The Bluest Eye

1. BackgroundInformation

As Toni Morrisonhas become one of America's most celebrated contemporary authors, her firstnovel The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, has gained increasing attention from literary critics. Most of the novel is narrated by a young black girl, ClaudiaMacTeer, who is part of a poor but loving black family in Lorain, Ohio, in the1940s. However, the primary focus of the novel is on Pecola Breedlove, anotheryoung black girl who lives in very different circumstances from Claudia and hersister Frieda. Pecola's mother, Pauline, is cruel to her family because theyare a constant reminder that her life can never measure up to the ideal worldof the white family for which she works as a maid. Not only is her motherdistant and aloof, but Pecola's father is also unreliable for any comfort orsupport. Cholly Breedlove drinks excessively and later rapes Pecola. She bearshis child, who dies shortly after birth. Because Pecola, like Pauline, yearnsto be seen as beautiful, she longs for the blue eyes of the most admired childin the 1940s: Shirley Temple. After visiting Soaphead Church, a"spiritualist" who claims he can make Pecola's eyes blue, Pecolabelieves that she has the bluest eyes in the world and now everyone will loveher. Clearly, Pecola is the truest kind of victim. Unlike Claudia, who possesses the love of her family, Pecola is powerless to reject theunachieveable values esteemed by those around her and finally descends intoinsanity. The Bluest Eye portrays the tragedy which results when AfricanAmericans have no resources with which to fight the standards presented to themby the white culture that scorns them.

2.Plot Summary

Part I

The Bluest Eye openswith a short Dick and Jane primary reader story that is repeated three times.The first time the story is written clearly. In the second telling, however,the text loses its capitalization and punctuation. By the third time through,the story has also lost its spacing. The novel then shifts to a short,italicized preface in the voice of Claudia MacTeer as an adult. She looks backon the fall of 1941. We find that this book will be the story of Claudia, hersister Frieda, and their involvement with a young black girl named Pecola,pregnant with her father's child.

Part II: Autumn

In this section,the tense shifts from present to past, indicating shifts between thenine-year-old Claudia and the adult Claudia acting as narrators. The storybegins with the arrival of Mr. Henry Washington, a boarder who will live withthe MacTeers. At the same time, Pecola Breedlove comes to live with theMacTeers. She has been "put outdoors" by her father, who has gone tojail and not paid the rent on their apartment. Frieda and Pecola talk about howmuch they each love Shirley Temple. Claudia rebels. She does not like ShirleyTemple nor the white dolls she receives each Christmas with the big blue eyes.To the dismay of the adults, she dismembers these dolls, trying "to see whatit was that all the world said was lovable."

The text shifts tothe third person ("he"/"she") omniscient point of view andgives the reader a brief of the inside of the Breedloves' two room apartment.The whole family shares one bedroom and there is no bath, only a toilet. At thesame time, the Breedlove family is introduced. The family is described as ugly:"No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly andaggressively ugly. Except for the father, Cholly, whose ugliness (the result ofdespair dissipation, and violence directed toward petty things and weak people)was behavior, the rest of the family wore their ugliness, put it on, so tospeak although it did not belong to them."

Pecola's parentsboth fight and make love in front of their two children. In the midst of theturmoil, Pecola comes to believe that if she had blue eyes, she would only seethe things she wanted to see. Pecola's only refuge from her life is with thethree prostitutes who live upstairs and who treat her with affection, the onlypeople who do so.

Part III: Winter

Claudia and Friedaendure the gray Ohio winter until a "disrupter of seasons," a newgirl named Maureen Peale, comes to school. She is lighter skinned than eitherClaudia, Frieda, or Pecola, and her family is wealthy. Claudia and Frieda bothhate her and love her. One day on the way home from school, the three girlsencounter Pecola,who is being teased by a group of boys. Frieda rescues her,and Maureen appears to befriend her. However, Maureen soon turns on Pecola,taunting her with her blackness and her ugliness.

The focus of thebook shifts to a description of the "Mobile girls," women who attemptto control and modify their blackness. In imitation of the dominant culture,they straighten their hair, control their body odors, and learn to behave inorder to "do the white man's work with refinement." Geraldine is onesuch woman who has moved to Lorain with her husband and son, for whom shecares, but never nurtures. Her love is spent on a cat. One day, her son Juniorlures Pecola into the house and then throws the cat at her. He finally killsthe cat and blames Pecola as Geraldine walks into the house. Geraldine beratesPecola: "'Get out,' she said, her voice quiet. 'You nasty little blackbitch."'

