The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison
Who is Toni Morrison?

• Born Chloe Anthony

Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain,
Ohio, the second of four
children in a working-class family
• Storytelling, songs, and folktales were
a deeply formative part of her
childhood
Who is Toni Morrison?
• Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye
(1970), is a novel of initiation
concerning a victimized adolescent
black girl who is obsessed by white
standards of beauty and longs to
have blue eyes
• Other works of Morrison’s include
Sula, Beloved, and Home which was
published in 2012
Who is Toni Morrison?
In 1993, Morrison became the first
African-American woman to
receive the *Nobel Prize in
literature.
Voted as the favorite author of the
20th century by the African
American Literature Book Club.

*Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been

awarded annually to an author from any country who
has, in the words of the will of Alfred Nobel,
produced "in the field of literature the most
outstanding work in an ideal direction"
Who is Toni Morrison?

• The central theme of Morrison’s

novels is the black American
experience; in an unjust society her
characters struggle to find themselves
and their cultural identity. Her use of
fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and
her rich interweaving of the mythic
give her stories great strength and
texture.
Why start with Autumn?

• Spring usually symbolizes the

beginning of things. To start with
autumn implies death and decay, the
end.
• She ends with summer, commonly
associated with life in full bloom, but
in her conclusion, there is death,
dissolution, destruction.
Pecola Breedlove

11 year old African American girl

Lonely and imaginative
Lives in an abusive home
Neglected and poor
Claudia MacTeer

9 year old African American girl

Serves as the narrator of sections of the
book
Sweet but tough little girl who stands up
for herself and others
Frieda MacTeer

10 year old African American girl

Older sister of Claudia
Knowledgeable and sensible older
sister
Pauline (Polly) Breedlove

Mother of Pecola
Works as a nanny/housekeeper for a
white family
Has an injured foot (deformity)
Finds more happiness in her work life
than in her home life
Cholly Breedlove

Pecola’s father
Polly’s husband
Angry, violent man
Had a childhood full of abandonment
and anger
Is abusive towards women
Mrs. MacTeer

Freida & Claudia’s mother

Hardworking, tough, but loving
 Symbolism
• Blue Eyes
Blue eyes seem to symbolize the cultural beauty
attributed to whiteness in America at the time.
Different characters respond to blue eyes in different
ways. Claudia, for example, resents the blue eyes of
her white dolls, viewing their association with beauty
ironically. For Pecola, however, blue eyes are
something to strive for. She believes that having blue
eyes would change the way other people see her,
giving her something white America values as
beautiful. Even more interestingly, she believes she
would see things differently through blue eyes, that
they would somehow give her the relatively carefree
life of a white, middle-class child.
We also like the idea that "blue" can refer to sadness.
When Pecola believes she has acquired blue eyes at
the end of the novel, we might understand her as
actually having the saddest eyes of anyone in the
novel.
 Symbolism
• Dandelions
These flowers represent Pecola herself in the
beginning of the story.
Pecola's self-perceived ugliness allows her to
identify with dandelions, which are things considered
ugly by others. Pecola does not see the dandelions
as ugly, which introduces the idea that beauty might
be a matter of one's perception, not something
inherent in the object being looked at. Unfortunately,
Pecola's obsession with external beauty standards
keeps her from realizing this about herself.
The "yellow heads" of the dandelions also connect
symbolically to the blond haired girls, who represent
the white beauty standard, and explains Pecola's
confusion as to why the black women throw them
away.
 Symbolism
• Marigolds
At the end of the book, Claudia and Freida plant
marigolds seeds as an offering to God in order to let
Pecola’s baby live.
The seeds never sprout just as Pecola’s baby does
not live. The Baby is born premature and dies after
birth.
At the end of the book it also says that some soils
are not meant to nurture all flowers. This is referring
to the town’s cruel treatment and abandonment of
Pecola, a young girl who needed help from anyone
who was willing to give it.
 Narration
• First Person – Claudia
Claudia provides the bulk of the narration in the
book. This is convenient because she actually
witnessed what happened to Pecola as well as the
way the town spoke about her, and she makes sure
to include snippets of these conversations in her
narration.
Claudia narrates her story from two different
perspectives. In the Prologue and final chapter, the
adult Claudia uses the past tense to describe events
that happened back in 1941 in Lorain. But for the
bulk of her narration, Claudia uses the present tense
to describe these events, which has the effect of
showing us things through her 9-year-old eyes.
 Narration
• Third Person (Omniscient)
In the chapters that deal with the Breedloves and
the one featuring Soaphead Church, the narrator
isn't Claudia, but rather a third-person omniscient
narrator. This speaker is capable of moving through
extreme distances of space and time. This is the
voice that tells us the long history of the Breedloves'
storefront, details Cholly's early sexual humiliation,
and recounts Soaphead's journey from the West
Indies to America.
The third-person style is useful in a book with so
many complex characters. It allows us to watch their
lives unfold over time, in ways we could never do if
Claudia were the sole narrator.
The Title
The title has at least two meanings, referring
both to Pecola's desire to change the way
she is seen and the way sees.
Let's deal with the easy one first. As a black
child growing up in1940’s America, Pecola
associates beauty with being white and
having blue eyes. Pecola seems to be OK
with her nose and mouth, even her hair – but
her eyes. She thinks that if she could just
have those bright blue eyes, she'd become
truly beautiful and no one would ever tease
her at school, her parents wouldn't fight
anymore, and she'd never be sad again.
• Now, onto the second aspect of the title – Pecola's
desire to see the world differently. Pecola believes
that if her eyes were blue, she would begin to see
the world the way that white children do – she
would get to be innocent, she would experience a
loving family.

A third idea plays with the meaning of "blue" as

"sad." Pecola's eyes already are the bluest in the
book, in that they are the saddest eyes, possessed
by the most tragic character in the novel.
Writing Style
• Lyrical and Featuring Multiple
Perspectives
Morrison is famous for her use of
fragmented narrative with multiple
perspectives. Her use of different
narrative styles – alternating between
first- and third-person omniscient –
gives her the freedom to do two
interesting things. On the one hand,
she uses Claudia to convey the
thoughts and perceptions of a
9-year-old girl, giving the novel an
aspect of innocence.
• On the other hand, the use of
third-person omniscient narration
allows the novel to cover broad
sweeps of time and space – like when
we get the history of the Breedloves'
storefront or stories about Soaphead
Church's white ancestors. This opens
the novel up, giving it historical depth,
and allowing us to see how the racial
issues of the past are still impacting
these characters in the 20th century.