CHAPTER -I

Introduction:

Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford. Her first

novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), received mixed reviews, didn't sell well,

and was out of print by 1974. Critical recognition and praise for Toni

Morrison grew with each novel. She received the National Book Critics

Circle Award for her third novel Song of Solomon (1977) and the Pulitzer

prize for Beloved (1987). She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in

1993 for, in the words of the Swedish Academy, her "visionary force and

poetic import" which give "life to an essential aspect of American

reality."

The writer chooses The Bluest Eye because this novel is

challenging to be reviewed. The controversial nature of the book, which

deals with racism, incest, and child molestation, makes it being one of the

most challenged books in America’s libraries – the ones people complain

about or ask to be removed, according to The American Library

Association (http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/14/here-are-american-

library-associations- 10-most-complained-about-books-2014). On the

other hand, the story of The Bluest Eye is interesting because the story

tells about an eleven year old African American girl who hates her own

self due to her black skin. She prays for white skin and blue eyes because
they will make her beautiful and allow her to see the world differently,

the community will treat her better as well. The story is set in Lorain,

Ohio, against the backdrop of America's Midwest during the years

following the Great Depression. The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first

novel published in 1970.

First of all, the purpose of the writing is that the writer would like

to give the readers a portrait to stop hating themselves for everything they

are not, and start loving themselves for everything that they are. The

writer assesses that Toni Morrison’ story line presented in the novel is

eye-catching even though it experiences an abundance of controversy

because of the novel's strong language and sexually explicit content. The

second purpose of the writing is the writer wants to expose the strengths

and weaknesses The Bluest Eye, so the readers could get a reference of

this novel.

Toni Morrison, also known as Chloe Anthony Wofford, is an

American writer noted for her examination of black experience

(especially black female experience) within the black community. She

was born February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, United States. She received

the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.Morrison grew up in the American

Midwest in a family that possessed a love of and appreciation for black

culture. Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part of

her childhood.

Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of

initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black girl who is obsessed

by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In 1973 a

second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the

dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the

community. Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search

of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar

Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class,

and sex. The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer

Prizefor fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the

point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of

slavery. Jazz(1992) is a story of violence and passion set in New York

City’s Harlem during the 1920s. Subsequent novels are Paradise (1998), a

richly detailed portrait of a black utopian community in Oklahoma, and

Love (2003), an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of

love and its ostensible opposite. A Mercy (2008) deals with slavery in

17th-century America. In the redemptive Home (2012), a traumatized

Korean War veteran encounters racism after returning home and later

overcomes apathy to rescue his sister.

Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford. Her first novel, The

Bluest Eye (1970), received mixed reviews, didn't sell well, and was out

of print by 1974. Critical recognition and praise for Toni Morrison grew

with each novel. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award for

her third novel Song of Solomon (1977) and the Pulitzer prize

for Beloved (1987). She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993

for, in the words of the Swedish Academy, her "visionary force and

poetic import" which give "life to an essential aspect of American

reality."

Morrison wants her prose to recreate black speech, "to restore the

language that black people spoke to its original power"; for her, language

is the thing that black people love so much--the saying of words, holding

them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them. It's a

love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher's: to make you stand up out

of your seat, make you lose yourself and hear yourself. The worst of all

possible things that could happen would be to lose that language.

Her prose has the quality of speech; Morrison deliberately strives

for this effect, which she calls "aural literature." She hears her prose as

she writes, and during the revision process she cuts phrasing which

sounds literary or written rather than spoken. She rejects critics' assertions
that her prose is rich; to those who say her prose is poetic, she responds

that metaphors are natural in black speech.

Morrison wants readers to participate in her novels, to be involved

actively. Readers are encouraged to create the novel with her and to help

construct meaning. She uses the model of the black preacher who

"requires his congregation to speak, to join him in the sermon, to behave

in a certain way, to stand up and to weep and to cry and to accede or to

change and to modify." She wants readers to say amen. Thus, her writing

is meant as a communal experience, a sharing of passion and ideas and

responses, with her holding the reader's hand during the experience. One

small example of her encouraging reader participation is her not using

adverbs like "softly" or "angrily" to describe characters' speeches; the

reader should recognize/feel the speaker's emotion from the writing.

