Bluest Eye: Hard To Read

The Bluest Eye

By Toni Morrison

Sometime ago Oprah Winfrey discusses the novel, Bluest Eye. I didn't read it then. I finally sat down and read the novel.  This is a book that should be read at this moment.

It is a slow read for me. And a difficult one to get through with a bit more than 200 pages.  If you are older you may remember the Dick and Jane primers we used to have to read in school. 

The book was for young readers that are impressionable and innocent. The book depicts the perfect family.  Mother, and Father, Dick, Jane, and Sally, dog, and a white picket fence. That was what we were taught. That doesn't mean it was true. In the very first chapter, we are reading the novel through a child's eyes. As the sentences are simplistic. Also, the author uses a technique of the Dick and Jane style. Which shows innocence. 

The Macteer family are living during the depression in Loraine, Ohio in the 1930s. Included in the family are two young girls, Claudia and Frieda.  The family takes in a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove. The Breedlove's house burns down because Pecola's abusive father was drunk. I don't think I have to explain more.  Pecola moves in temporarily. 

 Claudia and Frieda's mother is an authoritarian and can be uncaring and distant. At times she looks for arguments and picks on her daughters. 

Pecola wants to be blonde hair and blue eyes. She thinks she is ugly. The only way she will be admired, looked at, loved, and accepted is by having blue eyes. Throughout the novel, we will learn about Pecola's dysfunctional family. How her father and mother became who they are. How she is tricked into thinking she will get blue eyes.

Pecola's mother, Pauline we learn her background and it is not pretty. She has a difficult life with a lame leg. She stays to herself and is lonely. It is even worse  as the only way to be beautiful as she sees it. Is being a white. She learns this through movies. With actresses such as Jean Harlow. She passes this on to her daughter. She sees her daughter as ugly. But, the family she works for. She sees the daughter worth looking at. But not Pecola. 

The Bluest Eye is a book I have had on the back burner for years. I Finally, read the book. It is not an easy book to read. It is a hard reality, raw, and harrowing. At times I wanted to turn my face away from it. The racism is right in your face reality. Years ago growing up. I remember the Dick and Jane books we were taught in school with. 

. "See Dick Run". 

                                                                       

If you were White and living in an all-white neighborhood you didn't realize anything was wrong with the Dick and Jane books.  In the '60s when I was growing up. We didn't know any better. But here we are in 2021.  I hope now the classrooms are different. We took it for granted that schools were doing the right thing. Movies included in the 1930s were Shirley Temple. There weren't many movies that depicted people of color in a favorable light or showed them at all. There weren't many movies, books that depicted otherness till much later. We also had in society the, Mary Jane candy. Those are the few things in the novel representing racism. 

The Bluest eye asks the question what is beauty? Who has the right to tell us if we are beautiful or not? If you are not white are you considered beautiful?    There are many themes in the novel including racism, empathy, reckoning, love, understanding, acceptance, family, pain, suffering, self-esteem, self-identity, and self-hatred. What makes up a family? Who is the family? What about power and beauty? Do they go hand in hand? I think they do. Think about the corporate powerful people. The clothes they wear, their hair, their fashion. Most of them are beautiful people. There are many juxtaposed in the novel as well. Rich vs. Poor, beauty vs. ugly, White vs people of color, self-expression vs. stifled, neglected vs. abuse, 

The Breedlove family has no love or affection, or understanding for Pecola. All she sees is the sadness, despair, unhappiness, physical and emotional pain, and anger of her parents. She witnesses the abuse and fights her parents have. She can't bear to watch. Her parents show no love or affection for their daughter. When Pecola is abused. How does she deal with it?  But as we continue reading the novel. Toni Morrison's writing style pulls you and gives you a chance to see Cholly in an empathetic light.  I can't give you anymore as it will give away the story. 

The book has been banned for many years. I can understand why. The language, and violence in the book at times I wanted to turn my head away. But, I think it has many themes that need to be discussed in our society. If we cut it off and do not educate, it's a mistake. Without the power of books, we will never understand ourselves and become educated, and become better human beings.   I still think it should be read with the discretion of the teachers and educators. I don't want to get into politics. But, I think we as parents never.