Rating: 
Summary: I just couldn't put this book down!
Review: This is the first novel by Toni Morrison I have ever read but it certainly won't be my last! She demonstrated the things that I have always believed makes a wonderful author, like their ability to create an image in your head. This is a talent Morrison has been heavily blessed with! At times I felt as though I truly knew the characters that perhaps they were even living and breathing beside me! Morrison enriches each phrase with colloquialism, similes, metaphors, and makes each sentence and phrase a delight itself. Another talent of Morrison is her ability to evoke an emotion inside you! At times I felt so strongly about what was happening, I believe I felt just as the
character it was happening to would have. She had me wanting to jump up and protest what was happening or feeling sorrowful for the lose or misfortune of the characters. Morrison also used more than one narrator which is sometimes difficult to accomplish without awkwardness but I think she did this well; by doing so she added aninteresting flare to the book!
I'm not a very avid reader but when reading The Bluest Eye I found myself eager to turn the page curious as to what would happen next! I read this book in connection to a school assignment and for once my work came easily; it was simple for me to discuss and reflect on what I'd read; because this novel has so many deeper meanings that really make you question yourself. I think this book literally dares you to explore the truth. It made me step back and think about what our society considers beautiful and how those people that aren't what that is are affected by it everyday! Pecola, the main character, is an African American and struggles everyday to combat her ugliness vs. society's view of beauty. She herself has always believed she is ugly and never once chose to contradict it!
Here is how Morrison described Pecola and her family's ugliness it, "You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question....And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it." To Pecola, and the society, to be beautiful means to have
blonde hair and blue eyes or ultimately to be white. Now imagine
how she herself the total opposite must feel. This leads to her idolization of Shirley Temple; this can be easily compared to how young girls of today idolize celebrities for there skinny figures and...This prolonged believe just eats her away until the point where she feels that even her own mother couldn't love her unless she herself were to be beautiful, to have blue eyes. Although her believe about her mother's feelings for her are not far from the truth, can you even begin to imagine the pain that a child must endure to create those feelings?
This novel brings you on a journey through the adolescence of young Pecola Breedlove. As mentioned earlier this difficult time in a young girl's life is only made worse, with her struggle with ugliness and yearning for beauty! As it is her life is already more difficult than the average young girl's. Pecola lives in poverty and filth with a drunk father, a mother that doesn't love her and a brother who constantly runs away. Imagine being in her situation and then add having no friends and being the subject of hatred from the entire town. I don't
believe it could get much worse, but somehow it does! Not only
does she experience emotional abuse as she is constantly ridiculed but she experiences physical and sexual abuse from her family.
Morrison invites all of us to examine our hidden bias in the matter of race and appearance. It's not a pleasant experience, but it is a meaningful one. I believe this book and it's message is one that will stay with you for a long time if not forever, and I think you'll be glad it does. Reading books such as this, along with reality and other media, is part of what educates our society about the issues and it's
important that we remain educated. I know that as I read this novel I just thought how lucky I am. I myself being a teenage girl have a tendency to take things for granted, and a lot of the time I think things are pretty bad. I'm personally grateful for writings such as The Bluest Eye that put things back into perspective and remind me how lucky I really am! I think that's something we all need from time to time.It's a great story and a real page turner, you'll be sure to fly through the pages in a flash! However, I also say this with some caution the story is not always pleasant, in fact its rather graphic and profane at times, and I would recommend the reader be at least fourteen years of age. This novel can be overwhelming and depressing but ultimately I'd say it's quite an enjoyable book. I know that the day I finished the book I was actually disappointed; because I had finished the book and there was no more of the story that had so easily enthralled me! I also personally see this as a story-line that may be more favorable towards women but that's only my opinion. Also because there is so much to be discussed in this book I'd say it is a wonderful choice for any group reading or book club. Once again I strongly recommend reading this book, find out what happens to young Pecola in her struggle through life!
