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Avg. Rating: 3.88
Through Pecola's Blue Eyes...
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison?s first novel, is a spectacular rendition of what our world truly thinks about appearance. With very vivid detail and meaningful language, Morrison puts her soul out there for everyone to see. Morrison opened up my eyes to the painful outcomes our society can create. This book kept me turning the pages so I could see what happened next. Morrision?s use of language made me feel like I was right there beside each character listening to all their stories. Morrision?s organization of the book sets you up to the ultimate understanding at the end of the book. As a lover of fiction this is a novel that I will never forget. It offers us poetic language and striking detail that takes us on a journey through life.
This novel tells us the story of young Pecola Breedlove who desperately yearns for blue eyes to gain acceptance and love. Everyone torments this young, African American girl, in her hometown of Lorain, Ohio because she is unsightly and does not look like the symbol of beauty, which is blond hair and blue eyes. Pecola lives in an abandoned store and has a very disturbed home life. Her drunken father is very abusive, her mother is a strong woman, but is in love with the symbol of beauty and her brother always seems to run away. Each of these characters has a devastating effect on Pecola?s destruction on her quest for blue eyes. Pecola?s life changes profoundly for the worse. She is inevitably shattered by the negative thoughts of people all around her and destroyed by the emotional and sexual abuse from her family.
This novel expresses some serious themes that are present in our society today. Morrision presents to us the notion of black self-hatred and what society does to people who want to be beautiful. It hurts me to know that the only thing Pecola prayed for was blue eyes. Pecola just wanted to be loved and capture the attention her family was not providing her with. This is a very good book to read if you are feeling down about your appearance because it makes you realize that you cannot go by what society thinks is beautiful, you have to go by what is on the inside. Pecola was a beautiful girl on the inside but nobody realized that because everyone was too caught up with what beauty is on the outside. Pecola hated herself because she wanted to be just like Shirley Temple and all the grown-ups emphasized this too. The lesson in this story is people need to be true to themselves and know who they really are and not be caught in the deadly trap of the media or society.
If you like serious, touching, make you want to cry, fiction novels, then this is the book for you. I think anyone can learn something from its deep and somewhat hidden themes. This novel touched me and made me want to go find Pecola and give her a big hug and say to her ?I will be your friend.? This novel threw me into a whirlwind of different emotions. At times I just wanted to cry and at other times I was completely raging. There were times when I wanted to scream at the characters and there were times where I just wanted to put myself in Pecola?s head and defend her and make things right. This book should reveal to you how bad things can get in our society and that we need to stop them from happening. I think that this is what Morrison was trying to get across. Everyone needs to realize these things and then we can work on changing them for the better.
Magical, disturbing, insightful, sad, and worth every cent
I'm not normally one for anything but a bestseller, tending to stick with things like "Da Vinci Code" or "Bark of the Dogwood," but lately I've been veering off into what is unchartered territory for me. "The bluest Eye" is one such example. Brought to life by Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye is an extremely powerful story that tackles some of the difficult challenges people face to this day. I thought the tale was an unforgettable one. Toni Morrison uses just enough detail to let The Bluest Eye stick out in a person's mind for a lifetime. The way the author writes allows a person to understand things very clearly. The Bluest Eye is the story of Pecola Breedlove, a very unfortunate looking, young black girl living in Ohio in the early 1900's. Pecola's one main wish in life is to have blue eyes, hence the title of the book. She spends her entire childhood praying for these blue eyes so she may look like Shirley Temple and the other blonde haired, blue eyed, white girls in school. Throughout the story, are small tales of Pecola's family past, and explanations of why her life is so horrible. The various tales are written in block form, though, and therefore are very easily distinguishable from one another. As I read this book, I was saddened by the horrific events that this poor girl has to encounter, and shocked by the way people treated African American girls in the past. This story relates to many problems teenagers, adults and children still have now days in our society. Racism, family problems and loving your heritage are highly discussed issues in this book.
I would recommend The Bluest Eye to anyone interested in reading books that tell true life stories. Though I thoroughly enjoyed this book, not everyone will. If you are not the type of person drawn into stories that may make you feel depressed or upset at the way things used to be, then I would not tell you to read this book. To like this book, you have to enjoy reading back to what things were like a couple decades ago, and the hardships people went through in public situations and at home. Also recommended: BARK OF THE DOGWOOD--A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens.
Well-written, extremely depressing subject
After reading this book twice, once for a school assignment and once for my own pleasure, it successfully depressed me enough both times so I won't read it again. I can't say the book was bad, but I can't say I enjoyed it either. It was just one bad thing after another. I just have mixed feelings about this book altogether.
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