The Bluest Eye
Encyclopedia
The Bluest Eye is a 1970
novel by American
author Toni Morrison
. It is Morrison's first novel, written while Morrison was teaching at Howard University
and was raising her two sons on her own. The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl in Lorain, Ohio
, named Pecola. It takes place against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression
. The Bluest Eye is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and an adult, as well as from a third-person, omniscient viewpoint. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism
, incest
, and child molestation, there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries.
with blue eyes
. Throughout the novel, it is revealed that not only has Pecola had a life full of hatred and hardships, but her parents have as well. Pecola’s mother, Pauline, only feels alive and happy when she is working for a rich, white family. Her father, Cholly, is a drunk who was left with his aunt when he was young and ran away to find his father, who wanted nothing to do with him. Both Pauline and Cholly eventually lost the love they once had for one another. While Pecola is doing dishes, her intoxicated father rapes her. His motives are unclear and confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola, leaving her pregnant. In the end, Pecola’s child is born prematurely and dies. Claudia and Frieda give up the money they had been saving and plant flower seeds in hopes that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will live; the marigolds never bloom.
In the afterword, Morrison explains that she had met a man named Terry Owens from a down south area. Morrison knew this man while he had children of his own. He was a very nice but harmful man and didn't take nonsense from anyone. Morrison explains in a later book that Terry Owens was a veteran from the Vietnam war. "I was a very strong minded man coming from a home where I hadn't learn to read or working for a man that paid nothing much than a dollar."
Ideas of beauty, particularly those that relate to racial and class characteristics, are a major theme in this book. The title refers to Pecola's wish that her eyes would turn blue. Claudia is given a white baby doll to play with and is constantly told how lovely it is. Insults to physical appearance are often given in racial terms; a light-skinned student named Maureen is shown favoritism at school.
There is a contrast between the world shown in the cinema and the one in which Pauline is a servant, as well as the WASP
society and the existence the main characters live in. Most chapters' titles are extracts from a Dick and Jane
reading book, presenting a happy, white family. This family is contrasted with Pecola's existence as she is.
and start loving and adopting the ways of white people. Not only Pauline and Geraldine, but many of the black characters fall prey to this, loving white people more than themselves. We can find a better example of it when Pauline beats Pecola for spilling a pie on the floor of the Fishers' house and when schoolboys tease Pecola and stop it when Maureen goes to rescue her from those boys. Boys tease Pecola for her ugliness due to her blackness, but run away after seeing Maureen, as they don't want to do bad things in front of her.
in Chicago, Illinois commissioned Lydia R. Diamond
to adapt the novel into a full-length stage production. This play was developed through the Steppenwolf for Young Adults and the New Plays Initiative where it received its world premiere in February, 2005. The play was reprised in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre in October, 2006 by popular demand. The Bluest Eye received its off-Broadway
premiere at the New Victory Theater in New York in November, 2006.
In 2010, Phantom Projects Educational Theatre Group will present the Lydia R. Diamond
adaptation at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in La Mirada, California
It is also in the process of being adapted into a French version.
Rapper Talib Kweli
used the book as an inspiration for his song "Thieves in the Night" with Mos Def
on the Blackstar album.
1970 in literature
The year 1970 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Deliverance by American poet James Dickey published...
novel by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
. It is Morrison's first novel, written while Morrison was teaching at Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
and was raising her two sons on her own. The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl in Lorain, Ohio
Lorain, Ohio
Lorain is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Black River, about 30 miles west of Cleveland....
, named Pecola. It takes place against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. The Bluest Eye is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and an adult, as well as from a third-person, omniscient viewpoint. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, and child molestation, there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries.
Plot summary
Claudia and Frieda MacTeer live in Ohio with their parents. The MacTeer family takes two other people into their home, Mr. Henry and Pecola. Pecola is a troubled young girl with a hard life. Her parents are constantly fighting, both physically and verbally. Pecola is continually being told and reminded of what an “ugly” girl she is, thus fueling her desire to be caucasianCaucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
with blue eyes
Eye color
Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic character and is determined by two distinct factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris....
. Throughout the novel, it is revealed that not only has Pecola had a life full of hatred and hardships, but her parents have as well. Pecola’s mother, Pauline, only feels alive and happy when she is working for a rich, white family. Her father, Cholly, is a drunk who was left with his aunt when he was young and ran away to find his father, who wanted nothing to do with him. Both Pauline and Cholly eventually lost the love they once had for one another. While Pecola is doing dishes, her intoxicated father rapes her. His motives are unclear and confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola, leaving her pregnant. In the end, Pecola’s child is born prematurely and dies. Claudia and Frieda give up the money they had been saving and plant flower seeds in hopes that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will live; the marigolds never bloom.
