The Bluest Eye [Paperback]

Toni Morrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1994

The story of Pecola Breedlove profiles an eleven-year-old black girl growing up in an America that values blue-eyed blondes and the tragedy that results from her longing to be accepted. Reprint. NYT.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000: Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.

Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.

There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.

This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

No doubt spurred on by Morrison's winning of the 1993 Nobel prize for literature, Plume is releasing trade paperback editions of her novels, beginning with this title (LJ 11/1/70). These editions also include a new afterword by the author.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Plume (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452273056
• ISBN-13: 978-0452273054
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (542 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #140,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

178 of 186 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful story, May 8, 2000

By 

Roz Levine - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bluest Eye (Hardcover)

The Bluest Eye, the story of a young girl's tortured life, is not a story you can "like". It reads like your worst nightmares, very disturbing and very graphic. It takes a strong stomach to get through this novel. But, this is just what makes the book a masterpiece, that Ms Morrison can draw such powerful feelings from readers. Toni Morrison has grown as a writer. But this book, her first, takes you to a world most didn't know existed and evokes almost unbearably strong emotions. A must read for lovers of great literature. This is not a book you read for pleasure. It's a book you read for the power of the written word.

104 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly good..., September 28, 2001

By 

Dianna Johnston "Compulsive Reader" (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bluest Eye (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

I will admit to some apprehension prior to picking up this book. I had heard that Toni Morrison, although a brilliant author, is a little hard to understand. And there's nothing I hate more than wading through a book full of abstract poetic descriptions and thick symbolism that goes right over my head. Despite all this, I pulled up my bootstraps and dived right in. What was to follow was quite a surprise.

The Bluest Eye tell the story of the Breedloves, a poor black family living in Lorain, Ohio in the early 1940s. Each chapter tells something different -- the journey of the dad, Cholly, from curious young boy to a drunk and unloving father; the history of the mother, Pauline, and her dreams of movie stars and romance; and the childhood of the children, Sammy and Pecola, and how they deal with life as they've been given. Full of hardships and unfairness, the Breedloves have been through tough times most of their lives. And young Pecola's wishes of blue eyes and blonde hair in order to be loved and respected by others is a testament to the unjust world they lived in.

My fear is that this review won't do the book justice. There is so much written here that left me with feelings of sadness and horror, but also of hope -- hope that our world now has moved on from the racism of the past and will eventually surpass it. The Bluest Eye is highly moving and sensitive, and written in an addictive easy and lyrical style. I may have missed an important part of the book, any underlying symbolism or meaning that Toni Morrison was trying to convey -- I don't know. All I do know is The Bluest Eye is a darn good story, and I'm extremely glad I read it.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars beautiful and/but very sad, April 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bluest Eye (Hardcover)

Like all of Morrison's work, Bluest Eye is beautifully crafted. It follows a more clearly linear path than most of her more recent writings. But (as is appropriate for its subject matter) it doesn't have the sense of redemption or spiritual uplift that graces much of her other books, especially Song of Solomon. Read it, learn from it and appreciate it, but don't count on it to cheer you up.