She uses magic, folktales, and the supernatural in her novels

because

the way the world was for me and for the black people I know. In

addition to the very shrewd, down-to-earth efficient way in which they

did things and survived things, there was this other knowledge or

perception, always discredited but nevertheless there.

 Her family talked about their dreams in the same way they talked

about things that really happened, and they accepted visitations as real.

Morrison's style combines these unrealistic elements with a realistic

presentation of life and characters . This mixture has been called "magical

realism." Initially she objected to the label "magical realism," feeling it

diminished her work or even dismissed it. Now, however,she

acknowledges that it does identify the supernatural and unrealistic

elements in her writing. In The Bluest Eye the "magical" appears in the

failure of marigolds to bloom and the belief by some members of the

community in Soaphead Church's powers.

According to Morrison, another characteristic of black writing is a

distinctive irony. She's not sure that it is different from irony in white

literature, and she can't describe it. It's not humor, not a laughing away of

troubles. What it is is this: taking that which is peripheral, or violent or

doomed or something that nobody else can see any value in and making

value out of it or having a psychological attitude about duress is part of

what made us stay alive and fairly coherent, and irony is part of that--

being able to see the underside of something, as well.

In 1993, Morrison became the first African American to be

awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her fiction was noted for its "epic

power" and "unerring ear for dialogue and richly expressive depictions of
black America" by the Swedish Academy, while exploring the difficulties

of maintaining a sense of black cultural identity in a white world.

Especially through her female protagonists, her works consider the

debilitating effects of racism and sexism and incorporate elements of

supernatural lore and mythology. Many of Morrison's novels—

particularly The Bluest Eye (1970) and Beloved (1987)—have become

firmly established within the American literary canon, while

simultaneously working to redefine and expand it.

Among her best known novels, The Bluest Eye recounts the tragic

story of Pecola Breedlove, a poverty-stricken black child who longs for

the blue eyes and blond hair that are prized by the society in which she

lives. Evidenced by the superiority exhibited by light-skinned black

characters in the novel—as well as the self-loathing of those, like Pecola,

whose dark skin and African features mark them as unattractive and

unlovable—the work explores black acceptance of white standards of

female beauty. In 1973, Morrison published Sula, a novel chronicling the

lives of two women. One woman assumes a traditional role in the

community; the other leaves her hometown, returning only to resist

established female roles and to assert her own standards and free

will. Song of Solomon (1977) juxtaposes the pressures experienced by

black families that feel forced to assimilate into mainstream culture with
their unwillingness to abandon a distinctive African American heritage.

More so than in her earlier novels, Morrison incorporates mythical and

supernatural elements into the novel's narrative as a way for characters to

transcend their everyday lives. Tar Baby, published in 1981 and set in the

Caribbean, again uses myth and ghostly presences to mitigate the

harshness of lives in which all relationships are adversarial—particularly

in cultures where blacks are opposed to whites and women are opposed to

men. In 1987 Morrison published Beloved, a novel based on the true

story of a slave who murdered her child to spare it from a life of slavery;

the book won the Pulitzer Prize. Jazz (1992) features dual narratives: one

set during Reconstruction, the other during the Jazz Age. The novel

explores the lasting effects of slavery and oppression on successive

generations of African Americans. Morrison's most recent novels

are Paradise (1998), featuring the lives of nine black families who settle a

tiny farming community in Oklahoma in the 1940s, and Love (2003), a

story that portrays the owner of a once-popular East Coast seaside resort

for African Americans.

In addition to her novels, Morrison has written a play, Dreaming

Emmett (1986), a collection of literary criticism, Playing in the Dark:

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), and several books for

young readers in collaboration with her son Slade. Her children's works
include The Big Box (1999), The Book of Mean People (2002),

and Who's Got Game?: The Ant or the Grasshopper? (2003).

Although some critics expressed reservations about the book's

literary merits, The Bluest Eye received an impressive amount of

attention for a first novel, garnering reviews by many prestigious

publications. Sula met with more popular success, was serialized

in Redbook magazine, and was nominated for the 1975 National Book

Award. By the time Song of Solomon appeared, Morrison occupied a

secure place as one of America's top novelists. Morrison's reputation was

further enhanced by receipt of the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved and

the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Morrison is frequently faulted for her representations of a

matriarchal culture that features poor, uneducated black females, with

few positive black male characters and almost no white characters.

Jacqueline Trace contends that this is partly attributable to Morrison's

attempt to create a theology that is specifically black and specifically

feminist.

Several critics have discussed Morrison's work—particularly The

Bluest Eye—as a critique not only of the standards of female beauty

prescribed by the dominant white culture, but of acceptance of those

standards by blacks themselves. Pin-chia Feng discusses the development

of the two young girls in the novel, concluding that "Claudia survives to

tell the story by resisting social and racial conformity. Pecola fails the test

precisely because of her unconditional internalization of the dominant

ideology." Vanessa D. Dickerson (see Further Reading) contrasts

Morrison's treatment of the black female body with its historical

construction "as the ugly end of a wearisome Western dialectic: not

sacred but profane, not angelic but demonic, not fair lady but ugly darky."

Morrison, however, reappropriates black female representation within her

fiction, particularly in The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved. "In each of

these novels," Dickerson asserts, "Morrison summons us to the validation

of the black female body."

 CHAPTER - II

Themes and Practices in Morrison's Novels

The Bluest Eye is the story of a young African American girl and

her family who are affected in every direction by the dominant American

culture. It tells the story of an African American girl named Pecola, an

eleven year old who is basically described as poor, black, and ugly.

Pecola idolizes the idea of having white skin and blue eyes that she

believes are the ultimate representation of the “ideal” of beauty.

Pecola has experienced sad moments in her life, her mom, Mrs.

Breedlove is neglectful. She does not care about her at all and chooses to

work and take care of the baby in white family. While Cholly Breedlove,

her own father, is an abusive alcoholic who rapes Pecola until she gets

pregnant. Her parents fight on a regular basis, and these altercations lead

to physical violence. This is why Pecola's brother, Samuel, copes with the

violence by running away. The reader learns that Pecola's parents have

both had tragic lives too, which has led to their dysfunction as adults. Her

father, Cholly Breedlove, was abandoned as a baby and later turned away

by his father after searching him out. During Cholly's first sexual

experience, two white men force him and the girl he was with to continue

the sexual act as they watch. Her mother, Mrs. Breedlove, has a lame foot

and has always felt isolated and ugly. As a young woman, she loses
herself in movies. The beautiful white actresses make her belief that she

is ugly. Thus in an act of desperation, Pecola visits Soaphead Church who

claims he can work miracles, and Pecola asks for blue eyes. Soaphead

Church tricks Pecola into poisoning a dog he has long wanted to kill,

stating that if the dog acts funny it is a sign she will receive her wish.

The Strength of THE BLUEST EYE

The first strength of this novel is that the author, Toni Morisson,

criticizes the white beauty which is the main theme of the novel.

Whereas, beauty is something that is relative, it means that there are

differences in the view of some people about the beauty. Knight Dunlap

through Alfred Strom states that “Beauty varies distinctly from race to

race, so that such concepts can not be accurately compares across racial

lines, though he acknowledges that darker races sometimes change their

standards when influenced by Whites, and some even come to desire

White mates – a phenomenon with which we are all too familiar in our

century” (American Dissident VoicesBroadcast of October 2, 2004).

Nevertheless, black people sometimes change their standards when

confronted with the white race. In fact, standards of white beauty cause

distress for black women. When a woman can not meet the applicable

standards of beauty in society, she feels a sense of insecurity, loneliness,

and low self-esteem. This is what happened to Pecola, the main character
in the novel who, feels like the ugliest person alive due to not having the

white beauty standard.

“It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes

that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were

different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. Her

teeth were good, and at least her nose was not big and flat like some

of those who were thought so cute. If she looked different, beautiful,

maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe

they’d say, “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad

things in front of those pretty eyes.” (Morisson, 1970: 46)

The quotations above indicates that Pecola blames that her ugliness

making herself rejected by the society, including her own family. She is

certain that without blue eyes and white skin, she will never be seen as

beautiful, and therefore, cannot ever see her own life as beautiful. In

addition, if she meets the white beauty standard, people around will treat

her better. This mindset puts Pecola in a big question, why she is different

from others:“Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover

the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised

at school, by teachers and classmates alike” (Morrison, 1970: 45).

Through Pecola, Morrison exposes the power and cruelty of

middle-class American definition of beauty, which makes Pecola driven

madness by her consuming obsession for white skin, blonde hair and not

just blue eyes, but the bluest ones. The pressures of society and her own

self-hatred lead Pecola into a state of madness.Pecola is such a victim of

popular white culture and its pervasive advertising, where she believes

that people would value her more if she were not black: “Adults, older

girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had

agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every

girl child treasured. “Here,” they said, “This is beautiful, and if you are

on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.” (Morrison, 1970: 21)

The Bluest Eye shows that whiteness is desired by everyone. The

society blindly accepts that the true beauty means having blue eyes,

blonde hair, and white skin. It makes heartache for all the non-blue eyed

and brown or black skinned children who never got to see their beauty

reflected in the eyes of those around them. Through what happened to

Pecola, the author wants to speak up that beauty is not simply something

to behold; it is something one cando.

The second strength of this novel is the point of view of The Bluest

Eye. Point of view refers to the narrator’s position in relation to a story

being told. “To understand imaginative narrative we must consider the

author‟s point of view or angle of narration as well as the content of his

work. Point of view or angle is not the author’s general attitude toward
life or toward his story, but is a specific concept that we must understand

clearly” (Potter, 1967: 28). The point of view used in this novelmakes the

readers feel not boring to read the novel. Morrison is famous for her use

of fragmented narrative with multiple perspectives. In this novel, she uses

Claudiaas a narrator in The Bluest Eye that narrates the story for two

reasons; to provide a child's perspective as well as an adult's perspective.

Unlike Pecola, Claudia has strong feelings of high self-esteem and worth.

Claudia is proud of being black and has learned her values from her

supportive family environment. It is because there is love in Claudia’s

house, but it is absent in Pecola's.

The Weakness of THE BLUEST EYES

Besides the strengths, the writer also finds some weaknesses from

this novel. First, the language that is used in the novel is African-

American slang terms. Actually, black vernacular speech gives the reader

a sense of how recently these events are, on the other hand, it is hard to be

understoodby the readers. Not everyone understand the black slang terms,

therefore some words in the novel confuses the readers: “When she tried

to make up her face as they did, it came off rather badly. Their goading

glances and private snickers at her way of talking (saying “chil’ren”) and

dressing developed in her a desire for new clothes” (Morrison, 1970:

118). There are some words written “chil’ren” in this novel, and this
sentence is one of the examples. While reading that sentence, maybe most

of the readers question the word “chil’ren” as it is not a common one. It

can be seen that the phrase “chil’ren” is not clear for the readers who do

not know the meaning of the word. “Chil’ren” here stands for children,

but Morrison writes it that way as “chill” is a slang word means cool,

great, or awesome. For many people, this is an unusual word, however,

for others, in particular younger African-American, this is a casual word

that is very common to use. Toni Morrison uses her spoken African-

American language in writing The Bluest Eye to show the emotion of the

characters in the novel which are lower classs, but sadly it is not easy for

the readers to catch the meaning.

The second weakness of this novel is that Toni Morrison’s

criticism through the novel The Bluest Eye can give misundertanding for

the readers who are not critical. Criticism in the novel is the strength of

the novel, but it can become otherwise if the readers do not really

understand what Toni Morrison is going to say in this novel.

Sense of Loss

Morrison feels deeply the losses which Afro-Americans

experienced in their migration from the rural South to the urban North

from 1930 to 1950. They lost their sense of community, their connection

to their past, and their culture. The oral tradition of storytelling and
folktales was no longer a source of strength. Another source of strength,

their music, which healed them, was taken over by the white community;

consequently, it no longer belongs to them exclusively.

Roots, Community, and Identity

To have roots is to have a shared history. The individual who does

not belong to a community is generally lost. The individual who leaves

and has internalized the village or community is much more likely to

survive. Also, a whole community--everyone--is needed to raise a child;

one parent or two parents are inadequate to the task. The lack of roots and

the disconnection from the community and the past cause individuals to

become alienated; often her characters struggle unsuccessfully to identify,

let alone fulfill an essential self.

