Of The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye is the book of the struggle of a little girl against the injustice and cruely she was subjected to by the people she knows and she does not ever know. Among the books that we have read till now, only The Bluest Eye mirrors the real world in its very nakedness and solidness. Whereas all the previous books have in one way or another an unreal bravery, or friendship, or helplessness or dreaminess in them, The Bluest Eye catches what we call reality by its most sensitive nerve in a way that one finds it hard not to be disturbed by what he has to read. The very first page of the book begins with the shocking decleration of one truth: "Quite as it is kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at that time, that was because Pecale was having her father's baby that the marigolds did not grow (5). Pecola is having her father's baby and Caludia believes that such a gross sin kept the marigolds from growing.

In page 3 and 4, we read an introductory paragraph which is repeated three times, each time the characters closing more up each other. The first paragraph is the easist to read and to understand despite that it occupies a larger space in the book. Converesely, the third paragraph is the hardest to read despite that it takes much smaller place than the first two. I think, through this out of ordinary style, the writer aims to reminds us of the fact that acceleration causes more pressure and this results in disorder and uncomprehensiveness. The lives of these little children, Frieda, Caludia and Pecola, as well as of the elder people, Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove, Claudia's mother and father and the three whores, China, poland and Miss Marrie, and many others, are under the constant pressure of a kind of forced acceleration: They are wanted to be older and more mature. They are not allowed to be children like the children of the whites, and they are not allowed to be fathers or mothers like the white fathers and mothers. Just like those letters, they are squeezed together and out of this emerges chaos, incomprehensibleness and intolerance. Cholly rapes her daughter to alleviate her existential pains of not having a pair of blue eyes, and thus, of being such an ugly little girl. Pauline is finally given what "she had never had" (128), a nick name, Polly, by the white family and she is now satisfied to be able to take care of the home that she always wanted to have and where her crippled leg would not make no difference, that is, no sound. She was fortunate "to find a permanent job in the home of a well-to-do family whose members were affectionate, appreciative and generaous" (127) Now her job is her life and her life is like job. The little white girl with blue eyes is her own child and Pecola is who she has to take care of. This reversal of the primary and secondary roles, this disorder and anomaly actually symbolizes what the Black people had to go through at that time. They are forced to be happy only when they behave like someone else and when they live someone else's life, and die someone else's death. When they are themselves, they are unhappy just as Pecola is.

In this complexity, we see Soaphead Church lose his faith and assume God's position, penning a very personal letter to God. In his desecration of the divine carries us to the farthest points of human helplessness. In his agony, Soaphead Church, mimics what he calls God, "Do you know what she [Pecola] came for? Blue eyes... She must have asked you for them for a very long time, and you hadn't replied... She came to me for them" (180). This is like burning the Amazon rain forest down just to show what would happen if Amazon had not existed. This faithlessness and desecration is in no circumstances justified. This letter and his pedophilia show his mental situation clearly of which one would find it hard to accuse him. The author clearly did not mean to tell us how it is easy to be a morally perverted man. She wanted us to witness the social and political atmosphere in the country which drag people into such depths of inhumanity, reducing his wholeness something beneath the level of animals.

Soaphead Chirch's using Pecola to kill the old dog carries a symbolic meaning of a great significance. He advices Pecola, " Make sure he eats it [the meat] (175). What does it mean that Saophead killed the dog by means of Pecola and also promised to try to give her a pair of blue eyes and then wrote a rude letter to God, reminding him of his job and hinting that he wantes to take over His job if He does not do anything? I guess he simply wanted to be God because he wanted to give the little girl her blue eyes. He also wanted to give all the people what they wished. Or, maybe he wanted to be cursed by intentionally going too far in his letter to God. And maybe his pedophilia was also a means of giving the black girls what they would finally be deprived of once they become grown ups.

All in all, The Bluest Eye, virtually every single page of it, is laden with deep symbols and references. It is almost impossible to keep the track of all these well crafted and deeply immersed thoughts and beliefs without writing an analysis three times as long as the actual novel. Morrison writes with the confidence of a person who has direct information and real life experience of the things and people she talks about.