Rating:
Summary: The Bluest Eye
Review: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is an intriguing book about why beauty gets wasted in America. The story revolves around many main characters, Claudia MacTeer, Claudia is a fighter she rebels against adults' cruelty towards children and against the black community's respect of white beauty standards, and she is nine years old. Frieda MacTeer is ten; she is Claudia's older sister, Frieda, like Claudia is independent and stubborn. But because she is closer to adolescence, Frieda is more vulnerable to her community's admiration of beauty refraining to the white color of your skin. Frieda is more educated about the adult world and sometimes more courageous than Claudia they live with their parents in Lorain, Ohio. Pecola is the protagonist of the novel. She is 11-year-old black girl. She thinks that she is very unattractive and that having blue eyes would make her beautiful. She inactively suffers the abuse of her mother, father, and classmates. She is lonely and has a great sense of imagination. Pecola's father, Cholly is reckless, but in a dangerous way. Having experienced early embarrassments, he takes out his anger on the women in his life. He is capable of both affection and fury, but as the story unfolds, rage gradually dominates. Pecola's mother, Pauline believes that she is ugly, resulting in her being lonely and cold. She has a distorted foot and visions herself as the willing victim of a dreadful marriage. She finds meaning in romantic movies and in her job caring for a rich white family, not her own. Pecola's father has tried to burn down his family's house, and Claudia and Frieda feel sorry for her. Pecola loves Shirley Temple; she is her symbol of the perfect girl, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that she is ugly. Pecola lived with the MacTeers for a little while but then decides to move back in with her family, and her life is difficult. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother is isolated, and the two of them often beat each other. Her brother, Sammy, regularly runs away. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be respected and loved and that her life would be altered. In the meantime, she frequently receives confirmation of her own sense of ugliness. The cashier at the candy store looks right through her when she buys candy; boys tease her, and a lighter skinned black girl, Maureen, who temporarily was friends with her makes fun of her too. She is wrongfully held responsible for killing a boy's cat and is results in being called many disrespectful names by his mother. We discover that Pecola's parents have both experienced complicated lives. Her mother, Pauline, has a deformed foot and has always felt secluded. Pauline gets absorbed in movies, which confirm her principle that she is ugly and that idealistic love is reserved for the beautiful. She encourages her husband's violent actions in order to strengthen her own role as a martyr. She feels at her best when she is at work, cleaning a wealthy white woman's home. She adores this house and despises her own. Cholly, Pecola's father, was abandoned by his parents and brought up by his great aunt, who passed away when he was in his young teens. He was humiliated by two white men who found him having sex for the first time and made him carry on while they watched. He ran away to find his father but was rejected by him. By the time he met Pauline, he was a rootless and wild young man. He feels trapped by his marriage and has lost interest in life completely. Claudia and Frieda discover that Pecola has been impregnated by her father (Cholly), and unlike the rest of the neighborhood, they wish for the baby to live. They give up the money they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe that if the flowers they planted live, so will Pecola's baby. The flowers refuse to grow, and Pecola's baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly rapes Pecola a second time and then deserts the family, he dies in a workhouse.
Pecola desires blue eyes so much that she visits a man named Soaphead Church. He was born Elihue Micah Whitcomb. he is a light-skinned West Indian. He hates all kinds of human touch, with the exception of the bodies of young girls. He promises that he will give her the bluest eyes (this is where the book receives its title) and she believes him no matter what other people say. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been completed and that she has the bluest eyes.
The Bluest Eye is an excellent book if you like touching reads about beauty and views on life. It is depressing and shocking in parts. There is a very interesting narration that is distorted when Morrison runs its sentences and then its words together these start off each chapter. There are two children, Dick and Jane. They are always happy and playing and it seems as though they have a perfect life. They never confirm that these children are white but the way she describes them leads us to believe they are. Many things keep you hooked on the book, and I personally couldn't put it down. Toni Morrison uses other skills of great literature plus there are so many little conflicts that surface throughout the book that when you get to the end of one, another tension is being created. I recommend this book to anyone who would like a new perspective on life and our beliefs as Americans.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: The Bluest Eye is a novel about a young girl named Pecola Breedlove who wants so badly to be loved and accepted by society. It takes place in 1941 in Lorain Ohio, a small town where the author Toni Morrison grew up. Pecola is a black girl growing up in an America where the love is for blonde, blue eyed children. She prays every night 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.
