“Since why is difficult to handle,
one must take refuge in how.”
discussing between Claudia and Frieda
Claudia and Frieda, the narrators of The Bluest Eye, guide
us into the story and establish the framework of memory
that creates the reflective tone of the play. As adults,
Claudia and Frieda try to understand why the terrible
events they remember happened, but they cannot.
Instead, they tell the story of Pecola's life, hoping that
putting what happened into words will allow them to
understand it. In telling Pecola's story, they find it
necessary to also tell her parents' stories, which contain
the foundations of her life. By using the tangible and
immediate as a means to describe something too complicated and fraught to be easily grasped, they use the how
of Pecola's life to approach the why of her disintegration.
“Quiet as it's kept, there were no
marigolds in the fall of 1941.”
discussing between Claudia and Frieda
In a community and a culture where the adults are not acting as caretakers for their children,
children must take responsibility for each other. Claudia and Frieda look after Pecola when she
lives with them. They continue to feel responsible for her after she has been raped and
impregnated by her father. In doing so, they shoulder a burden that should be carried by the
entire community. They give up hope of buying a bicycle and instead, in an attempt to save
Pecola’s unborn baby, plant the marigold seeds they have been selling to earn money. Their
offering, their prayers, and their magic song may be childish, but the girls make a sacrifice of
their own comfort and privilege, something that no one else in their community is willing to do
for Pecola. They link their lives to hers and hold themselves accountable for her fate.
“I had only one desire: to dismember it.”
discussing between Claudia and Frieda
Claudia and Frieda are given baby dolls for Christmas. Frieda and Pecola adore these white
dolls and Shirley Temple, thinking of the dolls and the little girl with the golden ringlets and
rosy cheeks as examples of ideal children. When asked why she loves Shirley Temple so much,
Pecola says, "She's pretty and talented and people love her." Shirley Temple seems to be all that
Pecola is not, and Pecola loves her for it.
Claudia, on the other hand, hates Shirley Temple
in the same way that she hates the blonde,
blue-eyed dolls she is given for Christmas.
Claudia doesn't know why she should love such a
doll, so instead of caring for it, she dissects it,
thinking maybe she'll find "what the world
thought was so wonderful about pink skin and
yellow hair." Claudia is angry that Shirley Temple
gets to dance with Mr. Bojanles, a black man, "my
friend, my uncle, my daddy, who ought to have
been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me." It
seems to Claudia that the world likes little white
girls best, and so the dolls become a symbol of
that preference and a symbol of how she, as a little
black girl, can never be loved the most.
Claudia distrusts the "magic" through which little
white girls are able to win the hearts of adults, but
Pecola believes that if she looked even a little bit like them, people might think she was pretty
and would love and take care of her. Claudia does not believe that whiteness equals goodness
and senses the racism inherent in that assumption. A pervasive element of Pecola’s tragedy is
her internalization of the disregard with which her community treats her
“When I think of autumn,
I think of somebody with
hands who does not want
me to die.”
Claudia and Frieda's Mama
At the beginning of the play, Claudia gets sick. Mama
scolds and may seem harsh with her, but Claudia
knows that her anger is directed at the sickness she is
trying to cure. Her first concern is Claudia’s and Frieda’s
health: physical, emotional, and moral. Mama is a source of
security and strength for Claudia and Frieda because she has always been
the steadfast center of their lives. Despite the scolding and the whippings, they know she will do
anything for them. Claudia’s and Frieda’s Mama embodies the love and security that Pecola’s
family lacks. In the play, the unconditional love Mama provides for her daughters contrasts with
Mrs. Breedlove’s disdain for Pecola. Their family relationships parallel the community support
that is present for Claudia and Frieda but not for Pecola.
“Don't nobody need three quarts of milk.
Henry Ford don't need three quarts of milk.”
