The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison

Author Background…
 Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio.(U.S.A)
 Toni Morrison was the second eldest of 4 children.
 Her father , George Wofford, worked primarily as a w elder, but held several jobs at once to
support the family.
 Her mother Ramah was a domestic worker.
 Education – Cornell University, Howard University, Lorain High school
 As of now Toni Morrison is an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and professor
emeritus at Princeton University.
 Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book award in 1988 for “Beloved”
 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
 Other works by Morrison include “Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula, Jazz, A Mercy, and Tar
Baby” etc.
PLOT OVERVIEW

 Nine-year-old Claudia and ten-year-old Frieda MacTeer live in Lorain, Ohio, with
their parents. It is the end of the Great Depression, and the girls’ parents are more
concerned with making ends meet than with lavishing attention upon their
daughters, but there is an undercurrent of love and stability in their home. The
MacTeers take in a boarder, Henry Washington, and also a young girl named
Pecola. Pecola’s father has tried to burn down his family’s house, and Claudia and
Frieda feel sorry for her. Pecola loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is
beautiful and that she is ugly.
cont

 Pecola moves back in with her family, and her life is difficult. Her father drinks,
her mother is distant, and the two of them often beat one another. Her brother,
Sammy, frequently runs away. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she
would be loved and her life would be transformed. Meanwhile, she continually
receives confirmation of her own sense of ugliness—the grocer looks right
through her when she buys candy, boys make fun of her, and a light-skinned girl,
Maureen, who temporarily befriends her makes fun of her too. She is wrongly
blamed for killing a boy’s cat and is called a “nasty little black bitch” by his
mother
cont

 We learn that Pecola’s parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline, her mother,
has a lame foot and has always felt isolated. She loses herself in movies, which
reaffirm her belief that she is ugly and that romantic love is reserved for the
beautiful. She encourages her husband’s violent behavior in order to reinforce her
own role as a martyr. She feels most alive when she is at work, cleaning a white
woman’s home. She loves this home and despises her own. Cholly, Pecola’s
father, was abandoned by his parents and raised by his great aunt, who died when
he was a young teenager. He was humiliated by two white men who found him
having sex for the first time and made him continue while they watched. He ran
away to find his father but was rebuffed by him. By the time he met Pauline, he
was a wild and rootless man. He feels trapped in his marriage and has lost interest
in life.
cont

 Cholly returns home one day and finds Pecola washing dishes. With mixed
motives of tenderness and hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When
Pecola’s mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecola’s story
and beats her. Pecola goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for
blue eyes. Instead of helping her, he uses her to kill a dog he dislike
cont

 Claudia and Frieda find out that Pecola has been impregnated by her father, and
unlike the rest of the neighborhood, they want the baby to live. They sacrifice the
money they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe
that if the flowers live, so will Pecola’s baby. The flowers refuse to bloom, and
Pecola’s baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second
time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her
cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.
 And so.. 7

 The novel begins in Ohio after the Great Depression. ...

 Lorain, Ohio in 1941 is the Rural South in the Early 20th Century.

 Pauline's and Cholly's stories, show their move north to Ohio from the South as part of the Great Migration
of African Americans that occurred from 1910 to 1940.

 The effects of what is considered more desirable, like for example, being fair or white, has mentally and
psychologically scarred many people who are black or of another race, such as Pecola, and her Family in
this novel.
 Synopsis 8

 The Bluest Eye is about the life of the Breedlove family who reside in Lorain,
Ohio, in the late 1930s (where Morrison herself was born).

 This family consists of the mother Pauline, the father Cholly, the son Sammy, and
the daughter Pecola.

 The novel's focal point is the daughter, an eleven-year-old Black girl who is trying
to conquer self-hatred.
 The Protagonist 9

 Pecola Breedlove, the central character of The Bluest Eye

 prays each night for the blue-eyed beauty of Shirley Temple.

 She believes everything would be all right if only she had beautiful blue eyes.
 The narrator, Claudia MacTeer, tries to understand the destruction of Pecola, who is raped twice by her
father.

 Traumatized by the attacks, she visits minister Micah Elihue Whitcom, who gives her poisoned meat to feed
his old, sick dog.