Living in an unstable family, with a mother who shows no love for her children, and a father who is a drunk, you wonder how things can ever get worse for this young girl. The author explains how her life is the way she is with sections explaining the mother and fathers upbringing. With no friends, and everyone in the town looking down upon her, it's no wonder things went the way they did. Two young girls, Claudia and Frieda in which partly tell the story of this saddened child, do befriend her, better than anyone else ever has. They stick up for her when the boys tease her about her skin and the fact that her father sleeps naked, they feel sorry for her when tragedy comes, but this still does nothing to save her from the curse she was born with, and the yearning she has for these blue eyes, which will destroy her.
The style in which Toni Morrison writes is like no one else. She pulls you in with her beautiful language and with many different stories all intertwining together it is like poetry. "And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even in her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares." (Morrison 205) Those few sentences of the book describe the way the town felt about her, and used her to make themselves feel better. Remember that the rest of the characters too were black, and none of them met up to the blonde, blue eyed standards beauty was held to. The human nature of this is something that goes on in many situations, but with Morrison's words it gets brought to life. It makes you go on after the read to think about the way we see society, and why we think some things are beautiful. Toni Morrison writes about this ugliness in a way so it doesn't seem so ugly anymore. The yearning of the blue eyes, the love, the beauty. With this writing she spreads the message of what our society is telling these black children who don't look like this. Society is basically telling them that they are ugly. With the story of this 11 year old girl this message is delivered loudly.
It is easy to tell that this is a great book, however there are many metaphors in which you may not pick up on that prove once again how well Morrison wrote this book. Two main metaphors are the way she describes marigolds and dandelions. Marigolds represent the way Pecola was thought of in society. "I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. The soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers." (Morrison 206) The land would not accept the flower as society would not accept Pecola. Dandelions represent how Pecola sees herself. She wonders why people think they are ugly and call them weeds. She thought they were pretty. This is how she sees herself, but if society wasn't going to like the flower, she wouldn't either.
At the beginning of each new section Morrison uses a unique technique where she takes out excerpts from the Dick and Jane stories, and makes them look like a complete long lost thought that has been running through someone's mind, without any spacing or punctuation. It represents how this idea of beauty had been driven into so many peoples heads, that when you think of the word beautiful, immediately you picture a blond blue eyed child. This idea has been in Pecola's head her whole life, and she'd do anything to change the way she is, to meet the expectations of beautiful.
I personally enjoyed reading this book, and learned a lot about the hardships African-Americans face every day in our society that is so quick to judge. Through the eyes of Pecola Breedlove, me and so many others who don't have first hand experience with this issue, can now express our sympathy for it and try to help stop the hate that is going on, even though many can't even see it. Beauty and love are two of the most beautiful things our world has to offer. Just because someone doesn't fit the description of one certain look, does not mean they are not beautiful, and therefore don't deserve to be loved.
I strongly recommend this book to any mature reader who enjoys reading a well written, strong novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Truely Impressive
Review: After reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, I was truly impressed by how she conveyed the stereotype that surrounds blond haired blue-eyed girls. She showed them as being an icon to others not just as someone to be jealous of, or someone that is not worthy of getting attention. She makes Pecola Breedlove, drink milk over and over again because she likes the Shirley Temple cup so much, if Pecola was so jealous of Shirley Temple than she would have not wanted to drink out of the cup. But instead pecola idolizes her and drinks out of it to feel closer to being the ideal body type. I think that Toni Morrison's intention for this book, was not to make people feel guilty for having this stereotype, or to make people sympathize for those that do not carry this "burden," but to prove to everyone that this type of stereotyping not only exists but it effects many people around the world.