Claudia and Frieda's Mama
When Pecola comes to stay at their house, Mama agrees to provide for her but will not be
imposed upon. When she sees that three quarts of milk have been drunk in one day, she
assumes Pecola drank them and throws a fit, showing Pecola that she can rely on her only if she
does not ask too much. Ultimately, no one person can take the place of a community in
supporting an individual. Because she is poor, because her parents are not from Lorain, and
because her family is labeled "peculiar," Pecola does not have the support of her community.
Mama shows her some kindness, Claudia and Frieda make friends with her, but her place as a
part of the town is not secure. Eventually the community abandons her.
“I didn't mind that he sometimes
drank too much, 'cause it seem like
we was all the time laughing.”
Pecola's mother.
Mrs Breedlove narrates parts of The Bluest Eye, and her memories
provide the context for Pecola's experiences. While Claudia and
Frieda are the primary narrators for the events that occur in their lifetimes, Mrs. Breedlove’s voice
is heard when the play moves into the past. Her oral history of her family helps explain the pain
and violence of Pecola’s life. Mrs. Breedlove’s unhappiness at Pecola’s birth instigates Pecola’s
self-loathing and conviction of her own ugliness. Mrs. Breedlove describes the traumatic experiences of Cholly’s youth with empathy. Her point of view adds dimension to Cholly, who would
otherwise appear to be only violent and destructive. Mrs. Breedlove’s memories provide a picture
of the circumstances of her family and her community that produce Pecola’s tragic life.
“I settled down to being ugly.”
Pecola's mother.
When Mrs. Breedlove was young, she dreamed of falling in love. She wanted to be carried away
by a man who possessed, "tenderness, strength, and a promise of rest," and one day Cholly came
along and swept her off her feet. He kissed the injured foot she had thought made her unworthy
of attention, and they fell in love. She followed him to Ohio and settled down to live the simple,
happy, love-filled life of her daydreams.
When she was five months pregnant with her first child, Mrs. Breedlove lost her front tooth on a
piece of candy. She'd learned from going to the movies that to be happy you had to wear pretty
clothes and have a lovely smile. Missing a tooth, irreparably flawed according to Hollywood
values, she gave up on her hopes of glamour or even happiness. The reality of her Depression-era life in a small, dusty, Midwest town did not measure up to the standard of her dreams, so
she told herself she was ugly and worthless.
“In her presence, we became
just a little bit dirtier, a little
bit poorer, a little bit more
invisible.”
Maureen
Maureen embodies the problematic correlation
between beauty and worth. Because she is “cute”,
she is adored and privileged. She is haughty and
capricious, but people like her regardless of her
behavior. Even after Maureen turns on Pecola,
calling her ugly and accusing her of seeing her father
naked, Pecola admires her.
“I am cute! And you are ugly!"
Maureen
Maureen is considered beautiful in large part because of the characteristics that make her look
white: her fair skin, her long hair, and her green eyes. Her wealth also makes her seem to
Claudia more like the white girls at school. Her whiteness (and hence her beauty and rank) is
unattainable for Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola, but they see its power nonetheless. Pecola's wish
for blue eyes presents a pathological extreme of the desire to share that power. Pecola imagines
that if she had blue eyes people would not do bad things in front of her, and Maureen's charmed
life seems to support that idea.
Her perceived proximity to whiteness attracts people to her, but since she is still black, Claudia
and Frieda are freer to express their hatred of her privilege than that of the rich white girls
at school. Her position between the two races also provides Claudia and Frieda fodder for an ugly
version of her name: Meringue Pie, which is brown outside and white inside. Maureen is a safer
and more accessible target for their anger than actual rich white girls. (Morrison gives those
girls, whose lives are very foreign to Claudia and Frieda, only a passing mention.) However
cute and privileged, Maureen is not a rich white girl, and her similarities to Claudia and Frieda
place her within their reach.
“I even think now that the land of the entire country
was hostile to marigolds that year.”
