Oh, to be different.
That’s what Pecola Breedlove wants in Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye. This 206-page novel allows the reader to enter the mind and thoughts of an eleven-year-old black child that has experienced neither the acceptance of the outside world nor the love of a parent or a friend. Instead, she encounters prejudice. Because even at a young age, Pecola believes that being accepted in society means to be measured according to the beauty myth: blonde hair and blue eyes.
Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time. Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.
The Bluest Eye was the first novel written by Morrison in 1970. Set in the Pulitzer Prize winning author’s childhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, the novel traces two families – The Breedloves and the MacTeers. Throughout the short novel the author tackles issues of class, racism, incest, poverty and domestic violence. While the sisters in the MacTeer family attempt to resist the trap of racism, the Breedlove’s, in particular Pecola and her mother, seem to be trapped by it. We learn that Pecola’s mother suffers from the same undercurrent of racism that defines the acceptable standard of beauty. It is also revealed that Pecola is impregnated by her alcoholic father and a victim of her mother’s misplaced anger. Morrison’s work evokes an array of emotions – most notably a lingering sadness, at the life of this young girl as she drifts deeper and deeper into a mental abyss.
But just as the reader sinks into the pace of the novel, Morrison changes the tempo as if to keep you on your toes. Despite the shift in tone, Morrison writes prose so rich that it leaves you thirsty. Drink up. M
February 2002
Leave a Reply