“The reclamation of racial beauty in the sixties stirred these thoughts, made me think about the necessity for the claim.

(Foreword xi) I appreciate how Morrison, in quite plain language, tells us exactly what she wanted her novel to explore.

Who told her (Pecola)? Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak than what she was? Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her. “And twenty years later, I was still wondering about how one learns that.(Foreword x) This shows me why Morrison chose to tell the story of Pecola, a young girl scorned for her appearance. “The project, then, for this, my first book, was to enter the life of the one least likely to withstand such damaging forces because of youth, gender, and race.The notion to enter the life of the one (character) least likely to withstand such damaging forces (rejection).“When I began writing The Bluest Eye, I was interested in…the far more tragic and disabling consequences of accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-evident.” (Foreword x) The book explores what happens when we accept that when others reject us it’s because they have a justified reason.The notion of accepting rejection as legitimate.As I understand the foreword, here are four notions that Morrison wanted to explore with this book: A brilliant examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.” Toni Morrison, The Bluest EyeĪfter I finished my five-day reading, I skimmed back through the foreword and immediately knew I need to read this novel again. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife.

Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. “Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. In case you’re unfamiliar with the story, read this from the back cover:

(By the way, five days of off-and-on reading is fast for me. However, it finally happened last week when I read it over the course of five days. It was on my “To Read” list on Goodreads, and I had purchased a copy… but y’know… actually reading it was on my list for later. I admitted to my students that I hadn’t read the novel in its entirety yet.

The bluest eye sparknotes