The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye
By Toni Morrison

“There is really nothing more to say- except why. But since why is difficult to handle one must take refuge in how.”

The Bluest Eye is a story rooted in tragedy. Like many tragic stories, there is a great value one can learn from the painful out come. The highlight of the story is focused on a girl named Pecola Breedlove. This novel attempts to ask “how” instead of “why” to observe Pecola’s life and the effect of her background, and the part that these forces played in causing her tragedy.

Pecola yearns for blue eyes. She prays every night for a year to get blue eyes. She believed that if her eyes were blue, she will look beautiful. As a result, she will have friends who won’t hurt her, and her own family will live in peace. Her wish for blue eyes is a reflection of the nature of the society she was living in. She lives in Lorrain, Ohio, in which beauty is measured by skin color. Most people thought that white is beautiful and black is ugly. Since they considered blackness ugly, Pecola thought that she was ugly, and ugly people do not get respected by others.

Morrison delivers a message to the readers that the beauty is misunderstood by many communities. Beauty is being damaged. She states that “Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”

Pecola gets raped by her alcoholic father, becomes a victim of his violent behavior and gets pregnant. Pecola delivers a dead baby, and decides to go to Soaphead Church, a pedophilic fortune-teller, to ask him for blue eyes. Soaphead Church sends Pecola in a little mission to kill a dog that he abhors. She thinks that this task will transforms her eyes color into blue eyes. When Pecola completes the task, the dog dies in a frightening way. Pecola loses her mind as a result of the horrifying incident of the dog, and believes that she had obtained “the bluest eye”.

Pecola creates an imaginary friend, and spend her time talking to him. She becomes obsessed and repeatedly asks him if her eyes where the bluest of any one living. Pecola endures the rest of her life as a madwoman. Morrison connects this part of the story with the false social construction of beauty, which is created by the imaginary world of media and supermodels.

Toni Morrison is truly one of the best authors, whom I learned about her work through Oprah’s book club online. Her writing style does not only follow an extraordinary technique, but it is also a very inspiring and touching method. Morrison is a winner of the 1993 Noble Prize Award for Literature.