In telling Cholly's story, Morrison expands on the "why" of the novel's tragedies by explaining
the "how." She does not excuse Cholly's violence, but she refuses to isolate his actions from his
community's failings. That Morrison includes Cholly’s history at all indicates her intent that
readers regard him not as a mindless, unaccountable monster but as a damaged and wounded
man whose inability to confront and repair his pain has tragic consequences. In light of his past,
his role of abuser and exploiter is dispiriting but hardly surprising
“Never did he once consider
directing his hatred toward
the hunters.
Such an emotion would have
destroyed him.”
Cholly
Cholly is a living lesson that we are all repositories of our experience, that the cruelties visited
upon us play out in our conduct. Morrison offers the horrifying scene of Cholly and Darlene --
interrupted, threatened, and humiliated by a pair of white hunters who delight in terrifying a
black man for sport -- as part of the "how" of Cholly's failure to build a strong and nurturing
relationship with his wife and children.
After Aunt Jimmy's funeral, emboldened by the sudden loss of anyone to watch over him and
by the privileges of his bereavement, Cholly seeks out the girl he likes, Darlene. She is an exciting distraction from the loss of Aunt Jimmy, and their time together might have been a sweet
transition from childhood to adulthood. They shift naturally from the games of children --
throwing grapes and running through the gully -- to a gentle exploration of each others' bodies.
Cholly is caught between his sadness and his desire; his insecurity and uncertainty are coupled
with a fierce need for affection and closeness. He is mourning the loss of Aunt Jimmy and his
childhood as he embraces Darlene and the possibilities of adulthood.
The indelibly shocking arrival of the two white hunters damages Cholly. They destroy the
tenderness which he had felt with Darlene, and, worse, they poison his experience of the world
thereafter. He is left stranded, with neither the gentleness of a child nor the power of a man.
What might have proved the beginning of a caring and powerful maturity has been derailed,
leaving Cholly a wounded man whose inability to confront and repair his pain has tragic consequences: his anguish is perpetuated and its sickening ripples radiate outward.
"All civilizations derive from
the white race, none can exist
without its help, and a society
is great and brilliant only so far
as it preserves the blood of the
noble group that created it."
Soaphead Church
Soaphead Church is a misanthrope, a label that allows him to
feel perversely noble on the rare occasions that he touches,
helps, or counsels a human being. He grew up thinking, in the
manner of his family and ancestors, that blackness was ugly
and that whiteness was noble. Because of this wide gulf
between this received "wisdom" and the black man he sees in
the mirror, he hates himself for not being white enough, and he
hates other blacks for being "too" black. He is trapped in the negativity of his self image and in
his limited, warped view of the world, and he therefore loathes all human beings. This loathing
manifests itself in a disgust for the human body:
"He abhorred flesh on flesh. Body odor, breath odor, overwhelmed him. The sight of dried
matter in the corner of the eye, decayed or missing teeth, ear wax, blackheads, moles,
blisters, skin crusts -- all the natural excretions and protections the body was capable of --
disquieted him. His attentions therefore gradually settled on those humans whose bodies
were least offensive -- children."
"I have prayed now going on a year, but
I have hope still...To have something
wonderful as that happen would have to
take a long, long time."
pecula
The changing seasons in The Bluest Eye extend the metaphor of Pecola's coming of age and passage
through puberty. Her entrance into womanhood is met by an incestuous rape, unwanted pregnancy,
and social rejection. In the afterward to the book, Toni Morrison says, "In exploring the social and
domestic aggression that could cause a child to literally fall apart, I mounted a series of rejections,
some routine, some exceptional, some monstrous, all the while trying hard to avoid the complicity in
the demonization process Pecola was subjected to."
In the Autumn section, Pecola moves out of childhood quickly with no comfort from her own
mother. She starts menstruating while staying with Claudia and Frieda. She does not know why she
is bleeding, and Frieda tells her, "It just means you can have a baby." When Pecola asks how, Fredia
responds, "Somebody has to love you." But when Pecola asks "How you do that?" no one knows.
