This is a tragedy and I think the pain and agony of this tragedy, sculpted by means of Ms. Morrison’s powerful writing, is best understood by her own prose with which she opens the section entitled Spring. This, to me, becomes the metaphor. Then I’ll conclude with the second update I posted:


*The first twigs are thin, green, and supple. They bend into a complete circle, but will not break. Their delicate, showy hopefulness shooting from forsythia and lilac bushes meant only a change in whipping style. They beat us differently in the spring.

*Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush.

*Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer.

**The abuse of humans is very hard to read about. The abuse of animals is very hard to read about. I feel I'm looking at life through a grey-streaked window. And when I step out from behind the window the world around me remains grey-streaked.



3.75

Oh my goodness, I loved this book - loved it for the language, of course, Morrison is like Woolf or Forester, in how her sentences can do absolutely anything - but also for the way the plot is structured, for how the central character, Pecola, is the most shown and the least known, and for how the denizens of Lorain, Ohio, even the most immoral ones, are treated with equal measures of sympathy and scrutiny by Morrison. I found myself looking for Pecola, over and over again, and when the narrative finally "finds" her, it is too late. The subject matter is harrowing, so proceed with caution, but the strength of it is absolute.

And it's so weird! The beginning is so weird - the ending too. It takes the big swings that a first novel should, and all too often, doesn't.

4.5/5

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”
The Bluest Eye ~~~  Toni Morrison



I have several reading goals for 2019 ~~ get some big books off my Want to Read list, explore more Asian writing, and visit authors I have missed along my reading journey. One of the most glaring omissions on this list was Toni Morrison. So, with the advice of my friend, Rowena, I selected THE BLUEST EYE to right that wrong. I am wowed by Morrison's writing talents. I wish I'd have ventured to her world sooner.

THE BLUEST EYE may well be the saddest book I have ever read. Upon finishing this novel I felt like I'd been sucker punched. The events that took place in this world were devastating. Morrisson's novel is as far from the childhood world Ray Bradbury created in Dandelion Wine as imaginable. Both took place in the Midwest in the late 20's / early 30's, and focus on childhood. This, is where the similarities end.

As painful as this book is to read at times, it is a beautifully written novel. Morrison is a poet at heart.



The story is told by a minor character, Claudia, a young girl and friend of Pecola’s; her innocence offers a rawness to the story that would have been lost if narrated by Pecola or an older character. Morrison brilliantly uses the passing of the seasons to tell this story. Each season take place in a different time period and follows a different character in her or his life; we learn the back stories of Pecola's people through this. In the final pages of this book, we see how all these people make up parts of Pecola’s story.

Morrison writes of race better than any other writer I can think of. She touches not on race in general, but writes about various themes regarding race here, the central theme being that Pecola’s desire for blue eyes is showing the social context that views blue eyes, which in this case is the epitome of whiteness, as the standard of beauty. Every girl black or white should strive to be like Shirley Temple.

Morrison also deftly writes on parenting and family dynamics. When Claudia faces an unwanted event in her home, her parents act swiftly to protect their daughter. When a far more tragic event happens to Pecola, her mother beats and blames her.

The main theme of THE BLUEST EYE is not simply racism, but internalized racism. The main characters in Morrison's novel have been conditioned to believe in their own inferiority. No one suffers this more than Pecola. Even members of her own race put her down for being ugly and for the darkness of her skin.

In the end, Morrison forces us to walk in Pecola's shoes and learn of the painful world she inhabits, and she does so brilliantly.

Seriously... I have to read this book for class. I'm on page 50 and I've already had more than I can take. The symbolism is over the top and heavy-handed to the point that I can't decide whether I'm being shouted at for no reason or insulted as a dull creature incapable of understanding such things unless it is stated outright with excruciating detail. Its insistence on being so obvious with everything makes it sound pretentious, preachy, and annoying. Additionally, the overemphasis the author places on race and its inextricability from the conventional concept of beauty makes it sound like she's ranting. This would be fine in a blog or on Facebook - in the context of a novel it's just obnoxious and completely closes the ear to what the author intends to communicate. While the base idea of the themes is good, that idea is lost in how abused and overused they are within the novel. Again, although I'm only on page 50 I feel like I'm being perpetually beaten in the head with a frying pan. Needless to say, it's really not a pleasant feeling, and I'm frightened that I'm reading this in my Contemporary Literature course. Goodness help us if literature like this and The Kite Runner endures to earn that title in truth.

