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The Bluest Eye
A lot or a little?
The parents' guide to what's in this book.
What parents need to know
Parents need to know that The Bluest Eye is the first novel by Nobel-prize winning author Toni Morrison. The book is a complex investigation of ideas of physical beauty among blacks and whites, and the ways racial attitudes, and other life experiences, damage the lives of these characters. Pecola Breedlove's self-hatred, and her wish for blue eyes, is an outgrowth of the way she's treated by her family and the world in which she lives. Sexual behavior is also very complicated in this novel from 1970. Sex acts and feelings between adults are described, and more than one grown man behaves inappropriately with young girls. There is also incest and domestic violence, including a sexual assault on an 11-year-old girl. Even teens may need some adult guidance to understand the world of the novel, in which many characters seem driven by emotional and sexual feelings they can't control.
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What's the story?
Two preteen sisters, Frieda and Claudia MacTeer, live with their parents in Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. MacTeer take on a lodger, whom the girls call Mr. Henry, and for a brief period they take in a quiet, unhappy 11-year-old classmate of Frieda and Claudia's named Pecola Breedlove. The girls befriend Pecola, who comes from a very troubled household; her father, Cholly, is often drunk, and he and her mother, Polly, fight physically and verbally. Pecola considers herself ugly and unworthy of love, and believes that if only she could have blue eyes, she would be pretty and happy. Readers learn the life events that have shaped Polly and Cholly, led them to marry, and led them ultimately to their unfortunate state. Because of the book's edgy content, there have been efforts to ban it from schools and libraries.
Is it any good?
THE BLUEST EYE is a poetic and complex investigation of racial, personal, and sexual feelings. These doomed characters are both beautifully realized as individual characters and richly representative of the concepts Toni Morrison explores with her story. As the point of view shifts from character to character, the reader comes to understand what drives them, and will be deeply engaged in their experiences and moved by their fates.
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