The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison
This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish--for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved--for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.KIRKUS REVIEW
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLoved the discussion on The Bluest Eye, even though I hadn't gotten to finish the book before our meeting. Here's what I read on the next to the last page:
ReplyDelete"And Pecola is somewhere in that little brown house she and her mother moved to on the edge of town, where you can see her even now, once in a while.... plucking her way between the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and beauty of the world---which is what she herself was. All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us---all who knew her---felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness." A poignant truth traveling through time as we consciously and unconsciously victimize scapegoats.