The Bluest Eye

Synopsis: The chronicle of the tragic lives of a poor black family in 1940s America. Every night Pecola, unlovely and unloved, prays for blue eyes like those of her white schoolfellows. She becomes the focus of the mingled love and hatred engendered by her family's frailty and the world's cruelty.

Review: This book was slightly easier to read than Beloved, easier in writing style (though still beautifully poetical and mystical) but not easier in subject matter because it's every bit as harrowing.

Central to the story is 11 year old Pecola Breedlove and her family ... a family beset by poverty and hardship.

'You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question ... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.'

The story is narrated partly by an unknown third person and partly by Claudia (now looking back as an adult,) a girl living in the same town as the Breedloves and observing events as they unfold.

Pecola leads what can only be described as a dogs life, she is spat at, ridiculed, ignored, wrongly accused of crimes, she's not loved or admired, she's deemed ugly and worthless. Her home is a home of poverty, violence and hostility and her parents, who have themselves been similarly knocked about by life, don't seem to care about her. If that wasn't bad enough, her father has raped her whilst drunk and she is carrying his child. She prays every day for beauty, and in her mind, that means a pair of blue eyes.

To read about her was one of the hardest things, her spirit was absolutely crushed and everytime I thought a ray of light had appeared, it was snuffed out.

At the beginning of the book there's a paragraph taken from a child's reading book ‘Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick and Jane live in the green and white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, Mother, laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father, will you play with Jane? Father is smiling. Smile, Father, smile. See the dog. Bowwow goes the dog. Do you want to play with Jane? See the dog run. Run, dog, run. Look, look. Here comes a friend. The friend will play with Jane. They will play a good game. Play, Jane, play.’ and this passage is repeated randomly throughout the book but fractured now, without spaces or punctuation. It's a safe and cosy world this Shirley Temple world, one of innocence and comfort but what if it's not your experience of the world? what then? it's just a world that you don't fit into, a world of reproaches and taunts.

There's little hope in this book, what hope there is lies with Claudia and her sister Frieda, but not with Pecola. It's brutal and harsh and it contains scenes that will repulse you and make your heart sink but it's a really powerful piece of writing, you can feel Toni Morrison's anger and sorrow pulsing through the pages.