Having this book be told by a small African- American girl, with a whole lot of family problems can make it seem a bit odd that she believes having blue eyes will solve all of her problems, because her appearance is not the only thing that needs to be fixed. If I were her I would be more concerned with not ending up like either one of my parents, do to their past history. Instead she has a worse fate brought on by the selfishness of her father, and the lack of love from her mother. But, in her mind none of it matters because she has blue eyes, or so she thinks.
I also really enjoyed this book, due to its time period and diversity in the characters Toni Morrison chose. I found it interesting how none main characters, could have such a huge impact upon the readers feeling toward this young girl. It made you feel sorry for her and confused at why anyone would treat her the way some did for how she looked. It gives you the feeling of sympathy for her so that you will understand her reasons for wanting blue eyes, and her need to be excepted.
By reading this book I hope that everyone walks away with a feeling of self-esteem, because I have realized from reading this book that everyone wants to be something they are not. Everyone wants to change something about themselves. This book emphasizes that nobody is perfect, and we should celebrate each person's individualities, not similarities. I myself understand wanting to be something that I am not, but I also sometimes feel that being different can be good also. While reading this book I wanted to tell this to Pecola, tell her it is good to be different. But I can see by the end of the book being different in her time period and living in a ghetto such as hers can only mean pain. I guess it is easier for me to say this, than it was for Pecola to realize, while she was getting picked on for being physically "ugly," Meanwhile on the inside she was one of the sweetest most innocent girls ever.
Toni Morrisons use of metaphors in this book is amazing, Toni describes life through flowers and how Pecola's father planted bad seeds in his own soil, which lead to Pecola's horrible fate. She also related the story of that summer to why no marigolds grew. This made me think about how everything in life happens for a reason. But if everything happens for a reason why was this happening to Pecola, all she ever got from her life was pain and hatred from others. All she ever wanted was blue eyes why could she not get what she wanted? She hadn't done anything wrong. Did she deserve any of this? I had no answer to this question and still don't that is another reason why I enjoyed this book, because it got me thinking about things that could not be answered and although I hate not knowing why? I hope that this question will come in handy later on in my life when I am feeling down, and I will tell myself that everything happening has a purpose. Toni emphasizes every detail of every characters life using imagery, it makes you feel that you are in the book along with the characters. That you are part of the story and that keeps you reading because what happens to them happens to you to. That is what is so fascinating about this book how many emotions you can feel all at the same time. You feel sad for some people, angry at others and even happy when you know that Pecola thought she got what she was longing. The majority of the book is depressing but in a positive way. At the end of the book you finally see what has become of Pecola Breedlove's life and her family, It makes you want to do something about all the things you see wrong in our world today.
I loved this book Because of how I could relate to it, I would recommend this book to everyone, although It can be a bit gruesome at times. It has an energy to it that most books do not have, it inspires hope and gets you thinking about how great and awful life is at the same times. It is a great book for people to read especially teens.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I didn't like this book at all. I found it difficult to read because of the way some of the characters spoke. The author writes in many different points of view and I could never figure out who was talking at that point. I don't think that this book deserves half the praise it received.
Rating:
Summary: An absolute must
Review: I am a blue-eyed blonde woman, and, to me, this book is important to people of all colors. I read this in college, where I was in the majority. At the time, I was dating an African-American, and witnessed first hand the threats of violence and harassment that he faced every day. We also dealt with the prejudice in both families. I am now married to a Jewish man and we're still dealing with the cultural differences and prejudice. His grandfather pats my head and talks about how he can wait for his dark-haired, dark-eyed, olive-skinned grandson to have "beautiful blonde babies" with me. This book is a real reminder that the world isn't colorblind. It should be required reading for anyone that thinks the world treats you the same, no matter what you look like. I'd strongly recommend Schindler's List, the song "Strange Fruit" (covered by Diana Ross), the music of Anna Madorsky, a Russian Jewish immigrant in her 20's, and the novel "Roots". Art like this reminds us that we aren't yet colorblind and we do more harm than good when we pretend we are.
