The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison is an award-winning author who has written books about the lives of African Americans for over thirty years. In 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Her first novel, which was published is 1970, was entitle The Bluest Eye. Although not popular when first published it has grown in favor since then. While reading this novel I became engaged in the message she portrays about how children are subjected to ideas about beauty and how society only reinforces these stereotypes. 

The Bluest Eye is about an 11-year-old African American girl named Pecola Breedlove who is very dark skinned. Throughout the novel she longs to be blond haired and blue eyed. Her family and the town she lives in only reinforces these stereotypes and eventually causes her to have a mental breakdown. While reading the forward of the novel Toni Morrison states that she was inspired to write this novel because a friend of hers wanted to be blond haired and blue eyed also. She states “The assertion of racial beauty was not a reaction to the self-mocking, humorous critique, of racial/cultural foibles common in all groups, but against the damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority originating in an outside gaze.” (p.xi) This quote is very powerful. Here she illustrates that her friend had internalized the stereotype that African Americans are not beautiful and was fighting against the world’s standards of beauty. I found this intriguing because it is based on a real situation. This shows how prevalent internalizing racism and oppression is in minorities’ lives. Had this been a completely fictional story, it would have had just as much prevalence as it does, however, the fact that Morrison used a little girl’s actual desire and wrote the book, shows that these situations do exist. It also shows that children begin to interpret and internalize this racism and oppression at a very young age.

The story is told from multiple points of view, however the main point of view is from a 9 years old girl. Her name is Claudia MacTeer and she is the antithesis of Pecola. She fights against the belief to be black means that you are not attractive and does not feel that to be blond haired and blue-eyed means that you are beautiful. Her innocence is revealed as well as her maturity. She is innocent in the fact that she has not realized the internalized racism that plagues the black community and mature in the fact that she has realized that there is no one true standard of beauty.  In one part of the novel She states that the world believes that being white is the ultimate form of beauty and that she could not understand it and that she could not accept it. She describes a situation where for Christmas her parents brought her a white baby doll and how she felt toward it. She says, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs, - all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow haired, pinked skinned doll was what every girl child treasured…I could not love it.” (p. 20-21) She goes on to say that eventually life taught her that this is what beauty means and therefore she conformed her views. She calls it an “adjustment without improvement. ”

Throughout the novel we learn the experiences of Pecola Breedlove through the interactions with her family and with the people of her town.  Toni Morrison reveals that internalized racism and oppression runs deeper than in this one child. Her family walks around with the notion that they are ugly and that is all they every will be. Claudia states that they conduct themselves as if some higher being has told them that they are inferior and they have accepted that claim without question. This shows that she cannot get sympathy or compassion from her family because they are all in the same situation.  The town she lives in is predominantly African American, and throughout the novel one is shown how they view beauty. Many of the children and the teachers at her school prefer the girl who is of a lighter complexion, and whenever they describe someone of a darker skin color, especially Pecola, they always talk about how ugly and black they are, only furthering her notion that being black equates to being ugly.  Morrison shows that internalizing racism and oppression does not only affect one person of the community, but it affects the entire race as a whole and that as a community we pass these internalizations on to the next generation. 

At the end of the novel Pecola is finally “granted her blue eyes”. A medicine man gives her blue eyes in order to give her happiness. This causes Pecola to have a mental breakdown and she begins talking to herself. This is ironic because she was not happy without blue eyes, and now that she has them, or thinks that she has them, she has become worse. Claudia states at the end of the novel that Pecola wanders though the garbage at the edge of town talking to herself and how she was the victim that allowed the rest of the town to feel beautiful.  She states at the end of the novel that, “…among all the waste and beauty of the world- which she herself was. All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed.” (p. 205) Claudia also comments on how the soil in which Pecola was given to grow in was poor and how she never had a chance, “This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.” (p. 206)

This novel was very profound. Toni Morrison portrayed the struggles of internalized racism, not only from one individual’s viewpoint, but also from multiple individual’s perspectives. She showed us how this affects the entire community and how it will continue to affect the lives of minorities.  I feel that this book allowed people to realize that in order to stop this cycle we must first begin with ourselves in the hopes that we will change the future generations.


-Brandie Smith