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A review by aksmith92
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The Setup: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is a devastatingly powerful debut novel that examines the corrosive effects of internalized racism, societal beauty standards, and systematic oppression through the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove. Set in 1940s Ohio, the novel follows Pecola, who longs for blue eyes, believing possessing them will grant her everything she's ever wanted: love, acceptance, and the beauty she sees glorified in white society.
The story is framed by the perspectives of Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, two sisters who offer a counterpoint to Pecola's vulnerability and struggle. Through their observations, Morrison critiques the deeply ingrained social structures that dictate worth based on skin color and conformity to Eurocentric beauty ideals. However, the portrayal of Pecola's suffering explores themes of colorism, poverty, and abuse with brutal honesty.
What I Loved: I felt weird even writing "what I loved" because there was nothing I loved in this book. This story was heartbreaking, brutal, and devastating. However, it was a piece of literature that masterfully crafted a necessary and compelling story to interrogate the cultural forces that shape self-worth and belonging. This novel was not just a story about one girl's suffering - although that was also profound - it was a searing indictment of a society that teaches children to despise themselves for how they look.
Morrison's apparent strength in this book was her prose - both lyrical and unrelenting, shifting between tender introspection and harrowing realism. She did not shy away from challenging topics but approached them with an urgency that forced readers to confront the harsh realities marginalized communities face.
The amount of pain written in these lines will likely haunt me forever. Pecola was a haunting character, and I will never forget her. Morrison nuanced all characters so heavily that I felt there right beside them. It's undeniable: Toni Morrison was an incredible writer.
I have no notes. No critiques. I'm sure the narrative of jumping back and forth from different perspectives without much context may throw people off a little, but it was all part of the process and story.
It was hard to read - shocking and, at times, repulsive. Morrison talked about rape, incest, and intergenerational trauma in the narrative. These are not light topics, but as noted above, the reader's role was to confront those devastating realities.
#readbannedbooks
***
The story is framed by the perspectives of Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, two sisters who offer a counterpoint to Pecola's vulnerability and struggle. Through their observations, Morrison critiques the deeply ingrained social structures that dictate worth based on skin color and conformity to Eurocentric beauty ideals. However, the portrayal of Pecola's suffering explores themes of colorism, poverty, and abuse with brutal honesty.
What I Loved: I felt weird even writing "what I loved" because there was nothing I loved in this book. This story was heartbreaking, brutal, and devastating. However, it was a piece of literature that masterfully crafted a necessary and compelling story to interrogate the cultural forces that shape self-worth and belonging. This novel was not just a story about one girl's suffering - although that was also profound - it was a searing indictment of a society that teaches children to despise themselves for how they look.
Morrison's apparent strength in this book was her prose - both lyrical and unrelenting, shifting between tender introspection and harrowing realism. She did not shy away from challenging topics but approached them with an urgency that forced readers to confront the harsh realities marginalized communities face.
The amount of pain written in these lines will likely haunt me forever. Pecola was a haunting character, and I will never forget her. Morrison nuanced all characters so heavily that I felt there right beside them. It's undeniable: Toni Morrison was an incredible writer.
I have no notes. No critiques. I'm sure the narrative of jumping back and forth from different perspectives without much context may throw people off a little, but it was all part of the process and story.
It was hard to read - shocking and, at times, repulsive. Morrison talked about rape, incest, and intergenerational trauma in the narrative. These are not light topics, but as noted above, the reader's role was to confront those devastating realities.
#readbannedbooks
***
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 treasured. "Here," they said, "this is beautiful, and if you are on this day 'worthy' you may have it."
It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth. They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed helplessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds - cooled - and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path. They danced a macabre ballet around the victim, whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to sacrifice to the flaming pit.
Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.
Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap.
Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Incest, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, Abandonment, and Classism
Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Miscarriage, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Sexual content and Vomit
This is a dark book. Please take care.