In this novel we see how the hoplessness culminates inside the people. How poor they are, how they lack family ties, how they hate each other because of their bitternes toward others: All these reach to a climax in the first part and the rising tension keeps the reader in suspense all the time. It is not a history book. But it is history itself; history talking in the form of a novel. The pushing factor in shaping this history is Pecola and her secret wish: She does not wish her parents to get along well with each other. She does not wish their poverty to end. She does not wish fancy dresses and sweet icecream. All she wants to have is what she believes will solve all the problems they are having at once: A pair of blue eyes. Blue eyes that will make them as beautiful as the white people. Blue eyes that will bring her crumbling family back into normality. Blue eyes that will give them a nice place to reside, a kind mom to love and a strong father to depend on. Yet this wish is as simple as it is impossible. And this is really what hurts the reader. She is, "a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach" (204). Pecola never reaches the blueness she wants to and what she carries inside passes her blackness down to her baby, that is, borning prematurely and death, ending the life that she was to be forced to live just like millions of Pecolas in the country.

This is a very well written and insightful review. Thanks for posting it beroq -- it was a good read.

I'm looking forward to learning many things from this forum.

The Bluest Eye is a story of a black girl who sees beauty not through her own eyes but through the eyes of white people.

Thank you 'The Comedian' and 'haraf ish' for your posts and insights. Maybe there are few more things to be said on The Bluest Eye:

Towards the of the novel we get to know some of the key characters better. (Morrison deals with more than one character at a time) We learn how Cholly has been abandoned as a baby in a junk and, more important than that, how he has been humiliated in the hands of two white men. Sarcastically, in the darkness Cholly knows who they are. “There was no mistake about their being white; could smell it” (147). Here, the writer makes it clear that Cholly, despite his propensity to being violent, is not as ‘tough’ as we used to think. He is easily wounded. And he keeps on being wounded all throughout his life and keeps hurting.

This incidence is when he starts hating. He wants to strangle Darlene as if she were the reason for his being humiliated. Strangely he never directs his hatred toward the white men. The self – hatred of the Black people for the wrongs that they have not committed foreshadows Cholly’s badly actualized symphathy for her own child for being so ugly and his trying to help her cure her anomaly.

It is also when he sounds like a grown up for the first time: “We got to get, girl. Come on” (149). The white cruelty makes them look older in such a short time. Now Darlene has the slow movements of an old woman. This is the choking pressure that the race-oriented community puts on them. This pressure forces them to be grown-ups before they are able to become children.

Pauline become a grown-up when she discovers that her crooked foot prevented her, unlike other children, from having a nickname and from being the subject of any funny jokes or anecdotes. She faces the racism hidden in the standards of beauty of the Black community. “Pauline was now the oldest girl at home took over the care of the house” (112). It is not that her having to take care of the house and her siblings makes her a grown-up. It is how she is consent with her new position. Her early impressions of beauty are later reflected upon her attitude toward her own daughter, Pecola. Her rudeness toward Pecola is beyond hatred. It is apathy. This is made clear especially when Pecola scalds herself mistakenly in the white’s house where her mother works. In pain, she cries for help. “In one gallop she [Mrs. Breedlove] was on Pecola, and with the back of her hand knocked her to the floor” (109).

Pecola wants a pair of blue eyes. She keeps wanting it until she becomes mad and spends “her days, her tendril, sap green days, walking up and down” (204). Why does she want blue eyes, instead of straight hairs or a lighter skin? Is it because she thinks they are easier to have? Or because it is the eyes that you see first in a person? Or, maybe it is because she thinks that through the eyes you see others and you see how others see you. And Pecola sees how other people see her. Therefore, she wants to change herself to change others -- to change how others see her. She wants to be seen different from who she really is. Now she is “a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach” (204). This drama leads her eventually to madness, the only realm where she can have what she wants.

This is a sad story of a crushing system in America which we think is possible yet distant. Morrison makes it close enough. As she points out in the 'Afterwords,' "implicit in her desire was racial self-loathing" (210). Pecola's desire sounds more innocent than loathing in the beginning but later she becomes just like her father and mother was: A dreamer which hates to wake from her dream. Cholly dies and Pauline still have her reason but these do not make them different from their daughter.The only difference is that Pecola will never hurt anybody's soul and body unlike those two did.

I think this story is not the story of a distant future. In light of the recent events regarding Racial Profiling in America, this book gives us a strong message that if we lost the true path towards our innate goodness, we became once again animals and the highest price was paid by our children.