I can't take it anymore!

Please tell me there's someone who agrees. xD

Edit: Yo, guys. I did read the whole thing (much to my own dispair. It just didn't drastically change my opinion.

I would like to add, though, that again, although I thought the execution could have been better, this book DID open my eyes to the self image issues black girls have about not being white. I didn't know that was a thing they'd struggle with. To me, all shades of black are beautiful in their own ways. I love everything she's trying to get across, and her heart is more than in the right place. And I certainly understand more knowing it was her first novel, which kind of explains a lot. I would definitely be willing to read her more recent books - I'm sure she will have improved a lot since then.

Read with Feminist Book Club @FeministBC

This is my contribution to the discussion:

I think the main theme of the novel is the self-hatred produced by a racist culture. The most overt image of this is Pecola’s pathological desire for blue eyes, but it is also powerfully evident in the character of Geraldine, mother of Junior, who is one of the women who ‘come from Mobile’ and dedicate themselves to the erasure of their natural ‘funk’, and even more so in Pauline, Pecola’s mother. I found Pauline’s story the most affecting, because she was unable to show any tenderness to her own children, yet doted on the white child of the family she worked for (the berry cobbler scene is as disturbing to me as the rape) and was described by them as the perfect servant. Evidently, she doesn’t neglect Pecola because she is a cold, cruel person, but because a racist culture has ingrained in her a hatred of what it has designated as blackness (her husband’s fecklessness, her home’s hopeless poverty and cheerlessness, and her children’s ‘ugliness’). Morrison, in describing her behaviour to her family, ends by saying ‘and the world itself agreed with her’.

I think this blackness-as-designated-by-white-supremacy is the same thing as the ‘funk’ that the ‘women from Mobile’ try to expunge from themselves. Geraldine’s son yearns for blackness in sexual terms when he longs to play with black boys. White-supremacy (and the black self-hatred that is its offspring) is a hatred and fear of the black body and its sexuality.

Just before the rape scene, Cholly’s ‘freedom’ is described. I struggle to understand this idea of freedom, but it seems to arise from a litany of proscriptions he has transgressed. He has refused to conform to the demands of white supremacy, but as no alternative narrative to make sense of his experience or identity is available to him (Morrison suggests music could provide one, pointing, I guess, to the Black Arts movement and the reclamation of Black beauty/body/sexuality) he is almost a person without socialisation, without culture, so he can only behave reactively or out of feeling. As his experiences are largely negative, so are his actions. He is able to rape his own daughter without shame, in fact partially out of confused tenderness towards her, as he has no longer any way to make sense of relationships or the feeling of love – or, perhaps, since all his feelings are despised by white supremacy, they are in total confusion, with no way to distinguish kind from cruel, transgression from goodness.

Claudia (and her sister) is to some extent liberated from racialized self-loathing, as exemplified by her rejection of the white dolls she was given. However, I don’t think Morrison has made Claudia immune, rather, she is pointing out that people enact moments and points of resistance to the onslaught of the white supremacist hegemony.

I loved the book. I felt every word of it was a poisoned dart in the flesh of oppression. I was quite rightly discomforted.

Wow, this book is horribly difficult to really think about, isn’t it? I mean, it crushes the mind. The kind of violence perpetrated here, feeling historical and grand, terribly personal, preying on innocents, this book is truly horribly difficult to think about. It gets thicker with each passing moment of reflection. This book is a welcoming into the dark complex of humanity, standing like a building of horrors, a Pentagon, made out to be nothing less than a museum of our own terrific and sublime nature.