Part III: Spring

In the spring, Mr.Washington, the boarder, fondles Frieda's breasts, and Mr. MacTeer beats him upand throws him out of the house. Later, Frieda and Claudia go to visit Pecola who is at the Fishers', where Mrs. Breedlove works as a housekeeper. While thechildren are there, Pecola spills a pan of hot blueberry cobbler all overherself, the dress of the little Fisher girl, and the clean white floor. Mrs.Breedlove viciously abuses Pecola for the mess and comforts the little whitegirl.

In the nextsection, a third person omniscient narrator flashes back to Pauline's young adulthood and subsequent marriage. This narration also details how Pauline cameto work as a servant for a white, rich family. Pauline loves the order, theplenty, and the cleanliness of the house. Interspersed in the third personnarration are sections of Pauline's voice in first person. She talks of herlife with Cholly and why she stays with him in spite of his drunkenness andabuse.

The narrationshifts again, this time to Cholly's story. We read how he was abandoned by his mentally ill mother when he was four days old. His Aunt Jimmy raised him untilshe died when Cholly was a young teen. After the funeral, he took a young girlinto the woods and had his first sexual experience. He and the girl arediscovered by a group of white men who force him to repeat the act for theirentertainment. Cholly never forgets nor forgives this humiliation. At the endof this chapter, Cholly returns to his home in Lorain, drunk, and finds Pecolawashing dishes. He is overcome with both love and hatred for her; his responseis to rape her. He leaves her passed out on the floor, under a quilt. Pecolaawakens to her mother's angry eyes.

Again, the sceneshifts, this time to the room of Soaphead Church, an educated West Indian manliving in Lorain. Pecola, now pregnant with her father's child, visits Church,a "reader, advisor, and interpreter of dreams" in order to requestblue eyes. He tricks her into feeding poisoned meat to his landlady's dog; Pecolareads the dog's death throes as a sign from God that her wish has been granted.

 

Part IV Summer

It is summer whenClaudia and Frieda hear that Pecola is pregnant with her father's child. Theyoverhear adults talking about the child and how it will probably not survive.Claudia and Frieda seem to be the only ones who want the baby to live. They make a promise to God to be good for a whole month and plant marigold seeds that will serve as a sign for them: when the seeds sprout, they will know thateverything will be all right. However, as readers we already know that"there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941" and nothing turns outright for Pecola. The next chapter is a deranged dialogue carried out betweenPecola and herself in which she discusses her new blue eyes, questioning ifthey are the "bluest eyes" in the world. We also discover that Cholly has raped his daughter more than once. Her madness, then, appears to be adefense against the pain of living her life.

The last voice inthe novel is Claudia's, now an adult looking back, trying to assign blame forthe tragedy of Pecola. She tells us that Pecola's baby died soon after birth;Cholly is dead as well; that Mrs. Breedlove still works for white folks; andthat Pecola spends her days talking to herself and picking at the garbage in adump. The novel closes with an indictment of the community and the culture:

And now when I seeher searching the garbage — for what? The thing we assassinated? I talk abouthow I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth,the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country washostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers.Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruits it will not bear, and whenthe land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had noright to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late.At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of mytown, it's much, much, much too late.

Characters

Cholly Breedlove

Cholly Breedlove begins his life abandoned by his mother when he is only four days old. He spends most of his life in a state of abandonment, disconnected from thosearound him and, as the novel describes him, "dangerously free"because of his isolation. When his guardian, Aunt Jimmy, dies, he is initiatedinto the world of racism as two hunters interrupt him having sex with a youngblack girl named Darlene and refuse to let the couple stop. He is unable tocontinue having sex and directs his hatred toward Darlene instead of toward thewhite men because, as the novel states, hatred for whites who are in a positionof power would have consumed him totally and immediately. However, the hatred he directs toward Darlene gnaws at him his entire life. The day before he is to leave with the uncle appointed to be his guardian, Cholly leaves for Macon insearch of his father who, when Cholly finds him, spurns him in favor of a gameof craps. Cholly turns to alcohol, and although his early married life withPauline contains some hopeful moments, for the most part, his existence isdismal. In a scene portraying a drunken Cholly's ultimate frustration at beingunable to offer his children a better life than his, he rapes Pecola whilevisualizing her as the young Pauline. In the novel's last pages, the narrator reveals that Cholly finally dies in the workhouse.