In the afterword, Morrison explains that she had met a man named Terry Owens from a down south area. Morrison knew this man while he had children of his own. He was a very nice but harmful man and didn't take nonsense from anyone. Morrison explains in a later book that Terry Owens was a veteran from the Vietnam war. "I was a very strong minded man coming from a home where I hadn't learn to read or working for a man that paid nothing much than a dollar."
Ideas of beauty, particularly those that relate to racial and class characteristics, are a major theme in this book. The title refers to Pecola's wish that her eyes would turn blue. Claudia is given a white baby doll to play with and is constantly told how lovely it is. Insults to physical appearance are often given in racial terms; a light-skinned student named Maureen is shown favoritism at school.
There is a contrast between the world shown in the cinema and the one in which Pauline is a servant, as well as the WASP
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...
society and the existence the main characters live in. Most chapters' titles are extracts from a Dick and Jane
Dick and Jane
Dick and Jane were the main characters in popular basal readers written by William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp and published by Scott Foresman, that were used to teach children to read from the 1930s through to the 1970s in the United States...
reading book, presenting a happy, white family. This family is contrasted with Pecola's existence as she is.
Characters
- Pecola Breedlove - The protagonist of the novel, a poor, black girl who believes she is ugly because she and her community base their ideals of beauty on "whiteness". The title The Bluest Eye is based on Pecola's fervent wishes for beautiful blue eyes. She is rarely developed during the story, which is purposely done to underscore the actions of the other characters. Her insanity at the end of the novel is her only way to escape the world where she cannot be beautiful and to get the blue eyes she desires from the beginning of the novel.
- Cholly Breedlove - Pecola's abusive father and an alcoholic. Rejected by his father and discarded by his mother as a four day old baby, Cholly was raised by his Great Aunt Jimmy. After she dies, Cholly runs away and pursues the life of a "free man", yet he is never able to escape his painful past, nor can he live with the mistakes of his present. Tragically, he rapes his daughter in a gesture of madness mingled with affection. He realizes he loves her, but the only way he can express it is to rape her. The source of some of his sexual violence is explained in a flashback scene in which his first sexual encounter is interrupted by two white men, who force Cholly to continue while they watch.
- Pauline Breedlove - Pecola's mother. Mrs. Breedlove is married to Cholly and lives the self-righteous life of a martyr, enduring her drunk husband and raising her two awkward children as best she can. Mrs. Breedlove is a bit of an outcast herself with her shriveled foot and Southern background. Mrs. Breedlove lives the life of a lonely and isolated character who escapes into a world of dreams, hopes and fantasy that turns into the movies she enjoys viewing. After a traumatic event with a foul tooth however, she relinquishes those dreams, and instead escapes into her life as a housekeeper for a rich white family.
- Sam Breedlove - Pecola's older brother. Sammy is Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove's one son. Sam's part in this novel is relatively low key. Like his sister Pecola, he is affected by the disharmony in their home and deals with his anger by running away from home.
- Claudia MacTeer - Much of the novel is told from the perspective of Claudia.
- Frieda MacTeer - Claudia's older sister and close companion. The two MacTeer girls are often seen together and while most of the story is told through Claudia's eyes, her sister Frieda plays a large role in the novel.
- Henry Washington - A man who comes to live with the MacTeer family and is subsequently thrown out by Claudia's father when he inappropriately touches Frieda.
- Soaphead Church (aka Elihue Micah Whitcomb) - A pedophile and mystic fortune teller who "grants" Pecola her wish for blue eyes. The character is somewhat based on Morrison's JamaicaJamaicaJamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
n ex-husband.
- Great Aunt Jimmy - Cholly's aunt who takes him in to raise after his parents abandon him. She dies when he is a young boy.
- Della Jones- Henry Washington's landlady before the Macteers.
- Hattie- Della's sister.
- Aunt Julia- Della and Hattie's aunt.
- Peggy- The woman having an affair with Della's husband.
- Old Slack Bessie- Peggy's mother.
- Maureen Peal - A light-skinned, wealthy mulatto girl who is new at the local school. She accepts everyone else’s assumption that she is superior and is capable of both generosity and cruelty. She changes her attitude throughout the novel towards Pecola.
- Bay Boy- One of the black boys from school who teases Pecola about her daddy.
- Woodrow Cain- One of the black boys from school who teases Pecola about her daddy.
- Buddy Wilson- One of the black boys from school who teases Pecola about her daddy.
- Junie Bug- One of the black boys from school who teases Pecola about her daddy.
- Mrs. MacTeer- The mother of Claudia and Frieda. She houses Pecola when her family is "put out."
- Mr. MacTeer- The father of Claudia and Frieda.
- China- One of the prostitutes who live above the Breedlove residence. Physically, she is extremely skinny.
