A review by blessi
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The Bluest Eye (1970) is indeed a hard pill to swallow. Morrison’s first novel is a coming-of-age story that ironically tells the unbecoming of an 11-year-old Black girl named Pecola, who yearns for blue eyes, following a series of misfortunes she and her poverty-stricken family suffer in a mad pursuit of beauty and love from within and outside the communities that reject them. On one side, it depicts a faithful portrait of incest, pedophilia, racism, and sexual abuse, things that are eerily familiar on the news, which makes it all the more scarring to read and take in, and the other side is a vulnerable exploration of shame and trauma.

It is because of these venereal topics that the novel has been the subject of censorship, but within the pages, the X-rated scenes are just a scant wrinkle in the grand scheme of things. Given that the entire text has less than three hundred pages, four short chapters, and prose split into several piecemeal paragraphs, it can even feel fleeting most times. From the premise’s standpoint, it seems a lot since nothing good ever happens, and things just get worse by numerous transgressions—but it is more emotionally-concentrated narration than that. Morrison tackles them in a manner wherein the overt parts do not overshadow the emotional context behind them. When there is a graphic incident, it lasts for as little as five paragraphs on a single page—and then the rest becomes a long series of characters’ backstories and thought processes, complete with raw feelings and flashbacks, that by the time the narration returns to its present turmoil, the shockwave loses its effects as if they neutralize each other out. 

By all means, there is still a trace of inherent heaviness emanating from it, but it is the kind of weight with profound substance. It is not coming from a place of victim mindset, as what the back-cover blurb or initial synopsis seems to surmise. On the contrary, it takes the observer's seat in storytelling by putting the point of view outside Pecola’s. There is a first-person perspective in it, but not from hers, from her younger friend, Claudia’s—and as it takes a turn toward a myriad of stories about Pecola’s family history and the people and circumstances that instigate her tragic condemnation, the narration shifts into a third-person viewpoint, wherein there are more pages allocated to her perpetrators than Pecola herself; it is as if this is a sad testament to how the victim no longer has the capabilities to narrate this cautionary tale on her own. 
 
Her malefactors, as well as Claudia, are of the same racial background as Pecola’s—and so it gets to show each of their knowledge and experiences with racism in juxtaposition with each other’s. Akin to Pecola, the perpetrators are also Black people from all walks of life who suffer various forms of discrimination based on physical appearance and skin color, and this is only one-half of the problem. Most of these culprits are also victims of neglectful, if not abusive, upbringing, including Pecola. It goes to show how much racism and rough upbringing can make or break a person. For Pecola’s oppressors, growing up without proper parental guidance and love, coupled with the lack of belongingness in the community as a whole, turn them inhumane, whereas, to Pecola, these sore factors are what push her over the edge.
 
She becomes the scapegoat of her very own people of color and the community’s collective insecurities and inferiority complex against the tacit white beauty standard that pervades the neighborhood. White human transgressor characters are next to nothing in it; Morrison takes a much closer look at the complex lives of Black people as both victims and perpetrators of their own experiences. Hence, it is not a villainization of one race for the sake of the other; the primary participation of whites in this is a mere social construct in the form of what is known as “colonial mentality,” which is an “internalization of racial oppression” (Decena, 2014)—or in this novel, a belief that one group is prettier and superior, and therefore more deserving of love and respect than the other. Although this is just an abstract concept, it is enough to turn the characters against each other despite being part of the same marginalized community.
 
“When we trip and fall down, they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they ask us, are we crazy?” Claudia says in the third-paragraph introduction about how their adults treat their children—that is how it is; it has become an “every man for himself.” It is a mimicry diorama of apartheid, individualistic, and scapegoat culture where the true culprits get to wash their hands by pitting the innocents against each other: white standards pitting marginalized races, oppressive men pitting women—all under the tyranny of adults, who only have one or two parenting styles: authoritarian and, or neglectful. Each subject matter is a telling-it-like-it-is, and as guilt-tripping as it is eye-opening—it evokes a feeling of disillusionment for the countless twisted patterns of the world that have become mindless and pathological. How victim-blaming is rubbing salt into the wounds by barking up at the wrong tree, akin to when Claudia MacTeer’s mother gets mad at her nine-year-old child for being sick when she is already in pain, and it is not just Mrs. MacTeer. Grownups, per Claudia, are those who only talk to them [children] to give orders with little to no direction and then condemn them for their illnesses. There is no straightforward, clear-cut reason in it other than the characters’ backstories—but perhaps it is under the pretext that the world is cruel, so they have to toughen up their kids, which makes sense, especially being in the minority group; or it just simply how they feel that they end up projecting and imposing their biases, fears, insecurities, and traumas to the children. Akin to those male perpetrator characters who molest minor girls, perhaps because one of them comes from a lineage that values superiority and white beauty standards—and the other from neglect, and so, both choose to exploit the most innocent and subservient.
 
