in steel mills and ship yards. This is also a very cultural town and is full of ethnic activates all year round, including the Lorain international festival. Due to a tornado in 1924 the downtown area of Lorain was completely devastated, to celebrate the rebuilding of downtown they decided to build the Lorain Palace Theatre, where concerts, plays, and dancers, perform and is a big attraction to this city.

Plot Summary

 * Claudia Macteer recounts the events that would soon lead up to her best friends’ rape and death of her baby. This all started in the fall of 1940 during that time she and her older sister Frieda lived in a home that brought in borders and Henry Washington was among them. It was soon after Mr. Henry joined them that a young African American girl named Pecola Breedlove came in to live with them.  The reasoning for Pecola having to live with Claudia is because her drunken father burnt down her former home. As she stays at the home she and her new friends go through many new adventures including getting her first period.  Pocola’s family background was not a very pleasant story, her father Cholly was always coming home drunk and beating her mother Pauline, They were very poor and struggled to make ends meet.  But one thing that she always dreamed about and always thought would make everything better, was only if she had blue eyes. To her blue eyes were a symbol of beauty and happiness, as well as changing the way people look at her and the way she sees things. So, when a new girl at school comes into the picture, with long hair, green eyes, nice clothes and light skin, she is referred to as “White”.  Pecola was obsessed with longing to be white; including sometimes catching herself admired the curly blonde hair and blue eyes on the Shirley Temple cup at Claudia’s house, whom was disgusted with the “white” way of living. In the next section of the novel it explains who junior is and how he would torture the innocent little black girls in the community. As well as telling about how Mr. Henry touched Frieda’s breasts and was soon after beaten by her abusive father.  During this section the two girls also visit the 3 prostitutes who live in the apartment building with them. Soon later in the novel, the author describes the rape of Pecola, and how she was just home washing dishes when her father Cholly came in drunk, reminded of his wife, he rapes her and leaves her on the kitchen floor feeling ashamed and alone. The journey continues as the girls try to cope with the view of beautiful white little girls prancing around without a care in the world wearing nice clothes, eating candy, and smiling with their blue eyes sparkling. These girls had no worries of being raped of beaten, these girls were perfect and the black ones would never feel that in a lifetime. Weeks pass and rumors and gossip begin to spread that Pecola is pregnant by her father. Being a great friend, even though more like a sister, Claudia decides to plant marigold seeds, instead of using that money in her bike fund. If the marigolds bloomed everything would be fine, but if not, things would turn out for the worse. Pecola is left to talk to her only friend, an imaginary friend about the new blue eyes that she thinks she now has. She is only concerned that they are the bluest eyes in the world. She has driven herself into a state of madness over these blue eyes, and she is all alone. Claudia says that she saw Pecola after the baby was born and then died. Pecola walks up and down the street flapping her arms, as if she was a bird that could not fly. Pauline still works for white folks, Sammy ran away, and Cholly died in a workhouse. Claudia finally says that the marigolds did not bloom because some soil is just not meant for certain flowers. Does she ever get her blue eyes?? Will the drama ever end?? Read the book to find out!

Major Characters

 * Pecola Breedlove
 * Pecola is the protagonist of the story. She is an 11-year-old girl who believes she is ugly and would only become beautiful if she were granted blue eyes.
 * Claudia MacTeer
 * Claudia is nine years old and is rebellious against adults who are cruel to children. She is also rebellious of the idea of white people's beauty.
 * Cholly Breedlove
 * Pecola's father who is the antagonist of the play is impulsive and dangerous. Having suffered from humiliation as a teenager he takes out his frustration on the women in his family.
 * Pauline Breedlove
 * Pecola's mother who like her daughter, believes she is ugly, which has made her lonely and cold. She see's herself as a victim of an awful marriage. She finds the only meaning in live through romantic movies and in her job of cleaning and caring for a well off white family.
 * Frieda MacTeer
 * Claudia's ten-year-old sister who is closer to adolescence is more vulnerable to her community's equation of white people with beauty. She has more knowledge about the adults and is sometimes more brave than her sister.

Pecola's 14 year old brother who reacts to his family's problems by running away. Cholly's father who left his mother when she got pregnant. He now lives in Georgia and is very short and mean. Even though she seems tough and mean, she is actually really sentimental. She only has real feelings toward her cat.
 * Sammy Breedlove
 * Samson Fuller
 * Geraldine
 * Henry Washington
 * Mr. Yacobowski
 * Soaphead Church
 * M’Dear

Important Quotes
 "It never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding. We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair.” -Prologue

'' "It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights --- if those eyes of her were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different." '' -Pg. 46

 "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 lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye"  -Pg. 206 )Other signifacant Quotes: “So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.”

“If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”

“ ..What I felt at that time was unsullied hatred. But before that I had felt a stranger, more freighting thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world.”

“Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll is what every girl treasured.”

“” How do you do that? I mean, how do you get someone to love you?” But Frieda was asleep, and I didn’t know.”

Motifs

 * Sacrifice
 * Dirty

Themes and Symbols
 Themes 
 * Whiteness as the Standard of Beauty
 * The novel has a clear depiction in the ways white beauty standards corrupts the lives of black girls and women. There are clear signs that whiteness is superior everywhere in the novel; the white baby doll Claudia receives, the idealization of Shirley Temple, the idea that Maureen is cuter than the other black girls, and Pauline’s preference for the white girl she works for over her daughter.


 * Seeing VS. Being Seen
 * Pecola’s desire for blue eyes is very unrealistic. She believes that the cruelty she sees and goes through is connected through the way people look at her. She thinks if she had beautiful blue eyes people would not want to do unethical things in front of her or to her. This is assured by her being teased by the boys then Maureen comes to help her and it seems that the boys do not want to act badly under the pretty girls gaze.

Symbols
 * The House
 * The novel begins with a sentence from a Dick-and-Jane narrative: “Here is the house.” Homes not only indicate socioeconomic status in this novel, but they also symbolize the emotional situations and values of the characters who inhabit them. The Breedlove -apartment is miserable and decrepit, suffering from Mrs. Breedlove’s preference for her employer’s home over her own and symbolizing the misery of the Breedlove family. The MacTeer house is drafty and dark, but it is carefully tended by Mrs. MacTeer and, according to Claudia, filled with love, symbolizing that family’s comparative cohesion.


 * Bluest Eyes
 * To Pecola blue eyes symbolize beauty and happiness that she associates with white people. They also come to symbolize her own blindness because she gains blue eyes only at the cost of her sanity. The bluest eye could also mean the saddest eye


 * The Marigolds
 * Claudia and Frieda associate the marigolds with the safety and well being of Pecola’s baby. They believe that if the marigolds they have planted grow then Pecola’s baby will be all right. More generally, marigolds represent the constant renewal of nature. In Pecola’s case, her father raping her perverts her cycle of renewal.