The Bluest Eye 1

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is – thus far in my reading – not an easy story to swallow. It details poverty, abuse, racism, and other such tragic themes. When I learned what the book was about, I figured I would probably write a blog entry about family – about learning to live with all types of personalities in one family, or possibly about family sticking together through thick and then. Then I read the book. It is true, what Professor Bump says about the new “typical” family story: “From the perspective of family systems therapy, the motivation for narrative is no longer defined as primarily a potentially dysfunctional nostalgia for an ideal family that never was,” (Course Anthology, 349).(The Bluest Eye is NOT the story of a perfect family. image courtesy of:http://www.cm.iparenting.com/fc/editor_files/images/115/ipgraphics/familylove/fal005.jpg).For, where we are so far in our reading, the whole “sticking together” and maintaining family unity thing doesn’t seem to be a priority for the Breedlove family. Of course, it isn’t necessarily their fault; mental and physical abuse is scattered throughout the family and is also directed from those outside the family. It would be hard to survive in such an environment, much less become united through it. No, what the characters in this novel do best isn’t stick together as a family. Their most striking quality, for the most part, is an uncanny ability to misdirect anger from one situation to another.

I first noticed this when I read about Claudia’s hate for Shirley Temple and for the “big, blue eyed Baby Doll” she had received for Christmas one year (Morrison, 20). She recognizes that she is supposed to love it and care for the doll, that the adults around her expect her to. “I learned quickly what I was expected to do with the doll: rock it, fabricate stories situated around it, even sleep with it,” (Morrison, 20) she remarked to herself. I myself was confused by her reaction to this doll, until I realized the doll was white. “I destroyed white baby dolls,” says Claudia simply, after explaining her destruction of the toy (Morrison, 22). She herself recognizes, however, the deeper meaning behind this. It is not that she hates white people without meaning – she hates them because she hates her own life. Her jealousy (though that seems too petty a word for the emotion Claudia feels, I will still use it as I cannot rack my brain for a better one!) at the life of the white girls causes her to hate that doll, Shirley Temple, and anyone not like her that she can find. (image courtesy of:http://www.cherishedfriends.com/g6BL_ClubDoll_Blonde.jpg).

This misplacing of anger is a theme that continues on in Cholly’s treatment of Mrs. Breedlove. We learn in the story of a traumatic experience Cholly undergoes as a younger man. Two white men force him into having sex with a woman while they watch and instead of hating the two men, he ends up hating the young woman. “Even a half-remembrance of this episode, long with myriad other humiliations, defeats, and emasculations, could stir him into flights of depravity that surprised himself – but only himself,” (Morrison, 42). This redirection of his anger continues in his actions of abuse against Mrs. Breedlove. It is tragic, unfortunate, horrible – any number of words can describe his abuse towards Mrs. Breedlove, but we must also recognize the horrific acts of the white men that so scared Cholly into choosing the path of abuse he is on now.