Ancestors

Ancestors are necessary: they provide cultural information, they

are a connection with the past, they protect, and they educate. The

ancestor is "an abiding, interested, benevolent, guiding presence that is

yours and is concerned about you, not quite like saints but having the

same sort of access, none of which is new information." The ancestors

may be parents, grandparents, teachers, or elders in the community.

In The Bluest Eye, M'Dear is the ancestor figure. Morrison believes that

the presence of the ancestor is one of the characteristics of black writing.

Extreme Situations

Morrison places her characters in extreme situations; she forces

them to the edge of endurance and then pushes them beyond what we

think human beings can bear. These conditions reveal their basic nature.

We see that even good people act in remarkable and in terrible ways.

Also, this "push toward the abyss" reveals

what is heroic. That's the way I know why such people survive,

who went under, who didn't, what the civilization was, because quiet as

it's kept much of our business, our existence here, has been grotesque. It

really has. The fact that we are a stable people making an enormous

contribution in whatever way to the society is remarkable because all you

have to do is scratch the surface, I don't mean us as individuals but as a

race, and there is something quite astonishing there and that's what peaks

my curiosity. I do not write books about everyday people. They really are

extraordinary whether it's wicked, or stupid or wonderful or what have

you.
Freedom and "Bad" Men

To be free, the individual must take risks. Morrison sees men

ordinarily regarded as "bad," men who leave their families and refuse

responsibilities, as free men. (She is using bad to mean both bad and

good.) These men, who have "a nice wildness" and who are fearless and

"comfortable with that fearlessness," are misunderstood and therefore

condemned. Morrison admires them as adventurers who refuse to be

controlled and who are willing to take risks. Because they own

themselves, they are able to choose their own way to live their lives. She

explains:

They felt that they had been dealt a bad hand, and they just made

up other rules. They couldn't win with the house deck and that was part of

their daring. . . . whereas other Black people--they were horrified by all

that "bad" behavior. That's all a part of the range of what goes on among

us, you know.

Their behavior points out a valuable principle to the non-outlaw

blacks. Blacks have been cut off from their own natures and needs by

conforming to the rules of white society. The outlaw serves as a partial

solution to the problem of being out of touch with the essential self. Until

blacks understand in our own terms what our rites of passage are, what

we need in order to nourish ourselves, what happens when we don't get

that nourishment, then what looks like erratic behavior but isn't will

frighten and confuse us. Life becomes comprehensible when we know

what rules we are playing by.

She knows that, in our society, these outlaws have unfortunate and

even disastrous effects on others and often end up unemployed or in

prison. Nevertheless, in her world view, "evil is as useful as good" and

"sometimes good looks like evil; sometimes evil looks like good."

Responsibility

Morrison is not advocating irresponsibility and destructive or

chaotic behavior, however. She believes in the necessity of being

responsible for one's choices: "freedom is choosing your responsibility.

It's not having no responsibilities; it's choosing the ones you want." Jan

Furman comments, "She respects the freedom even as she embraces the

responsibility."

Unfortunately, in our society, "many women have been given

responsibilities they don't want" and which they could not refuse.

Consequently, they are not free.

Good and Evil

Morrison shows understanding of and, often, compassion, for

characters who commit horrific deeds, like incest-rape or infanticide. This

trait springs in large part from her attitude toward good and evil, which

she distinguishes from the conventional or Western view of good and

evil. She describes a distinctive view which, she claims, blacks have

historically held toward good and evil:

It was interesting that black people at one time seemed not to

respond to evil in the ways other people did, but that they thought evil

had a natural place in the universe; they did not wish to eradicate it. They

just wished to protect themselves from it, maybe even to manipulate it,

but they never wanted to kill it. They thought evil was just another aspect

of life.. . . It's because they're not terrified by evil, by difference. Evil is

not an alien force; it's just a different force.

She shifts the boundaries between what we ordinarily regard as

good and what as evil, so that judgments become difficult. This reflects

the complexity of making moral judgments in life. Her villains are not all

evil, nor are her good people saints.

Loss of Innocence

Innocence has to be lost in order for the individual to grow. Harold

Bloom suggests that "the fall from innocence becomes a necessary

gesture of freedom and a profound act of self-awareness." Claudia, a

narrator in The Bluest Eye, loses her innocence as she watches Pecola's

destruction.