“Violent people love violently,” it says by the end. It is evident that how people treat each other impacts their personhood, particularly children’s. For this one, racial discrimination begets ambivalent, harsh, and indifferent parents who neglect and abuse children, who then pick on Pecola; it is a one-two punch with threefold repercussions. Next to young black girls, it shows how black women are the second-most vulnerable in the patriarchal society that, to quote, puts men in a position to beat each other and then make women clean the mess and pay the price through domestic violence—who, in turn, strike their very children. The difference between Claudia’s parents and Pecola’s (even her perpetrators’) is that when a stranger hurts one of Mrs. and Mr. MacTeers’ children, they rush to their kid’s defense; the difference is love from parents, which is one of the two things that Pecola and her perpetrators do not have by birthright. Again, add to this the impoverished love from townspeople and poverty in a literal economic sense—it makes sense for a mental and moral breakdown. Even when Mrs. MacTeer is often beside herself, she has a sense of ethical protectiveness toward her children. Cholly, Pecola Breedlove’s father, has that same sense, but it is corrupt; having been abandoned by both his parents at birth, he confuses protectiveness with lust. While Cholly’s basis may be genuine–-“ignorance of the law excuses no one.”
 
Pieces of evidence from Cholly’s backstories suggest he has experienced parental love from his Aunt Jimmy and even a random act of kindness from three stranger women. Despite his reputation, he has a decent job, and yet he chooses a malignant and heavily reliant relationship with alcoholism. So the question is, how much of the things he does not know? Is he truly not aware that rape is prohibited, or is it just the adverse psychological impact of his alcohol consumption? Even if it is the former, there is still a matter of consent, which his child has expressed exhaustively through resistance. The same goes for that misanthropic pedophile character—regardless of his upbringing and the naivete of his victims, he knows full well the illegality of his perversions, having had a complete education and coming across it in the newspapers. Girls who do not meet the societal beauty standards but get raped in this novel is one more proof that rape is not a matter of physical appearance; it is an issue that permeates because of predators.

Despite the book’s attempt to steer its egregious topics into emotional contexts, it is for this same reason that the novel still feels upsetting to read. Morrison’s prose is graceful, magnificent, unpretentious, and well-versed, with a subdued tone and admiringly calming disposition—but when it gets into the headspace of characters, it does get into it with so much passion and conviction. As it gets to the perpetrators’ side of the story, the narration begins to read as though it is a case study, where it alternates the point of view between an omniscient third-person and the malefactors’ very own personal reflections, as though it is an interviewer-interviewee set up. It is in these parts that are most violent and obscene because their thoughts are raw and unfiltered; for instance, the pedophile character’s perverted thoughts on little girls and even Claudia’s savage muses of dismembering blue-eyed baby dolls or beating up people she hates.

One of the things that helps the novel to feel less like a victim story, even if it is, is having Claudia narrate it, as her character is strong-willed, and thus, she makes up for the courage that her friend, Pecola, lacks. Her chain of thoughts on the matter is on point, so spot on for what witnesses might feel and think in her friend’s situation, e.g., how she wants to straighten Pecola’s sad body posture and “spit the misery out of her.” As Claudia grapples with the concepts of and correlation between beauty, love, and intercourse, in terms of general perception versus the science behind them, it begins to make sense that her entire point of view acts as one big metaphor and a foreshadowing of Pecola’s fate, which is brilliant. The unadulterated ignorance of nine-year-old Claudia and her ten-year-old sister, Frieda, on the ways of the world—is comical that the novel might have been sidesplitting if it was not so depressing. Nevertheless, it is an absolute enlightenment, akin to the irony of Mrs. MacTeer’s singing tragic songs when she is in a good mood, which leaves Claudia with the conviction that “pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.”
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