 Driven to madness, she invents an imaginary friend, who reassures that her eyes are the bluest in the world.
 Cont.. 10

.J
 Everyday she encounters racism, not just from the White people, but mostly from her own race and in
particular.

 In their eyes she is much too dark, and the darkness of her skin somehow manifests that she is inferior,
and according to everyone else, her skin makes her even "uglier."

 She feels she can overcome this battle of self-hatred by obtaining blue eyes, but not just any blue. She
wants the bluest of the blue, the bluest eye
 Synopsis 11

 presenting the various modes of escape and retreat into hollow notions of
whiteness

 Morrison demonstrates how this is a damaging way to work through so many

years of being abject and objectified
 Synopsis 12

 In The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove's father rapes her more than once and she falls pregnant

 When she learns of the pregnancy, she goes to see Soaphead Church, the town's spiritual advisor, and
asks him to give her blue eyes.

 She has a miscarriage. When Pecola's baby dies, she goes mad.

 Pecola spends the rest of her days speaking to her imaginary friend about her blue eyes, which were
given to her by Soaphead Church.

 At the beginning of the novel, Pecola Breedlove goes to live with Claudia and Frieda's family, the
MacTeers, after her father Cholly burns down their old house.
Cont.. 13

 When Pecola's baby dies, she's driven mad by grief and abuse,

 she spends the rest of her days staring into mirrors, talking to her imaginary
friend about her big blue eyes.

 Pecola thinks that if she can live up to the image of the blue-eyed Shirley Temple,
Dick and Jane that she will have the perfect life that they have.
CHARACTERISATION

 Claudia McTeer – the child narrator , Frieda’s sister , 9 year old.

 Pecola Breedlove – victim of racial conflict, wants blue eyes, lives with the
McTeers and impregnated by her father.
 Frieda – 10 years old, Claudia’s sister, smart.
 Mr Henry – paedophile, roomer to the McTeers.
 Miss Della – senile old women ,former roomer to Mr Henry, church woman pg.
28
 Cholly Breedlove - Pocola's father ,abusive, jailed, put his family outdoors.
 Pauline (Polly) Breedlove - Pocola's mother, who believes that she is ugly.
Characters continued

 Mrs McTeer- the mother to Claudia and Frieda, strict, loving and protecting.
 Sammy Breedlove - Pecola’s fourteen-year-old brother, who copes with his
family’s problems by running away from home. His active response contrasts with
Pecola’s passivity.
 China, Poland, Miss Marie - The local whores, Miss Marie (also known as the
Maginot Line) is fat and affectionate, China is skinny and sarcastic, and Poland is
quiet. They live above the Breedlove apartment and befriend Pecola
 Rosemary Villanucci - A white, comparatively wealthy girl who lives next door to
the MacTeers. She makes fun of Claudia and Frieda and tries to get them into
trouble, and they sometimes beat her up
Literal devices

 First person narrative – use of I e.g. page 24

 Visual imagery – I had heard too many black and red words about her, seen too many
mouths go triangle at the mention of her name of her name (China)
 Humour (page 60) – Pecola Breedlove was so ugly that she only sat a double desk alone
in school. PAGE 93 Mr Henry beds prostitutes and begins telling Frieda and Claudia
they are his bible class mates
 Flashback – page 57 –
 Diction – use of colloquial language (page 59) –Sammy says you naked fuck to her
father.
 Historical allusion – blue eyes – Adolf Hitler's Aryan race with blue eyes and blond hair.
 Personification – see the cat, come and play with Jane
continued