 

Pauline Breedlove

 

Pauline Breedlove,mother of Pecola, is trapped by the same destructive force as her daughter: theunachievable desire for beauty. After stepping on a nail as an infant, Pauline is left with a deformed foot, an event that causes her to see her entire selfas deformed in some way. As an adolescent, she buys into the myth of a"prince charming" who will sweep her off her feet, and she seems tofind such a man in Cholly. Although their life together begins well, it quicklydeclines. Pauline struggles with loneliness and a loss of self-esteem after sheloses a front tooth. She turns to Cholly for consolation, but he turns toalcohol instead of to her. She begins to take solace in going to movies and imagining herself as beautiful film star Jean Harlow. After Pauline losesanother tooth while eating candy at a movie, she no longer cares about herphysical appearance, and her relationship with Cholly, Pecola, and Sammybecomes the way we find it at the book's beginning: abusive and full of hatred.Pauline only finds satisfaction in working for the Fishers, a white family thatlives in a clean, affluent world, a world in total contrast to the one in whichPauline exists.

 

Pecola Breedlove

 

Pecola Breedlove,the protagonist of Morrison's novel, is the truest of all victims, for she is an innocent little girl born into a family that does not provide her with anysupport to endure society's racial prejudices. When Pecola lives temporarilywith the MacTeers after her family is evicted from their apartment, we learn ofher obsession with white female beauty when she sits at the table with Claudiaand Frieda to snack on milk and graham crackers. She continues to drink quartafter quart of milk just to be able to use the cup with Shirley Temple'spicture on it, almost as if she was trying to drink Shirley Temple's beauty.Much like her mother, Pecola longs to be beautiful, to have blue eyesspecifically, because she thinks that fulfilling white society's idea of beautywill bring her the love she has never received. Pecola's life is consumed bythis desire, and after she is raped by her father, she is so desperate that shegoes to the town's pedophilic fortune teller, Soaphead Church, for help inobtaining blue eyes. Even the fraudulent Soaphead pities her and writes in aletter to God that he may not have been able to give Pecola blue eyes, but shethinks she has them and will, therefore, live "happily ever after."Soaphead is, of course, horribly mistaken, and Pecola descends into madness.She continues believing that her eyes are bluer than any others, illustratingthe danger for an unloved black girl who accepts white society's definition ofbeauty.

 

Geraldine

 

Geraldine fits thetype of middle-class black woman that Morrison describes in detail just before Geraldine appears in The Bluest Eye. This kind of woman rejects what she viewsis "black" by distancing herself from the "funkiness" of life,the dirt of poverty, and ignorance. Geraldine has only a perfunctoryrelationship with her family and is closest to her cat, whom her son Juniorthrows against a wall after Pecola shows it affection. In Geraldine's eyes,Pecola represents the black lifestyle she rejects; therefore, when Geraldine discovers Pecola in her house, she throws Pecola out with the words, "You nasty little black bitch. Get out of my house."

Junior

 

Junior is the onlyson of Geraldine, an arrogant black woman who despises most other black families and, as a result, prevents Junior from playing with other black boys.Because he lives near the school, Junior claims the playground as his turf, andwhen he sees Pecola walking there, he invites her into his house and terrorizesher with his mother's cat.

Claudia Macteer

 

A nine-year-oldblack girl, Claudia narrates the majority of the novel. Because she and Pecola share many of the same experiences, Claudia also acts as a foil, or contrast,to Pecola. For example, Claudia hates Shirley Temple, unlike Pecola whoidolizes her, and does not understand the fascination black adults have withlittle white girls. Claudia is also a representative of society as a whole inher attitude toward Pecola. Although she and Frieda befriend Pecola after shelives with them temporarily, they have no contact with her after her fatherrapes and impregnates her. Claudia hopes that her baby will live simply to"counteract the universal love of white baby dolls"; however, the babydies, and Claudia and Frieda avoid Pecola from then on. As an adult, Claudiarealizes that she, like those around her, made Pecola into a scapegoat, hatingPecola in order to make her life appear much better in comparison.

Style: Point of View and Structure

 

The point of view in The Bluest Eye is dominated by first person ("I") through the mindof Claudia MacTeer, sometimes narrating as a nine-year-old child and sometimes as an adult. The instances in which Morrison uses the adult Claudia as narratorserve as points of reflection for Claudia. For example, because Claudia is thesame age as Pecola, she should be able to empathize with her; however, as anadult, she looks back at the manner in which she and her community cast Pecolaas a scapegoat and is able to see that they did not love her as they shouldhave. A third person, omniscient, anonymous narrator also exists in the novel.For example, this narrator presents to us the childhoods and early adulthoodsof Cholly and Pauline, providing a means for the reader to understand the pathwhich has taken Cholly and Pauline to such depths of self-loathing. The narrative as a whole is the adult Claudia's flashback, framed by her adultmusings and interspersed with scenes presented by the third person narrator.The novel is divided into four parts to correspond with the four seasons, anappropriate structure since the main characters, nine-year-old girls, would measuretime by passage of the seasons.