I’m reluctant to say that the pieces here don’t quite add up with quite the power that they feel they are building towards. This book was squarely, simply, not written for me. I’m white. I’m male. I had the hardest time connecting with these characters whose history and whose ownership of place, whose connection to time and the world around them, is entirely different from any of the stories I grew up living or much of my own experience, much of my own sense of fear in this world. Certainly that limits my way of appreciating the art on display here. So takes that into consideration with my next comments.

In the building of this novel a lot of jabs land, and they land hard. The writing here is incredibly strong, and so the reader is lead through a field of punches to the kidney and a few to the face, and the reader, like a boxer facing a clearly talented opponent, comes away with bruises and soreness. But the final blow isn’t quite there. There was no knockout.

I’m not quite sure how there wasn’t. I thought I felt where this book was moving, could pick up on the hints and the moments. I opened each chapter with a feeling of dread - here it was going to come, I would be totally startled, totally alarmed, totally exhausted after this chapter. But, even as the event at the centre of the book happened, I was in a daze of confusion. Even slightly disappointed. Shouldn’t there be something more here?

This may be characteristic of Morrison. She brings to her debut a wisdom and compassion for the human experience which many young novelists miss in their first books. As a result there isn’t much flash or sensationalism even in those moments when we think that there should be. I think this is probably part of how she understands the world. Nothing is surprising about people, they make sense in their own horrific ways, they are products of the crimes which have been committed against them. These crimes are complex. Some are committed by people, others by groups of people, many by “society”, which is and isn’t a character in this book. It is hard to describe I suppose, both for Morrison and the reviewer. But Morrison doesn’t want to point fingers. I don’t think that is her way. She wants to wrap everybody in a thick blanket, hold them, tell them that they are loved despite our broken and troubling nature, despite the way the world has treated them.

It is melancholic, but it is powerful.

Maybe the melancholy is the knockout. In the end Morrison didn’t want to leave my body on the floor of the ring, she wanted me to go out and look at my fellow humans with an ever more aware sense of the our universal victimhood, our universal resilience, our hidden rays of beauty and the overpowering, burdensome, destructive sadness of our existences.

It is a joy to read books which become something more than mere words on paper and enter us in that funny way that the greatest literature does. It is a mystery to read those books which almost get there, but somehow miss a piece or two along the way and, in doing so, don’t quite fulfill their promise. I would squarely place this in that category of books, though it bears with it a power which makes it a necessary read. Morrison is a great writer with a careful patience in her observations, in her construction of her characters, in her humanism. Others can only hope to one day mimic her in their greatest of works. This is marvelous, subversive, troubling literature.

I first read The Bluest Eye in the 1990s for book club. I decided to reread it when my daughter read it for school. I am very grateful that we shared the experience of reading and discussing it together. Scenes that stuck with both of us were the Shirley Temple Cup, the scene with the cat, and Maureen Peals/meringue pie. The Maginot Line is definitely a memorable character.

The subject matter is heavy and disturbing. Morrison humanizes those that have historically been dehumanized. Characters we may have a hard time liking (like Pecola’s parents), are seen in a new light as the reader sees the events that have brought them to their current situation. Every character is navigating some form of trauma. Every character searching for something to help them escape their situation. Cholly’s search for his father and Pecola’s request for Soapbox Church were both so very sad.

The banter between the sisters and the beautiful prose Morrison composes are like debris from a shipwreck, keeping the reader afloat while witnessing her main character break and get pulled under.

Just a few days ago I happened to have a conversation with someone (quite a 'well-read' person too) who said quite casually, almost in an offhand manner, how he found books written by women 'uninteresting'. On prodding him for the reason behind his 'disinterest', he replied that 'books written by women just do not engage' him. I didn't have the heart to ask him why a second time.
And there it sat between us, this knowledge of his disdain for women writers (for some hitherto unknown reason), like a breathing, venom-spitting, invisible monster quietly killing our conversation (thankfully!).

No evasion. Not even a half-hearted attempt at rescuing an uncomfortable situation. A wholly unabashed, flat out declaration made with the confident, self-righteous air of a reader who knows what good reading should consist of and, when it comes to that, exclude.

In retrospect, when I dwell on the memory of this horrendous, very real conversation, I experience a crushing hopelessness. It's not that particular guy I am mad at. No. He is only a minuscule part of the universal malady afflicting our collective psyche. It is this spirited tolerance for continued ignorance and apathy that infuriates me so. This tradition of belittling the female voice which speaks of personal sexual gratification, love, marriage, and childbirth, of the tyranny of beauty that forces her to adhere desperately to some predetermined standard of physical perfection - the right angle to her cheekbones, the right slope to her nose, the right lushness to her eyelashes, the right curve to her hips, the right skin color to match her hair and her eyes. All of this is terribly uninteresting isn't it?

n  "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."n

So what if she is a Nobel laureate? So what if she created the most haunting, poignant and unforgettable elegy to the horrors that American slavery spawned?
So what if she has crafted an eleven-year-old, ugly and unfortunate Pecola Breedlove with the utmost sincerity? So what if she has made her ugly and unfortunate Pecola yearn for a shred of love and dignity in vain till her last days? So what if she has tried to shed some light on the unloved, the mercilessly trodden upon rejects of a community caught in the vicious trap of fatal self-loathing? So what if she has thought up a newer way to deconstruct the violence of a sexual crime by removing the convenient 'glamour of shame' routinely heaped on the victim? So what if she has tried to bestow humanity even on the ones beyond redemption? So what if she has offered a window into a world where a million and one injustices compete for primacy every moment?

Such trifling womanly subject matters do not mesh well with the reading tastes of a man! After all, the Doris Lessings and Elfriede Jelineks, Nadine Gordimers and Alice Munros, Zora Neale Hurstons and Zadie Smiths, the Jhumpa Lahiris and the Banana Yoshimotos, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolfs, write/wrote books for only women to read and appreciate.
'Women can't paint, women can't write...'

It hurts to know that the Charles Tansleys of the world are alive and well. But, thankfully, we have the Toni Morrisons to restore some balance.

I initially read this novel over 20yrs ago, it just baffled me. The manner in which Toni Morrison describes the “Allusion” at the beginning of this Riveting novel. The perception of Dick and Jane. Yes, we all remember the series of books in school. Yet, this time around there were a multitude of Elements that always make this novel my favorite by this author. I decided to make this my last book of my ~2023 Goodreads Challenge ~ and listen to the audiobook in this version. Toni Morrison BLOWS her novels away in her stage performance voice and movement of words. ~ Pure Beauty ~

This will always be my Favorite novel by this author. Even in all of its heavy sadness, Toni Morrison touches on the horrors of racial and women oppression. She has always been an author Flawless with creatively battling these subjects also explored in this novel, “the blonde hair, blue eyes” white beauty standards.


In Lorain, Ohio, Pecola has the desire to have ‘The Bluest Eyes’. She Believes having them will make her be liked by her classmates. This novel is so heavy, I’m sure to read this one again very soon because it is astounding the proportion of Metaphorical Literature this novel dispenses from beginning to conclusion. A True Masterpiece. This time, I realized how each Season in this story shared a different meaning also.



Everything about this Novel is chilling. This second time around what stays with me more was the manner in Toni Morrison’s description of the house and furnishings. The one and only piece of furniture that causes any type of emotion is the couch; filling the owner with anger.

“The furniture was anything but describable, having been “conceived, manufactured, shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness, greed, and indifference. The furniture had aged without ever having become familiar.”

This story continues explaining no memories among these pieces to be cherished. Yet, only Toni Morrison’s descriptive style could send a Jolt through readers to actually FEEL her gripping words of an item provoking a physical reaction. Brilliance! And, even this Impeccable author could lyrically express the Breedlove’s coal stove being the only living thing in their house. Simply Amazing…



We learn also of Pecola drinking numerous amounts of milk from the Shirley Temple cup. In my younger years, I was not able to understand the reason for her drinking such an amount was because she was infatuated with Shirley Temple (looking at the cup) and idealizing the life and standards of what she saw from her eyes.

Although this is a story that shows so much abandonment and sadness. It is one so Phenomenally written and can be used for endless discussions.

And, after ALL Pecola went through in her life, the conclusion…the conclusion.

Listening to the audio version just gave me chills, seriously. I struggled with even writing this review a couple of times. However, it became extremely important for the fact that so many readers share negative thoughts, views, etc. about Toni Morrison’s creative writing style and work. I admit, her work is not the easiest to digest. It took me several years to be able to Understand most of her writings and I am still revisiting her literary collection to Increase my Understanding at a wiser age. Even now, when I rate her novels 5 stars just is NOT enough (In my Heart & Soul ). But, this is Goodreads…

Again, I highly recommend Readers to always listen to this author via audiobook.

Toni Morrison

I first read this classic at least twenty years ago. The only memory is of sadness. I have no recollection of how beautifully it was written, how realistic, how revolutionary, how timeless. I don’t recall being knocked out by the dialogue, loving Claudia’s rebelliousness, her rejection of white skinned dolls. ( I rejected dolls with blonde hair.) How could I have forgotten the three prostitutes, their humor and their willingness to accept and not judge?

I can add nothing to the wonderful and insightful reviews that have been written over the years. I have gleaned so much more by reading this again. I am resolved to reread all the other Morrison books I read years ago. It will be like reliving a fond but fuzzy memory with fresh new details and vibrant colors that had formerly been missing.

"Here is the house."

I get the feeling that this book is going to stay with me for a very long time.

There's so much to say but at the same time: spoilers, so I think I'm going to focus on why I rated this a 4 star instead of a 5, and what I would've done differently.

I will start by saying that I loved 80% of the book. Morrison's prose had a calming effect on me--I just wanted her to keep on telling me the story. The only sensation I can think of that feels similar is being at home, warm, wearing soft socks, and snuggled under a blanket. Some parts are difficult to read, as most people are aware, but I never felt she did so distastefully or in too graphic a detail.

The story is supposed to be about Pecola Breedlove, but I felt that was oversimplifying it. It was really about the three children's experiences--Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola--as a whole, being poor African-Americans in a mostly white state during segregation.

The book is split into 4 parts--Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer--and takes place in Lorain, Ohio in 1940-41. It starts in the main characters' present, with flashbacks throughout, and switches POVs between Claudia MacTeer's 3rd person narrative, and that of an omniscient 3rd person for the flashbacks and stories where Claudia isn't present. This is one of the first things I would've changed. I loved Claudia's voice--the naivete and innocence of it--and I missed it when it wasn't there. Maybe it could've been completely written in Claudia's voice, as a child for the present, and as an adult for the flashbacks and epilogue. It might've even taken some sting out of some of the rougher material, making it easier to get through. Granted it could've been done in the omniscient 3rd party throughout, but I think that would've taken some of the heart out of the tone.

I would've also changed the order the flashbacks happen in, and I would've taken Soaphead Church completely out--or reworked him entirely. I probably would've written him as a snake-handling preacher. As is, he was a completely unnecessary character, let alone worthy of as many pages as he was given.

I did truly enjoy this, and I feel like I learned a lot about the African-American experience post-slavery but pre-civil rights. I highly recommend picking this up at your local library or bookstore. Trigger warnings for this book should include--rape, child rape, physical, verbal, mental, and emotional abuse, racism, bullying, and animal cruelty.

"At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late."

*I also listened to this on audiobook and the narrator was wonderful. Her voice paired nicely with the words on the page, helping to add some emotional depth. However, I did notice that she pronounced some things strangely, but I'm not sure if it was wrong, or just a dialectal difference.

What a tremendously depressing and haunting read. Toni Morrison could definitely write and her prose is lovely, but now I remember why I haven't read anything by her since high school – sad books just aren't my thing. But, still, there's a reason that The Bluest Eye is a modern classic, and the audiobook is perfectly narrated by Morrison herself. 4.45 stars, rounded down.