Many characters in The Bluest Eye are involved in a quest--Pecola

for love and an identity, Cholly for his father, Claudia for meaning,

Soaphead Church for a place. Identity, the ability to find/express love, the

parent-child relationship, friendship, a white standard of beauty, a belief

in "romantic love," child abuse, and racism are other major themes.

Image clusters in this novel include nature, the seasons, eyes, white dolls,

and splitting.

Perception

Perception is a key element in The Bluest Eye: how the individual

is perceived or is seen by others, how the individual internalizes that

perception, and how the individual perceives others. The interaction of

these perceptions helps to create and reinforce the individual's sense of

identity or lack of a sense of identity.

Some psychologists theorize that the process of identity-building

begins when the infant sees itself reflected in the mother's eyes; this gives

the child what is sometimes called a sense of presence. This experience

enables the infant to see others and to give presence to them. This
reciprocal exchange--seeing oneself and being given a presence through

the eyes of others and in turn giving them presence-- continues through

childhood and adulthood.

An existentialist view of the relationship between perception and

identity differs slightly. Sartre identifies "the Look" (being seen) as

crucial to developing identity. The Look confirms the individual's

identity; however, it simultaneously threatens the individual's sense of

freedom. The Look reduces the individual to an object in someone else's

reality and takes away the individual's sense of self and potential to be. In

other words, the Look controls and reduces the individual to the status of

the Other. A power struggle ensues as the individual tries to regain

control by reducing the "Looker" to an object; that is, the individual tries

to reduce the person with the Look to the status of the Other. In Sartre's

view, true identity results only when the following two conditions are

met:

 The individual gives up the effort both to take way someone else's

autonomy and to make the person an object or the Other.

 The individual accepts his/her autonomy and responsibility for

his/her own life as well as his/her status as an object in someone

else's view/reality. This process may occur between individuals,

between groups in a society, and between societies.

In The Bluest Eye, characters in the black community accept their status

as the Other, which has been imposed upon them by the white

community. In turn, blacks assign the status of Other to individuals like

Pecola within the black community.

Morrison uses seeing/not seeing and being seen/not being seen

throughout the novel. Pecola is invisible in that her beauty is not

perceived, and she desires to disappear or not be perceived. The eye is a

natural symbol for perception or seeing.

The Bluest Eye, 1970, is Morrison’s first novel, and she set it in

her hometown of Lorain, Ohio. It took her years to write, but was mostly

overlooked by critics. In it, she calls attention to the issue of internalized

racism; more specifically, black people hating themselves for failing to

live up to white ideals of beauty and happiness.

The Bluest Eye tells the tale of Pecola Breedlove, a victim of

family violence, poverty, and racial hatred, who longs to be truly loved.

She believes blue eyes are the key to garnering love and happiness. After

all, blacks and whites alike adore the blue-eyed Shirley Temple. Thus,

Pecola, surrounded by poverty and hatred, renounces her own blackness

and begins a descent into madness.

 Claudia MacTeer, Pecola’s well-adjusted schoolmate, narrates

most of the story as a child caught up in the events of 1941, and later as

an old woman looking back on them. In medias res, Morrison adeptly

shifts to a third-person narrator, and allows some of the characters to

recount details from their pasts. This makes even the most heinous

character, Pecola’s father who rapes her, somewhat sympathetic.

Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye in the late sixties, a

tumultuous time in which a generation that survived the Great Depression

sent their children off to war in Vietnam. Black people and women were

fighting for equal rights. Meanwhile, as blacks began recognizing their

power as a collective, they also began ridding themselves of the self-

loathing absorbed over generations. The “Black is Beautiful” movement

fought to release blacks from mainstream propagandized ideas of what

constitutes beauty and happiness. The Bluest Eye highlights how young

black girls are especially susceptible to white ideas of beauty and

happiness.

Consider the events happening in the world today. Imagine you are

an author, and you want to call attention to some current critical social

issue. What issue would you choose? Would you choose fiction or

nonfiction as your platform? Write a brief synopsis detailing how you

would address a social issue in a book.

 A blurb is a brief but positive review of a book that usually appears

on the back cover or the inside sleeve of the dust jacket. The purpose of

the blurb is to get the reader to buy the book. Therefore, a blurb should

intrigue the reader, but not reveal too much.

