The Bluest Eye 3

Writing, I have come to realize through this class and especially through my reading of Toni Morrison’s the Bluest Eye, is truly a universal language. It allows us to put our feelings to paper in a way that is more satisfying than talking to oneself and yet also just as private. It gives me personally an outlet for my feelings that I utilize not only because, as I always say to my friends, “I’m better on paper than in person”, but also due to the fact that writing is permanent. That permanent aspect can give us the advantage of perspective which, in turn, helps us find our way in terms of not making the same mistakes over and over again. Writing becomes like history that way.

Morrison’s work, I realized, is not only her outlet for recording past memories and experiences – it is a way for her to get answers to questions she has had for a long time. She explains in the afterward of the novel that she once had an experience with a beautiful African American friend who claimed to want blue eyes more than anything in the world. “The Bluest Eye was my effort to say something about that; to say something about why she had not, or possibly ever would have, the experience she possessed and also why she prayed for so radical an altercation,” (Morrison, 210). Decades later, Morrison was left with so many questions about the young girl and the racial, social, and physical barriers that caused her to feel such a way. “Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak than what she was?” Morrison questions (Morrison, 210). Writing this novel was not only Morrison’s way of searching for these questions within herself, it also served as an education for any and all readers with self-esteem problems stemming from race or beauty or any combination thereof. (Blue eyes; coveted. image courtesy of:http://theaterboy.typepad.com/theaterboy/Bluest%20Eye%20%232.5.jpg).

I figured I could cover the “basic” topics for this DB. Talk more about why Morrison wrote the Bluest Eye or ask myself more about race and beauty. Don’t get me wrong, those are important topics. But what stuck with me the most after finishing this novel was how a writing choice Morrison made in the novel affected my entire view of a man, a family, and a race of people. In one of the later chapters of the book, the story of Cholly Breedlove is told in full. His life as a boy with a beloved Aunt who died when he was young is detailed, as is his horrific experience as a victim of two white men who force him to continue to have sex with a young woman as they watch. As we all know, the book come to a near close with Cholly raping Pecola. If someone had told me the summary of this book – leaving out Cholly’s family history told from his point of view – I would have been completely disgusted at his rape of the little girl. I probably would have been disgusted to the point that I would write Cholly off as an insane man. However, Morrison made a choice when writing about Cholly’s life story and the rape of Pecola to tell it from his perspective, as opposed to Pecola’s. Instead of describing Pecola’s feelings during the rape, Morrison writes, “The sequence of his emotions was revulsion, guilt, pity, then love. His revulsion was a reaction to her young, helpless, hopeless presence,” (Morrison, 161). Of course we know that the rape is a terrifying event for Pecola, but I would never have guessed how confusing it was for Cholly – a man whose brain and soul are completely backwards and skewed thanks to the white men who ruined his life with their despicable actions. “Whether her grip was from a hopeless but stubborn struggle to be free, or from some other emotion, he could not tell,” notes Morrison of his confusion, (Morrison, 163).(image courtesy of:https://eee.uci.edu/programs/humcore/Student/Fall2009/LectureNotes/week10/Toni-Morrison-abstract-image-Pecola.jpg). I of course am not condoning Cholly’s actions or calling them anything other than despicable, but I do think it is important to note that thanks to Morrison’s writing decision, the story takes on new meaning and helps me as a reader realize just how deep racism can go and just what kind of affect it can have on people for the rest of their lives just as it did with Cholly.