 Flash-forward – Pecola expecting to give birth to her fathers child

 Symbolism – marigolds – life , birth
 Milk – symbolises purity and beauty of whiteness
 Simile – Nuns go by as quiet as lust
 Flashback – page 48
 Humour – page 53 (description of the Breedlove)
Themes :whiteness as the standard of
beauty
 The bluest eye provides an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized
white beauty standards deform the lives of black girls and women. Implicit
messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, including the white baby doll
given to Claudia ,the idealization of Shirley Temple ,the consensus that light
skinned Maureen is cuter than the other black girls ,the idealization of white
beauty in the movies, and Pauline Breedlove’s preference for the little white girl
she works for over her daughter. Adult women, having learned to hate the
blackness of their own bodies ,take this hatred out on their children-Mrs
Breedlove shares the conviction that Pecola is ugly ,and lighter skinned Geraldine
curses Pocola's blackness. Claudia remains free from this worship of whiteness
,imagining Pocola's unborn baby as beautiful in its blackness. But it is hinted that
once Claudia reaches adolescence, she too will learn to hate herself ,as if racial
self-loathing were a necessary part of maturation.
Continued

 The person who suffers most from white beauty standards is, of course , Pecola.
She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she possesses blue
eyes ,the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. This
hopeless desire leads ultimately to madness ,suggesting that the fulfilment of the
wish for white beauty may be even more tragic than the wish impulse itself
Seeing Vs. Being Seen

 Pocola's desire for blue eyes ,while highly unrealistic ,is based on one correct insight
into her world. She believes that the cruelty she witnesses and experiences is connected
to how she is seen. If she had beautiful blue eyes ,Pecola imagines ,people would not
want to do ugly things in front of her or to her. The accuracy of this insight is affirmed
by her experience of being teased by the boys- when Maureen comes to her rescue, it
seems that they no longer want to behave badly under Maureen’s attractive gaze.
 In a more basic sense ,Pecola and her family are mistreated in part because they happen
to have black skin.by wishing for blue eyes rather than lighter skin, Pecola indicates
that she wishes to see things differently. She can only receive the wish ,in effect, by
blinding herself. Pecola is then able to see herself as beautiful, but only at the cost of
her ability to see accurately both herself and the world around her. The connection
between how one is seen and what one sees has a uniquely tragic outcome for her.
The power of stories

 THE BLUEST EYE is not one story, but multiple, sometimes contradictory ,interlocking
stories. Characters tell stories to make sense of their lives, and these stories have tremendous
power for both good and evil. Claudia’s stories, in particular, stand out of their affirmative
power. First and foremost, she tells Pecola’s story, and through she questions the accuracy and
meaning of her version, to some degree her attention and care redeem the ugliness of Pecola’s
life. Furthermore, when the adults describe Pecola’s pregnancy and hope that the baby dies,
Claudia and Frieda attempt to rewrite this story as a hopeful one, casting themselves as
saviours. Finally, Claudia resists the premise of white superiority, writing her own story about
the beauty of blackness. Stories by other characters are often destructive to themselves and
others. The story Pauline Breedlove tells herself about her own ugliness reinforces her self-
hatred, and the story she tells herself about her own martyrdom reinforces her cruelty toward
her family. Soapheard Church’s personal narratives about his good intentions and his special
relationship with God are pure hypocrisy. Stories are as likely to distort the truth as they are
to reveal it. While Morrison apparently believes that stories can be redeeming she is no blind
optimist and refuses to let us rest comfortably in any one version of what happens.
SEXUAL INITIATION AND ABUSE

 To a large degree/extent, THE BLUEST EYE is about both the pleasures and the
perils of sexual initiation(good and bad). in the novel Pecola has her first
menstrual period, and toward the end of the novel she has her first sexual
experience, which is violent as depicted by TONY MORISON. Frieda knows
about and anticipates menstruating, and she is initiated into sexual experience
when she is fondled by Henry Washington(sexually abused). We are told the story
of Cholly’s first sexual experience, which ends when two racist white men force
him to finish having sex while they watch. The fact that all these experiences are
humiliating and hurtful indicates that sexual coming-of-age is fraught
(undesirable)with peril, especially in an abusive environment.
CONTINUED