Morrison precedes her narrative with text from an old grade school

reader. Pecola Breedlove’s story, as told by Claudia MacTeer, contrasts

violently with the preceding text, which is what schoolchildren all across

America were reading in 1941. The juxtaposition of the happy family in a

lovely home with the impoverished life of the narrator, and later the

protagonist, serves to jar the reader. Thus, Morrison gives the reader a

clue: You are about to enter a messy, unpredictable world.

If you were to contrast an existing text with the story of your life,

what book would you choose? Using Morrison’s technique as an

example, write the first few paragraphs of your novel.

Morrison reveals the crux of her story in the first two lines of the

novel: “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We

thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s

baby that the marigolds did not grow.”

The Bluest Eye unfolds in Morrison’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio.

As you read, you will come across references to actual stores and places
in the town. In this way, Morrison weaves fiction with some truth. This

lends verisimilitude to the narrative.

In “Toni Morrison’s Experimental Novel, The Bluest Eye:

Tempering ‘Disinterested Violence’ through the ‘Narrative Project,’” I

claim that Morrison critiques the intellectual practice known as modernist

purifica-tion. This essay complicates earlier studies which simplify The

Bluest Eye as a text solely concerned with racism inflicted on African

Americans by whites. Rather, modernist  purification and mediation shed

light on the underlying mechanisms by which characters in the text

(blacks and whites) are reduced into ideolo-gical abstractions devoid of

subjective experiences and worth. This practice allows for the

“disinterested violence” to be inflicted on all races seem more

permissible. I then assert that the notion of the “narrative project” (coined

by Morrison) provides the proper medium by which a critique of

purification may be made. However, in order for Morrison to critique

purification as afflicted on characters, such as the protagonist, Pecola

Breedlove, Morrison must engage in a type of scientific inquiry which

necessitates the enactment of purification, echoing Émile Zola’s notion of

the “experimental novel.” In Morrison’s “scientific inquiry,” how-ever,

there arises a paradox: she must enact and reify that which she also

critiques. In a fashion that recalls Robert Musil’s juxtaposed discursive

modes in The Man without Qualities, Morrison attempts to alleviate the

aforementioned conundrum (her own potential for “disinterested

violence” in the writing of her novel) by establishing a pair of

paradigmatic shifts in the novel’s narrative structure and its ethical/moral

aims.

Despite its status as a debut novel, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

(1970) is at once intricate, complicated, and ambitious in its scope and

implications. The novel’s protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, desperately

wishes to attain blue eyes despite (and arguably because of) “the

unyielding earth” of her status as a black girl (Morrison 3). Her

predicament, marked by the unbridgeable chasm between how she wishes

to see the world and how she finds it reminds us of Cervantes’s Don

Quixote, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and even Yukio Mishima’s Kiyoaki

Matsugae, who dies in pursuit of an unrequited love, an unfulfilled ideal,

prompting a grieving friend to lament, “it would unquestionably be

wonderful if a man could really make

the substance of the world truly conform to that of his innermost

heart” (Mishima 387). The Bluest Eye channels universal themes and in

so doing joins a rich literary tradition (broadly speaking, that of Europe

but also of world literature) which predates (and informs) American and

African American literature. The inclusion of Morrison into a type of

conversation between her novels and works of European and/or world

literature does not diminish Morrison’s contributions to American and

African American literature despite critics’ fears. Nor does it lessen

Morrison’s status as an accomplished novelist in her own right. As with

any novelist or artist, Morrison inherits from a set of precursors and

responds to them, in part, by adapting and applying universal themes to a

milieu that has been perhaps until now underrepresented. Valerie Smith

notes that despite the “universal” nature of Morrison’s work, “Morrison’s

writing is famously steeped in the nuances of African-American

language, music, everyday life, and cultural history” (270). Similarly,

Timothy Parrish asserts that though Morrison’s novels undoubtedly serve

as testaments to “her complex understanding of modernist prose

aesthetics … the true achievement of her fiction has been to give voice to

an African-American point of view previously unrepresented in American

literature” (xxxii). These two points intersect in Smith’s claim: “Morrison

uses her fiction to mine the unexplored depths of American culture”

(270).

Morrison’s work, and specifically, The Bluest Eye, in all its

complexity, has generated a number of compelling and diverse readings

over the past few decades. Debra T. Werrlein, for example, examines the

interplay between childhood innocence in American culture, a national

ideology of innocence, and popular culture in The Bluest Eye. Donald B.

Gibson reframes The Bluest Eye as a “countertextual” novel that, unlike

most works of social critique, engages in a conversation with itself to

clarify by complication (rather than by simplification) the social

conundrums present in the text. Arguably, Werrlein approaches the novel

with an amalgamation of cultural, social, and historical frameworks in

mind. On the other hand, Gibson encapsulates his various readings of the

novel within the framework of a narrative structure (the “countertext”).

Inevitably, a study which emphasizes the cultural, social, and/or historical

facets of a novel often sacrifices much-needed commentary on a work’s

narrative structure. The inverse is often true as well. I argue, though, that

in The Bluest Eye, the nar-rative form and structure is inextricably linked

to the novel’s examination of the cultural phenomenon known as

Modernity (which will be used loosely henceforth, for obvious reasons).

Narrative structure and notions of Modernity, as critiqued by

Austrian philosophical writer Robert Musil, are centered around a notion

I would like to term, not unlike Gibson’s “countertext,” counter-

paradigms. Though scholars and readers have offered differing

suggestions as to who or what exactly “centers” the novel − Pecola,

Claudia (Pecola’s friend and part-time narrator), or the titular “bluest

eye” that is the white gaze − I suggest that the novel intentionally eludes
such “dis-interested” classification (which Morrison implicitly criticizes)

by making and unmaking paradigms by which a systematic act of

disinterested classification is made possible in the first place (Morrison

23). The Bluest Eye, then, is not only a novel about white on black racism

or a hegemonic white culture and its effect on black individuals (though

these are salient issues the text undoubtedly raises). It is also a novel

which, by its very structure, attempts to enact what its characters cannot

do − to escape or elude a systematic act of ordering/classification that is

not limited to the white gaze (“the bluest eye”) but is rather symptomatic

of Modernity’s reach which, with its “disinterested violence,”

compartmentalizes individuals (black and white) into abstracted

ideological containers (“the bluest I”).” Morrison’s novel, then, is also a

novel concerned with its own construction and form. (Morrison, after all,

tentatively terms The Bluest Eye as a “narrative project” in a foreword to

a later edition of the work).

 CHAPTER –III

CONCLUSION

The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode, but the true beauty

in a woman is reflected in her soul. No matter what color your eyes, hair,

or skin, are you will always look beautiful if you are nice to people. It is

not always physical beauty that makes a person beautiful, it is the heart

that matters the most. Whatever your race is, accept and love yourself,

because loving yourself is the greatest revolution.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison presents an interesting way but it

is attractive. The writing style of Morrison becomes one of the strengths

of the novel. Her use of different point of view makes the readers not feel

bored to read the whole novel. In addition, the way Morrison puts the

Dick and Jane in the opening of the novel story, which us extremely in

contrast with Pecola's life, makes the readers feel the pain of Pecola in the

novel. However, there are some weaknesses found in the novel. First, the

language that is used by Toni Morrison in the novel is black slang terms

so it is hard to be understood by the readers. Second, Toni Morrison's

criticism through the novel The Bluest Eye can cause misunderstanding

for the readers who are not critical. It can be an invitation to be a white
beauty that will make them imitate the white beauty concept which means

having blue eyes, white skin, and blonde hair.

Finally, with many strengths and weaknesses, The Bluest Eye is a

recommended novel especially for those who like shades of racism or

colonialism of beauty standards. Toni Morrison successfully makes the

readers feel the pain felt by main character. The story gives us message to

accept and love ourselves, as no one is going to love you if you do not

love yourselves first.

 WORK CITED

 Morrison, Toni. 1970. The Bluest Eye.USA: Penguin

Books.

 Potter, James L. 1967. Elements of Literature. New York:

The Odyssey Press.

 http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/

morrison.html - accessed on March 25th, 2015 11:25

 https://www.bookbrowse.com/reading_guides/detail/

index.cfm/book_number/462 /the-bluest-eye - accessed on

March 25th, 2015 11:28

 http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/14/here-are-american-

library-associations-10- most-complained-about-books-

2014 - accesed on June 13th, 2015 8:34