- Poland- One of the prostitutes who live above the Breedlove residence. She speaks the least out of her, China, and Miss Marie.
- Maginot Line (aka Miss Marie)- One of the prostitutes who live above the Breedlove residence. She is known for being very plump.
- Dewey Prince- An old boyfriend of the Maginot Line.
- The Fishers- The rich, white couple who employ Pauline as their servant.
- Geraldine- A socially-conscious black woman in the community who tries to over exaggerate the fact that she is above traditional black stereotypes, and is more "civilized" than other black families in Lorain, Ohio.
- Louis- The husband of Geraldine.
- Louis Junior- Geraldine's son who picks on Pecola, and blames her for the killing of his mother's favorite cat.
- Rosemary Villanucci- The little girl of the MacTeer's next door neighbor who constantly tries to get Claudia and Frieda in trouble.
- Blue Jack- Cholly's boyhood mentor.
- M'Dear- Medicine woman in Cholly's hometown who tends on Aunt Jimmy.
- Essie Foster- Aunt Jimmy's neighbor whose peach cobbler is blamed for her death.
- Miss Alice- One of Aunt Jimmy's friends.
- Jake- Cholly's cousin that he first meets at Aunt Jimmy's funeral.
- Darlene- Young girl from Cholly's hometown whom he shared his first sexual experience with.
- Mr. Yacobowski- The immigrant grocery story owner where Pecola goes to buy Mary Janes.
- Samson Fuller- Cholly's father who lives in Macon, GA.
- Chicken and Pie- The nicknames of Pauline's younger, twin siblings.
- O.V.- Aunt Jimmy's half brother.
Whiteness is beauty
In this book whiteness stands for beauty. This is a standard that the black girls can not meet, especially Pecola, who has darker skin than the rest. Pecola connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she would just have blue eyes all the bad things in her life would be replaced with love and affection. This hopeless desire leads her to madness by the end of the novel.Love is only as good as the lover
The novel that contains several relationships, although the relationships never end pleasantly. Morrison sees love as a dynamic force, which can be extremely damaging depending on who is doing the loving. The biggest example of this is the relationship Cholly has with his daughter Pecola. Cholly is the only character in the whole book that can see past Pecola’s seemingly revolting shell enough to touch her. While this sounds like a beautiful thing, in actuality it is the violent rape that serves as the climax of the story. As Claudia points out in the final chapter of this novel, “Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly” While Cholly definitely loves, the core of his personality forces him to manifest this love in violent ways. Because he has had extremely damaging experiences as a child, his love is extremely tainted. The reader can look at this in one of two ways. It can be seen as a very pessimistic view, claiming that true love can only be achieved if the lover is a good, honest person. However, the reader can also see this as uplifting. Even though love can be distorted, Morrison makes the point that everyone can, in fact, love. Even if an evil person loves in an evil manner, they are still able to love.Gender Disparity
The Bluest Eye is based on the lives of black women as it is written by a black woman. Toni Morrison has described the world wide gender disparity by her characters like Pecola, Frieda, Pauline and the narrator Claudia,who once mentions in the novel that three things have greatly affected her life: being a child, being Black and being a girl. All the women characters are abused by both white women & men, as well as by Black men.Dirty/cleanliness
Morrison continually places the idea and image of dirt and impurity-both figuratively and literally-in each new setting. In the beginning she introduces an ill Claudia plagued with bronchial and flu-like symptoms, cooped up in an “old, cold, green” house. The Breedloves own appearance and home is poor and ugly. Pecola befriends the prostitutes living above her, who are impure in their own nature. They sleep around, refute religion, are caked with make-up, surrounded themselves with smoke and are overweight. Altogether, the characters live in a dusty, hot town, separate from the upper-class whites. They themselves are dark and not pristine in appearance. Pecola is especially insecure about her differences and imperfections. Morrison uses this repetitive concept to emphasize the severity of their lifestyles and their desperation to keep up appearances.Sacrifice
Most of Morrison’s characters are martyrs to some cause or some person. Claudia and Frieda’s mother gave up youth and her own life to stay at home and care for a family. Pecola believes she’s ugly so that others may be beautiful. Her body is sacrificed to Cholly for his self-fulfillment. Claudia and Frieda gave up their bike money and flower seeds to “make magic” for Pecola and her baby. Mrs. Breedlove gave up her family, wealth, and status for Cholly and the trouble he brings economically, physically, and emotionally. Even Maginot Line and China gave up their bodies and social position to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. The book’s constant discussion of sacrifice, sin, and an unattainable redemption stresses a larger idea of life’s real purpose and the struggle to make it through something that yields no reward.Blue Eyes and Vision