Rating:
Summary: Touching
Review: This book was interesting. It draws you in, and you yearn to know what happens with this little girl. I thought this was a really good book.
Rating:
Summary: A Relection of life
Review: I read The Bluest Eye, in high school. The perfect place to read a book like this, where everyone is so caught up in the outward appearance. It's a sad tale of a young girl, named Pecola growing up in a bad neighborhood with careless parents. All Pecola wants in life is to be loved and in the society she lives in having blue eyes was concidered beautiful, so every day she wishes for blue eyes. This is a heart wrenching tale of young Pecola and the extent of her desperation to be loved in a world that conciders her "ugly". I recommend this book for all mature readers, for there is content not appropriate for younger readers.
Rating:
Summary: Could have been great....but,
Review: When I started to read this book I honestly thought it would be a nice book about racial identity, feeling good about who you are, etc. A book like that would transcend races and speak to everybody. The Bluest Eye does not celebrate the beauty of the black individual but instead simply and grotesquely trashes white characteristics (i.e. blonde-straight hair/blue eyes.) So if a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl reads this book is she supposed to feel ashamed to have these characteristics?
Toni Morrison does not impress me at all as a writer of substance because she doesn't add to anything; she reinforces a stereotype that white people=bad because the media pushes the idea of the ideal beauty as a white woman. Maybe she's upset because even black men tend to find white women more attractive than black women. Whose fault is that? The media? Another thing to consider is that during the "golden age" of film (she goes through a big thing about going to the movies and wanting to have blonde hair like the movie star) a majority of the moviegoing public was white in America, therefore the movies reflected the majority of their audience. I'll tell Toni Morrison a secret about movies, Japanese movies promote Japanese women as the most beautiful in the world. Maybe if Northern Africans made movies they could promote the black female. Are white filmmakers supposed to deny the beauty of white women because some little black girl might feel left out? Ridiculous and petty. So to me, this book is one big promotion of the downtrodden "victim" that is the African-American. Aren't people tired of this yet?
Rating:
Summary: The sub-text is always important in the novels by Morrison.
Review: "The Bluest Eye" should be read by all Americans, especially African Americans. First, let's begin by saying that the novel is not just about Pecola and her sad journey, but it is about the journeys that we, African Americans, take through a world which has been defined and constructed by the majority. It is about how we negotiate or attempt to negotiate those sometimes confusing and confounding paths which have been constructed by the West. The key to the novel is the passage: "There in the dark [in the movies] her [Mrs. Breedlove's] memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another -- physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought." And, these ideas have been passed down to us generation after generation, and they are the worst characteristics of the society in which we attempt to find our self-worth and our "humanness." The coin of the realm is "beauty," and, with it, come love, romance and power. If one is bereft of "beauty," then one cannot be loved. Isn't that what the West tells us. And into this "bad soil," we plant our seeds (our children); some will survive -- only if the soil is manured by enlightened parents, or, as Claudia says at the beginning of the novel, they will adjust and not improve. If we judge ourselves by the superficialities of the West, then we will never realize our potential. We will become "Pecola" -- "a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach." The sub-text is important in Morrison's novels. It is about freedom and self-realization; it is about de-constructing imprisoning worlds and constructing worlds in which we define freedom, good, evil and -- "beauty." The lesson is found at the end of the novel; it is an appeal to us not to let happen to our children what happened to Pecola. Her odyssey begins with the question: "How do you get somebody to love you?" She finds the answer, but it is horrific and fatal. She gets the blue eyes (not the bluest!), and the "horror of her yearning is only exceeded by the evil of fulfillment." She falls over into insanity which protects her from our silly preoccupations with "beauty" and "romantic love." Read the novel again!
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