 In the novel, parents carry much of the blame for their children’s often traumatic
sexual coming-of-age. The most blatant case is Cholly’s rape of his own daughter,
Pecola, which is, in a sense, a repetition of the sexual humiliation Cholly experienced
under the gaze of two racist whites(some sort of vengeance)that breeds
unworriedness. Frieda’s experience is less painful than Pecola’s because her parents
quickly come to her rescue(beating MR WASHINGTON), playing the appropriate
protector and underlining, by way of contrast, the extent of Cholly’s crime against his
daughter. But Frieda is not given information that lets her understand what has
happened to her. Instead, she lives with a vague fear of being “ruined "like the local
prostitutes. The prevalence of sexual violence in the novel suggests that racism is not
the only thing that distorts black girlhoods. There is also a pervasive(prevelant)
assumption that women’s bodies are available for abuse. The refusal on the part of
parents to teach their girls about sexuality makes the girls' transition into sexual
maturity difficult.
Satisfying Appetites Vs. Suppressing
Them
 A number of characters in THE BLUEST EYE define their lives through a denial of
their bodily needs. Geraldine prefers cleanliness and order to the messiness of sex,
and she is emotionally frigid as a result. Similarly, Pauline prefers cleaning and
organising the home of her white employers to expressing physical affection toward
her family. Soaphead Church finds physicality distasteful, and this peculiarity leads to
his preference for objects over humans and to his perverse attraction to little girls..
 Claudia prefers her senses indulged by wonderful scents, sounds, and tastes than to be
given a hard white doll. Cholly’s greatest moments of happiness are eating the best
part of a watermelon and touching a girl for the first time.
 Pauline’s happiest memory is of sexual fulfilment with her husband. The novel
suggests that, no matter how messy and sometimes violent human desire is, it is also
the source of happiness: denial of the body begets hatred and violence, not
redemption.
 CRITICAL ANALYSIS. 25

 Morrison explores the persistent effects by exploring on black self-hatred

 the main characters in the novel who are consumed with the constant culturally-imposed notions of white
beauty,

 they have disengaged with themselves and have a disastrous tendency to subconsciously act out their
feelings of self-loathing on other members of the black community.
 Analysis 26

 Morrison is stating here that the feeling of low self-worth after years of being put down is still
perpetuating and is resulting in an ugly SCENE that is constantly felt, if not directly seen.

 More importantly, the narrator suggests that they accept this imposed feeling of ugliness and lack of self-
worth without questioning its source

 and it is this accepting of self-hatred, a hatred that comes form outside the family is one of the biggest
problem faced by the family.
 analysis 27

 By presenting characters who hate themselves because of what they are told they are, which reinforces
racism and the social hierarchy

 Morrison attempts to work through what this self-hatred is, where it comes from

 she demonstrates how this is a damaging way to work through so many years of being abject and
objectified

 and how it has a devastating influence on the lives of people who, while physically free, are still bound
by the society that keeps them hating themselves
  wants to make a statement about the damage that internalized

Morrison.. racism can do to the most vulnerable member of a community

—a young girl. 28

 wants to put an accent on the necessity of self-satisfaction;

 for her, if women accepted themselves as they were, they

would have imposed their ideas and themselves

 and revalorized themselves, first originally Africans and as

free African American women.

 highlight the impact of western standards of beauty on black

females and called for racial and gender equality taking into
consideration that blackness is not ugliness and whiteness is
not beauty.
Conclusion 29
JUDGEMENT

 Unlike so many works in the American literature that deal directly with the legacy
of slavery and the years of deeply-imbedded racism that followed, the general
storyline of Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye does not engage directly with
such events but rather explores the lingering effects by exploring and commenting
on black self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in “The Bluest Eye” by
Toni Morrison who are African American are consumed with the constant
culturally-imposed notions of white beauty, cleanliness, and sanitation to the point
where they have disengaged with themselves and have a disastrous tendency to
subconsciously act out their feelings of self-loathing on other members of the
black community.
CONTINUED

 In her research on the The Bluest Eye, Macey France exposes some shocking
discussion by the author.

 "Morrison, says that she wanted the reader to feel as though they are a 'co-
conspirator' with the rapist. She took pains to make sure she never portrayed the
actions as wrong in order to show how everyone has their own problems. She
even goes as far as to describe the pedophilia, rape, and incest 'friendly,'
'innocent,' and 'tender.' It's no wonder that this book is in the top 10 list of most
contested books in the country."
Personal judgement

 The BLUEST EYE is an exciting book.

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