The Bluest Eye

Rating:
Summary: a crime against humanity
Review: People (especially Jews) are fond of calling the Holocaust "the greatest crime against humanity." After reading The Bluest Eye, I will give slavery that honor. The Bluest Eye, when it was originally published, was probably the African-American equivalent of Portnoy's Complaint. The airing of the dirty laundry - quite literally - that many thought better to be kept hidden... at least from outsiders, who have so little respect for us anyway. Obviously some Amazon reviewers are repulsed by the scatological descriptions. No, it is not pretty. And it is not really "about" Pecola Breedlove or her family or classmates other townspeople of Lorain, Ohio. It is about America. That dirty little underside of American history, like dirty underwear. It is the aftermath, the results of slavery, the deep and profound self-loathing that comes from everybody hating you, that in the year 2000 we are finally beginning to shed. Forget blue-eyed baby dolls. Today we have the Williams sisters (you go, girl) and other shining models of beautiful blackness. Maybe The Bluest Eye, obviously required reading in many American Lit classes, helped bring that about just a little bit.

Rating:
Summary: Not for everyone
Review: This is more of a comment than a review. I read The Bluest Eye a few years ago. It's a quick read and depressing. My comment is in response to some other reviews on this page. Whether a reviewer enjoys a book or not, s/he should comment on the content as well as the feelings invoked. If I read a review from someone who didn't seem to have read the book, it isn't very useful to me. The idea that Toni Morrison targets white people in this book is wrong. Anyone who reads this book will notice the scarcity of white characters. Pecola suffers at the hands of relatives and other children, most of whom happen to be black (with one exception). Mainly she suffers from the idea that she isn't beautiful because she doesn't fit a certain image. I'm sorry to say that the concept of beauty Morrison portrays is all too real. Disbelief in that concept of beauty doesn't lessen it.

Rating:
Summary: mediocre
Review: This is about a little girl who wishes that she could somehow change her appearences so that she would feel better about herself and liked better by others. The writing style is a very unique and although I enjoyed the variety of viewpoints it often left me wanting to know a little more about all the characters.

Rating:
Summary: The Bluest Eyes
Review: An unbelievable touch of reality...one that few will ever come face-to-face with, let alone actual admit. Once I started reading, I could not stop until it was over. Painful, yet so true, honest, yet so shameful - many of the words have been said, heard and thought by others for years, yet no one wants to admit them. Ms. Morrison's details of each character, their background and appearance are all to hard to ignore and without it one would not be able to truly relate. A sad account of one child, one family and one community's affliction with their own race. All people of color could benefit from this tale of fictional-reality and perhaps find where it is we all went wrong. It is so easy to place the blame on each other, when in actuality it has been learned; taught, nurtured and accepted...black is beautiful. We say it, but how many of us truly believe it?

Rating:
Summary: this book is garbage
Review: white bashing at its best Im sick and tired of whites being blamed for blacks behavior start taking responsibility for your own peoples actions this book is trash I would rather clean the toilet than suffer through another morrison garbage read

Rating:
Summary: A worthy predecessor to Beloved
Review: I can understand Morrison's dissatisfaction as an artist with this book, as it is less mature than her later works, but I myself feel no disappointment towards it. I was interested in this book because I *loved* Beloved. I was curious to see whether Morrison's earlier novels worked on so many levels. I was pleasantly surprised. I guess nothing can live up to Beloved, but I found this as poetic, lyrical, and emotionally wrought as Beloved. I guess it would have been better for me if I hadn't read it just to "compare," but what's done is done. Morrison's prose, in fact, was just as evocative in the 1970s. The story, which could so easily have been transformed into a sordid tabloid-esque travesty a la VC Andrews, is done tastefully (as much so as any tale of incest & poverty can be). In a society as "look-ist" as ours, the Breedloves -- for this is their story, not just Pecola's-- is as relevant as any: sadly, in America, beauty can make or break a soul, even if they have the bluest of blue eyes.

Rating:
Summary: Not ...
Review: After reading "Beloved", I tried really hard to like this book, but just couldn't. I was so relieved when it ended. As other reviewers suggest, it is disjointed, boring in parts, and simply not a very good read. I'd encourage readers to try other Morrison books though, she has come a long way since this one.

Rating:
Summary: Dullest Book I ever read
Review: This book doesn't even deserve a star at all. The only reason that I didn't stop reading it in the first few pages was that I always thought it would get better on the next page- but it never did. It's all about sex- in any form other than normal sex between two married people. Rape, insest, malestation, sademy, prostetution, and obsessions with little girls. This book is an extremly slow read and many of the story lines are stated and abandoned, never being finished. Oprah's book club was all raving about how life altering this book is- how it will change the way you think about things- BUT IT DOESN'T. And it doesn't even come close. The only way that this book would change the way that you feel about something would be to hit yourself over the head with it to feel pain.

Rating:
Summary: Blue Eyes Are Not the Answer
Review: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison's first novel, is redolent with imagery and the richness of language that her later books also reveal. We discover, through the eyes of children, the heartbreaking story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven year old Black girl whose physical ugliness shapes her place in the world. Shunned by her classmates and made fun of, she is befriended by two sisters who feel sorry for her and set about trying to change the course of her life. Pecola's lack of beauty is an extension of her family which has no unity and no core of values to lean on. Her longing for blue eyes suggests her craving for the beauty that exists for all the blond and blue-eyed children and explains her love of Shirley Temple and similar stars, but deep inside, reveals the tragic lack of self-love and the almost universal belief of her times that Black was not beautiful. When a devastating event shakes her entire world, Pecola tries to maintain her equilibrium with her belief that her eyes will really turn blue. However, the changes that occur, are far less attractive and incredibly more destructive. As with all her books, Toni Morrison has created a poetic, if tragic, view of the world. In Pecola's life we can experience the tragedy of not having a true place in life, and share the shattering of disillusionment that can only be felt in childhood.

Rating:
Summary: This should be required reading before leaving high school.
Review: I was raised by parents in San Francisco and never knew anything about racial hatred. "Along with the idea of romantic love... physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yes, quoted from the book, it tells it all. I cried.