Reviews

Where do I even begin with this book? I have so many mixed feelings I don't know how to explain it. It was a very disturbing experience to say the least. I loved it and hated it because it was equally beautiful and hideous, it both filled me with warmth and made me shudder so much it was endearing and repulsive at once. This is a story one wouldn't want to read because once you do, you could never pretend you didn't. As Morrison states in the afterword "this is a terrible story about things one would rather not know anything about". It's about beauty, poverty and racism, it's the story of a little black girl told by another little black girl. The innocence of the narrator and the object of narration makes it even more impactful for us, adult readers, because unlike them we understand the atrocity of what is happening.
Rather than a linear narrative, The Bluest Eye reads more like a series of portraits of characters seemingly unrelated but there's a commun thread the reader is aware of and as these portraits add up, in the reader's mind it builds up until every piece falls into place and we get the bigger picture that is Pecola's tragedy. This tragedy while stemming from racism, is the manifestation of something just as destructive : the internalized self-loathing and the hatred directed by people of colour at themselves. Pecola's family is purposely dramatised to show various aspects of this racial self-hatred and the extent of the damage it can cause. An affectionately distant mother, an abusive father and a barely there brother, layer upon layer of complexity accumulating and culminating in that last step that caused Pecola to fall into madness. Pecola accepted her "ugly blackness" in resignation and never had she once questioned it as anything but the truth.

"It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, 'You are ugly people.' They had looked about themselves saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. 'Yes,' they had said, 'You are right.' And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it."

She even suspected it to be the root of all evil in her life and wished, in her childish naivety, for blue eyes. Blue eyes as the symbol of salvation from her misery, the bluer the better. And here, I loved the parallelism between Pecola and our narrator, Claudia. While Pecola resented herself, Claudia resented the world and was completely unapologetic about it. She was repulsed by every white standard of beauty and was angered by the idea of accepting it as the dream to aspire to when she didn't even relate to it. When offered a blue-eyed doll for Christmas, Morrison writes in Claudia's voice:

"I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. 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".

Another thing I absolutely loved about this book is Morrison's writing. It's poetic yet raw and blunt at the same time. With the simplest of words, it manages to be effectively expressive and eloquent. The last two pages were particulary poignant and I'd quote all of it if I could but for rationality's sake I'll just keep it to this :

"And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only agressive ; we were not free, merely licensed ; we were not compassionate, we were polite ; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substitued good grammar for intellect ; we switched habits to simulate maturity ; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.
She, however, stepped over into madness, a madness which protected her from us simply because it bored us in the end."

This is a book that will make you uncomfortable and sad and angry. It is not a pleasant read and your heart will feel heavy but it is as thought-provoking as it is painful, it will make you reevaluate many things in your life and if only for that, it is worth it.

jp1920's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is the only book that has ever made me physically uncomfortable. I remember this story and the lessons from it to this day. We read it for a college course, it is the only required material I’ve kept from college. Beautifully written.

deanpeters's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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