The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
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“The soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruits it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.”
- Toni Morrison
Inhale two three four, exhale two three four… this is a tough one.
The Bluest Eye is a heartbreaking story. The fact that it was Toni Morrison’s debut novel is astonishing. She was fully-formed as a writer right from the beginning. The characteristics such as lyricism, acute observations, brutal honesty that epitomizes her writing are already present in this debut. My introduction to her writing was actually the Song of Solomon. While I did not connect with that particular story, there was something about her writing that was deeply moving. I was fortunate to have a second chance with her writing. Since the Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison quickly became one of my favorite contemporary writers.
The Bluest Eye is brutally honest. In just over 200 pages, Morrison explored some of the thorniest, grimmest, and most shameful aspects of humanity - racism, classism, sexism, abuse and love, ugliness and beauty… Morrison skillfully wove together a complex, layered, and intricate narrative that rests on the shoulders of only a small cast of characters, most of whom children. Through the innocent eyes of children, the injustice suffered and witnessed became even more brutal and heartbreaking. In the twisted world that Pecola lives, she is firmly placed on the bottom rung of the caste - she is black, female, poor, uneducated, ugly, young, small, and unprotected, and unloved. Her misfortunate may seem acute and extreme, but Morrison crafted the story such that it is unmistakable that Pecola’s tragedy is not a result of her unique circumstances but rather an inevitability in the society shared by all.
In the forward, Toni Morrison wrote: ”When I began writing the Bluest Eye, I was interested in … not resistance to the contempt of others, ways to deflect it, but the far more tragic and disabling consequences of accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-evident. I knew that some victims of powerful self-loathing turn out to be dangerous, violent, reproducing the enemy who has humiliated them over and over.” She succeed in doing exactly this.
Since there is so much to unpack, I chose to focus on the characters Claudia and Pecola and how they understand and interact with the world at large. They are both black, poor, young, highly perceptive and sensitive. But they are fundamentally different.
When Claudia destroyed coveted Baby Doll, she rebelled against the pervasive conviction of the superiority of white culture and aesthetic. The dominance of the white beauty standards, more importantly, the black community’s assimilation to it, deeply offends Claudia’s sense of fairness. While she was not old enough to reason the root of such injustice, she reacted intuitively and viscerally. By contrast Pecola accepted the white superiority and by extension, her own inferiority as an internalized fact. She desired, above all else, to be lifted out of the ‘pit of her blackness’ by possessing a pair of blue eyes.
Claudia’s desired way of experiencing the world, her sensory preferences, are fundamentally different from those of Pecola’s. Claudia wanted “the security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music… to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach…” Pecola’s world is highly visual. Even the blue eyes she desired above all else can only be experienced through being perceived by the external world.
It’s impossible to understand Pecola’s psyche without discussing the family she was born into. The Breedloves were “relentlessly and aggressively ugly” because such was their conviction. There was an even perverse sense of determination to show the world just how ugly they were, as though if they could take this weakness into their own hands, the world will not be able to hurt them with it. However unlike Mrs. Breedlove who handled her ugliness “as an actor does a prop” to perform the tragedy of her martyrdom; or Sammy who uses his ugliness “as a weapon”, Pecola internalized such ugliness as shame and self-loathing. Ugliness became her identity before she ever had the chance to discover who she was underneath the unappealing facade.
When Pauline was introduced to the idea of physical beauty, one that centers around whiteness, which then is equated to virtue, she embarked on the journey of self-loathing. Just after Pecola was delivered, Pauline determined that this helpless new born baby, her own child, was ugly. And to her, this was the greatest sin of all. If Pecola’s fate wasn’t sealed when she was born black into a society that despises its existence, it was when her own mother decided that she was ugly.
When Pecola went to buy her Mary Janes, she was met by the most naked and unadulterated loathing from a white man who despises her very existence. Pecola is sensitive and perceptive. She might not have been able to articulate such mistreatment, but she understood intuitively her “undesirable” existence in society. She experienced anger and shame in equal measure. But the pivotal moment occurred when the latter triumphed over the former. Anger would imply an “awareness of worth.” She might have been able to survive this world had she been able to lean into the anger, cultivate it, until it became a life-sustaining force. Once again, we see the difference between Pecola and Claudia. Claudia would have been indignant. She would have wanted to act and externalize her anger. But fighting back is a skill one acquires in safety. Pecola never had the luxury to explore ways in which she could express her emotions. Cubs only learn how to play, bare their teeth, and test the limits of their power because they knew they were safe with their mama.
Claudia grasps intuitively the superiority that Maureen’s lighter skin pigments bring. She also understood that the overt preference for it was broadly shared within her own people. She felt the powerlessness in their collective conviction. But she was afforded an innocence, a period of her life when she was “in love with herself”. As a result when she was mistreated, she could not “comprehend this unworthiness”. However Pecola never had such innocence, the luxury to be in love with herself, to discover her own worth.
The story is made all the more poignant through the tragedies of one black child witnessed by another. Against the tide that eventually obliterated the dignity and sanity of Pecola, Claudia alone fought for her. She fought in a way only a child could, with the utmost sincerity and heartbreaking naivety. She needed Pecola’s baby to live. More importantly, she wanted for others to want the baby to live. That way, just maybe, she could regain some semblance of justice in a cruel world.
Morrison argued that the idea of physical beauty is one of the most destructive in the history of human thought. “Originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” Pecola’s tragic life followed this exact path, albeit her disillusionment was extreme.
I’ll leave you with a quote from the Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.
First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.
Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.
Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.
Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
