A Fantastical, Yet Disturbing, Read

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	• The Bluest Eye (Oprah's Book Club) Toni Morrison Plume, 2000 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 498 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Powerful, masterful

Toni Morrison is a tremendous writer who really makes me think, and this book was no exception. The details of the story are absolutely tragic- a young girl is raped by her father and bears his baby, who dies. Meanwhile, she's so full of socially-created self-hatred that she wishes for blue eyes, which she comes to believe she's been given. The writing in this book is astonishing. Morrison has managed to produce something more than unmitigated sadness, even though so many details of the story are tremendously sad. This is a powerful book.

A Connection to Literature

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison's first novel, is filled with so much emotion. Before reading this novel for my honors literature class, I had never really connected to the literature. While reading The Bluest Eye, I thoroughly bonded with the literature and went on the emotional roller coaster Morrison displays in her poetic style of writing. Often I would find myself questioning how and why could such terrible things happen to a little girl so misfortunate like Pecola Breedlove.

This novel really broadens my view of literature and the messages the author try to get across. After this enjoyable read I feel like I no longer have to struggle to find symbolic meanings, but instead feel the mood the author is trying to put in their audience's mind. This novel really touches every emotion there is and it was an enjoyable read for me. It gives you the feeling that you are really connecting with the characters and their feelings in novels. I would definitely recommend Toni Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye.

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A Fantastical, Yet Disturbing, Read

I have read many excellent books in my time, including modern novels and disturbing novels. But never have I read such a disturbing piece of splendidly crafted modern literature. William Faulkner is splendidly crafted, but not particularly disturbing. Charles Dickens is disturbing, but he is not modern. Toni Morrison, though, is the only novelist I have ever had the pleasure to read who has managed to combine both characteristics to create something fresh, if not pleasantly so.
One of the aspects of the story I enjoyed most was the way in which the perspective jumps from person to person, and the narrative from first to third person and back again. The story begins with first person narratives from Claudia, who does not really have a part in the story, but it creates a feel for the atmosphere surrounding the story. It then goes on to describe in third person the adult Breedloves and their lives, past and present. I won't spoil the end; you have to read it yourself to feel the intense emotions that can only be experienced by reading it. But the jumps in perspective, and the slight confusion they create help to encourage the confusion that should rightly surround this novel: does this really exist? How can we have allowed it to continue?
A word of caution: this book is not for the faint of heart, or stomach. Many people do not realize that books should be screened and rated the same way movies are, if one's scruples demand one not read/view certain scenes. There are reviewers who were shocked and sickened by this book, and thought it repulsive. I found the details only added to the emotion overdrive I was obliged to suffer in order to finish this book. But I will never forget it, and that is truly the mark of an excellent novel. I highly recommend it.

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A Story Everyone Needs To Read!

This is my first Toni Morrison novel. At times difficult, at times you have to put the text down and think about what you have just read. A beautifully written story that really hits home and really makes you think. As a white man, reading this book at this time (a time when we are close to electing a black man as president), it made me realize how far we have come as a country; and yet it made me think about how far we have yet to go. This is an important "don't miss" novel. If at all possible try to read it in one or two sittings. Ms. Morrison has done a masterful job!

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The Bluest Eye

I still remember the quote I heard that first fueled my desire to start reading The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. "If my mother was in a singing mood, it wasn't so bad. She would sing about hard times, bad times, and somebody-done-gone-and-left-me-times. But her voice was so sweet and her singing-eyes so melty I found myself longing for those hard times, yearning to be grown without `a thin di-I-ime to my name.' I looked forward to the delicious time when `my man' would leave me, when I would `hate to see that evening sun go down...' `cause then I would know `my man has left this town' Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother
s voice took all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet." Immediately, I was struck by the poetry of her writing. The way she personified misery with greens and blues and the set up of her oxymoron "sweet pain" was amazing to me. Toni Morrison's unique style and evocative imagery appeals to readers of all kinds.
Every sentence of the book portrays a new image. The first sentence of chapter one, "Autumn" and already readers are intrigued. Morrison writes, "Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel." The reader finds themselves pondering the unusual simile of nuns and lust, and the ironic juxtaposition of nuns and drunken men. The tone of the sentence helps to set up the over all mood of the passage.
Throughout her novel, Morrison utilizes similar stupefying creative language that allow her readers not only to imagine and create pictures, but allow them to feel, and evokes emotion. She uses several metaphors, for instance, the longing for blue eyes, by Pecola, an African American girl who is looked down upon because she is ugly. Pecola believes that blue eyes are the representation of the beauty associated with the white middle to upper class. Morrison also uses the growth marigolds to represent the health and growth of Pecola's baby. When the marigolds don't bloom, Pecola's baby does not live.
With her use of figurative language, Morrison appeals to her readers pathos. She describes Pecola's want for blue eyes, "It had occured to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different...Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time." The visual imagery of a young girl hoping, longing for a certain color of eyes makes the readers sympathize, and feel pity for her Pecola. They long with her, that someday, she may indeed get her blue with beauty eyes.
Readers are sure to fall in love with the writing of the novel, and have their hearts broken by the plot itself. Continuously interesting, and beautiful, The Bluest Eye draws readers in, consumes their emotions and is sure to evoke all kinds of emotions.

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Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.

It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

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