Good Reads / Community Library Notes
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, is the story of Claudia. She tells the reader in her own voice how she and her sister, Frieda, fill burlap sacks with bits of coal to heat their house. Claudia hates the dolls she is given at Christmas and birthdays: life-size dolls with blond hair and blue eyes that say “Mama” in a voice that sounds like a rusted refrigerator door opening. Claudia mutilates the dolls and wishes she could mutilate Shirley Temple too.
Pecola comes to live with them. Her father, Cholly Breedlove, is in jail. Her mother, Mrs. Breedlove, is staying with her employer. Years ago, the Breedloves lived in a run-down storefront with peeling paint and a torn couch. Author Morrison describes it all so we can see it, smell it, hate it. They were poor and black. They thought they were ugly. Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove loved to fight; they needed to fight, they needed each other. Sammy, Pecola’s brother, ran away from home during those times. Pecola tried to disappear, but she never did. Pecola visits the whores who live upstairs: Marie, China, and Poland. They entertain her with stories of old boy friends and make her laugh at their antics.
When a new girl named Maureen Peal comes to their school, the two friends become envious of her light complexion and her long brown braids. She’s rich and when she walks home with them she offers to buy them ice creams. When Claudia and Pecola get home, Mr. Henry, the renter, has two women with him in the living room. One is China. He makes the girls swear not to tell their mama after the women leave.
Meanwhile, Junior traps Pecola in his empty house and throws his black cat at her. He lives in a fancy house next to the school’s playground which he thinks is his backyard. He loves to bully girls. Author Morrison tells us how Pauline, the girls’ mother, met Cholly Breedlove. Pauline worked for a white woman who told her to leave Cholly when he mistreated her. But she was lonely. She began going to the movies and was happy only when she was at the picture shows. She learned about physical beauty and virtue, about love and hate. She was an “ideal servant” and began to neglect her own house.
Cholly goes to Macon to search for his real father. The man he thinks is his father rejects him and goes to a crap game. Cholly runs away, and cries. He kills three men and goes to prison. He meets Pauline, marries her, but is bored by the sameness every day.
Souphead Church likes little girls. His business is dread. People come to him so he can fix things: marriages, love affairs, business failures, health, money woes. A little girl comes to him and asks for new blue eyes. He tells her no one else can see her blue eyes. Does she believe him? In summer, Pecola is pregnant by her father, but her baby dies before it is born. Claudia and Frieda see her occasionally on her porch. Pecola’s pain makes them feel healthy.
Morrison, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, says in the afterward that this story is about the devastation racial contempt can cause. It’s how the demonization of an entire race can begin inside the most vulnerable member; a female child, and her crippled and crippling family. This is a sad story. Find it in the fiction room of your Mendocino Community Library.
Pecola comes to live with them. Her father, Cholly Breedlove, is in jail. Her mother, Mrs. Breedlove, is staying with her employer. Years ago, the Breedloves lived in a run-down storefront with peeling paint and a torn couch. Author Morrison describes it all so we can see it, smell it, hate it. They were poor and black. They thought they were ugly. Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove loved to fight; they needed to fight, they needed each other. Sammy, Pecola’s brother, ran away from home during those times. Pecola tried to disappear, but she never did. Pecola visits the whores who live upstairs: Marie, China, and Poland. They entertain her with stories of old boy friends and make her laugh at their antics.
When a new girl named Maureen Peal comes to their school, the two friends become envious of her light complexion and her long brown braids. She’s rich and when she walks home with them she offers to buy them ice creams. When Claudia and Pecola get home, Mr. Henry, the renter, has two women with him in the living room. One is China. He makes the girls swear not to tell their mama after the women leave.
Meanwhile, Junior traps Pecola in his empty house and throws his black cat at her. He lives in a fancy house next to the school’s playground which he thinks is his backyard. He loves to bully girls. Author Morrison tells us how Pauline, the girls’ mother, met Cholly Breedlove. Pauline worked for a white woman who told her to leave Cholly when he mistreated her. But she was lonely. She began going to the movies and was happy only when she was at the picture shows. She learned about physical beauty and virtue, about love and hate. She was an “ideal servant” and began to neglect her own house.
Cholly goes to Macon to search for his real father. The man he thinks is his father rejects him and goes to a crap game. Cholly runs away, and cries. He kills three men and goes to prison. He meets Pauline, marries her, but is bored by the sameness every day.
Souphead Church likes little girls. His business is dread. People come to him so he can fix things: marriages, love affairs, business failures, health, money woes. A little girl comes to him and asks for new blue eyes. He tells her no one else can see her blue eyes. Does she believe him? In summer, Pecola is pregnant by her father, but her baby dies before it is born. Claudia and Frieda see her occasionally on her porch. Pecola’s pain makes them feel healthy.
Morrison, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, says in the afterward that this story is about the devastation racial contempt can cause. It’s how the demonization of an entire race can begin inside the most vulnerable member; a female child, and her crippled and crippling family. This is a sad story. Find it in the fiction room of your Mendocino Community Library.