The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
4 ratings • 1 reviews
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
4 ratings • 1 reviews
The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways. With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.
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My first full-length Toni Morrison novel - can't wait to read more!!
* love is never any better than the lover. wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. there is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. the loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye. (206)
* 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. her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. her poverty kept us generous. even her waking dreams we used—to silence our own nightmares. and she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. we honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength. (205)
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