Believing a new pair of eyes will change the way she sees things as well as the way she is seen, Pecola’s one deep desire is to have the bluest eyes in the world. The young girl’s innocent wish is marked by her perception of a world where the cruelty and hardships she suffers are a result of her appearance as an ugly black girl with dark eyes. She imagines having blue eyes will earn her respect and possible admiration. This is demonstrated when Pecola is teased by the little boys on the playground—when Maureen approaches staring at them with her light eyes, the boys back down and behave in a more respectable manner. Furthermore, Pecola wishes specifically for new eyes rather than lighter skin because she also hopes to literally view the world in a better way. At home and all around her, Pecola is tortured by the cruelty and dirtiness she constantly witnesses; if she were blessed with new eyes, she would be able to see herself and her world in a new, beautiful way. Pecola’s desire for blue eyes makes a connection between how a person is seen and what he or she sees.Whiteness
Throughout the novel, white skin is identified with beauty and purity. There are many recurring implications to the superiority of whites over blacks, specifically in women. The novel questions concepts of blackness and whiteness and describes the negative impact of white cultural domination on both black and white cultural identity. The adoration of Shirley Temple (Frieda and Pecola in particular), the white baby doll given to Claudia, light-skinned Maureen being cuter than the other black girls, and Pauline Breedlove's preference for the little white girl she cares for demonstrate the prevailing dominance of whiteness. As a result, women learn to hate themselves for being black and in turn relay this disgust to their daughters. This is most apparent within the Breedlove family, where Mrs. Breedlove despises the ugliness she sees in her own daughter. Pecola is most affected by this connection of beauty with whiteness, believing that beauty is associated with love and is necessary for affection and respect. Her hopeless desire to be identified as a white girl eventually drives Pecola to insanity.Hegemony
Black women of this novel are presented as the victims of the white beauty standards of society and some of them, like Pauline and Geraldine, are greatly affected by cultural hegemonyCultural hegemony
Cultural hegemony is the philosophic and sociological theory, by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one social class, by manipulating the societal culture so that its ruling-class worldview is imposed as the societal norm, which then is...
and start loving and adopting the ways of white people. Not only Pauline and Geraldine, but many of the black characters fall prey to this, loving white people more than themselves. We can find a better example of it when Pauline beats Pecola for spilling a pie on the floor of the Fishers' house and when schoolboys tease Pecola and stop it when Maureen goes to rescue her from those boys. Boys tease Pecola for her ugliness due to her blackness, but run away after seeing Maureen, as they don't want to do bad things in front of her.
Adaptation
The Steppenwolf Theatre CompanySteppenwolf Theatre Company
Steppenwolf Theatre Company is a Tony Award-winning Chicago theatre company founded in 1974 by Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry in the basement of a church in Highland Park, Illinois. It has since relocated to Chicago's Halsted Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Its name comes from...
in Chicago, Illinois commissioned Lydia R. Diamond
Lydia R. Diamond
Lydia R. Diamond is an American playwright. Her plays include Here I Am...See Can You Handle It, The Inside adapted from the poems of Nikki Giovanni, Stage Black, The Gift Horse, Stick Fly, Voyeurs de Venus, The Bluest Eye, an adaptation from Toni Morrison's novel and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents...
to adapt the novel into a full-length stage production. This play was developed through the Steppenwolf for Young Adults and the New Plays Initiative where it received its world premiere in February, 2005. The play was reprised in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre in October, 2006 by popular demand. The Bluest Eye received its off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
premiere at the New Victory Theater in New York in November, 2006.
In 2010, Phantom Projects Educational Theatre Group will present the Lydia R. Diamond
Lydia R. Diamond
Lydia R. Diamond is an American playwright. Her plays include Here I Am...See Can You Handle It, The Inside adapted from the poems of Nikki Giovanni, Stage Black, The Gift Horse, Stick Fly, Voyeurs de Venus, The Bluest Eye, an adaptation from Toni Morrison's novel and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents...
adaptation at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in La Mirada, California
La Mirada, California
La Mirada is a city in southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, and is one of the Gateway Cities. The population was 48,527 at the 2010 census, up from 46,783 at the 2000 census....
It is also in the process of being adapted into a French version.
Rapper Talib Kweli
Talib Kweli
Talib Kweli Greene , better known as Talib Kweli, is an American hip-hop artist and poet from Brooklyn, New York. His first name in Arabic means "student" or "seeker" ; his in Swahili means "true"...
used the book as an inspiration for his song "Thieves in the Night" with Mos Def
Mos Def
Dante Terrell Smith is an American actor and Emcee known by the stage names Mos Def and Yasiin Bey. He started his hip hop career in a group called Urban Thermo Dynamics, after which he appeared on albums by Da Bush Babees and De La Soul. With Talib Kweli, he formed the duo Black Star, which...
on the Blackstar album.