In Winter, Pecola's friendship with Claudia and Frieda develops. When Maureen Peal walks home
from school with the girls, Pecola is part of a community, unlike before. The girls talk about hair and
the movies, but their companionship does not last long. The girls get into a fight and Claudia and
Frieda feel the need to stand up for Pecola by calling Maureen "six-finger-dog-tooth-meringue-pie."
Maureen's rejection of Pecola represents the continual rejection Pecola receives from everyone but
Claudia and Frieda.
In Spring, Pecola is raped by her father, Cholly. The event ruptures Pecola's adolescence, tearing her
away from childhood and into adult sexuality she is not ready for. Her life before the rape was
certainly troubled, but after the rape, she is disconnected from the process of coming of age.
In Summer, a pregnant Pecola turns to Soaphead Church, asking him to answer the prayer God has
ignored: to give her blue eyes. When her baby dies before it is born, Pecola takes refuge in a world of
her own creation, discussing her beautiful blue eyes with a friend who does not exist. Like the
marigolds which do not grow, Pecola is lost to the world, trapped between childhood and adulthood,
unable to be anything but broken.
"And people would have to be nice and the teacher
would see me, they would really look at me in my
eyes and say, look at pretty-eyed Pecola."
Pecola is defenseless against the violence and brutal remarks thrown at her by her schoolmates and
family. The community in Lorain treats the Breedlove family poorly and blames them for their own
misfortune. Even Pecola's mother acts as if she does not exist.
When Pecola is impregnated by her father, shame and blame are placed on her alone; no one takes
responsibility for the many ways that her family and community have failed her. At the end of the
play, Claudia tells how the community continues to be indifferent towards Pecola's helplessness,
saying:
"I want them blue so people don't do ugly things in
front of me and I stop being invisible."
Race and Beauty
Pecola equates blue eyes with the beauty and happiness of a white middle-class world to which
she does not belong. She sees Shirley Temple, Mary Jane, Dick and Jane, the white girls at school,
and even the little girl her mother cares for being treated nicely. When her parents fight, Pecola
tries to will herself invisible. In her mind, she can make her body vanish, but never her eyes. For
Pecola, those eyes are a reminder of what separates her from perfect, loveable Shirley Temple. She
believes that teachers would be nice to her and her parents would not fight in front of her, if only
she had blue eyes. She believes if she had blue eyes
people would actually look at her instead of looking past
her. Disappearing or having blue eyes, both impossible,
are the only improvements Pecola sees available to her
since all of her experiences of the possible have been
overwhelming painful. Because of this, she redefines
and retreats into a reality of her own that includes
receiving blue eyes.
A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror of the heart of
her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment. A little black girl steps over into
madness, a madness which protected her from us, simply because in the end, it bored us.
Pecola imagines all along that people would love her if she had blue eyes, but by the time she
believes she has blue eyes, she has retreated into her own private world. Pecola's community
knows neither how to help her nor how to stop hurting her. The importance of Pecola's story is
not that she, in particular, is failed by her community, but that she is representative of the
vulnerability of all young black girls.
"I want them blue so people don't do ugly things in
front of me and I stop being invisible."
Pecola equates blue eyes with the beauty and happiness of a white middle-class world to which
she does not belong. She sees Shirley Temple, Mary Jane, Dick and Jane, the white girls at school,
and even the little girl her mother cares for being treated nicely. When her parents fight, Pecola
tries to will herself invisible. In her mind, she can make her body vanish, but never her eyes. For
Pecola, those eyes are a reminder of what separates her from perfect, loveable Shirley Temple. She
believes that teachers would be nice to her and her parents would not fight in front of her, if only
she had blue eyes. She believes if she had blue eyes
people would actually look at her instead of looking past
her. Disappearing or having blue eyes, both impossible,
are the only improvements Pecola sees available to her
since all of her experiences of the possible have been
overwhelming painful. Because of this, she redefines
and retreats into a reality of her own that includes
receiving blue eyes.
No comments: