The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

“There is nothing more to say – except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how (p. 9).”

There are some stories that are so terrible, that hold so much hurt and loss that the how is what can be shared minus the why. Pecola was born to wounded parents, in a broken down house, after the last ember of love and warmth had died away. Sometimes you hear stories of what isolation can do to infants. If no one comes to care for his or her needs: being held fed and loved; the child languishes and dies. Pecola’s mother had to go back to work when she and her brother were young. Her father was there when he felt like it, but was drunk most of the time anyway. The home was ill attended to, and if her parents were there together they would fight. Glass flying, voices screaming, and all Pecola thought was…if I had blue eyes everything would be perfect.

It amazes me how children will absorb the chaos around them, excuse the violence around them, and say it wouldn’t happen if they were good, obedient or beautiful. That is such a lie. Children don’t choose whom they’re born to.

Pecola’s existence is one that astounds me. A girl like her, with a family life like hers’- how did she survive? In a drunken stupor, her father sets fire to their ramshackle apartment because he wants everything to be over. The fire is extinguished, but the destructive power of her father’s rage is only stoked. As her mother tries to pull together a shabby household, Pecola leaves to stay with another family in town. This family isn’t rich. But there is a warm bed, milk to drink and two girls to be her “sisters”. For the first time Pecola has some semblance of a family, even if it is only for a few days.

Pecola has to use the survival skills she learned at home, to make it at school. Rumors about her father’s sexualized and drunken acts spread like wild fire, making her feel more ugly and lost than ever before. Her new “sisters” defend her from the mob of merciless children. But over time, the attacks become too rash for them to continue to provide.

Pecola finds friends where she can. She is particularly fascinated by the Fancy Ladies that live close by her salvaged apartment. She enjoys their songs and sass, although she is too naïve to understand their humor. They don’t tell her she is ugly and she doesn’t feel invisible in their presence.
Pecola is invisible at home. The house is more dead than alive. The only sign of life in it are her efforts to wash dishes or read in the corner of the room. He brother leaves home, as the atmosphere of death is too much for him to bear. Her father sees the clean dishes, read books and the reminder of long lost memories of love and Pecola’s mother. His anger, pity and fear culminate in his misdirected desire for his own daughter; for the life she holds. He rapes his twelve-year-old daughter on the floor of the kitchen. He gives her his death, he takes her life and he leaves.

Pecola’s mother ignores the terrible truth of what has happened, but she has finally received freedom from the chains of this sad man. Pecola is lost and still feels that if she were beautiful, all would be well in her life. She goes to see a Magician to ask him for blue eyes. The man is a fake and is entirely crazy, but he promises her blue eyes –beauty. She believes him, and the madness that infected the magician is passed to Pecola. Although there is no physical change, Pecola believes her eyes are blue. She has the bluest eyes.

Reality takes root and Pecola is found to be pregnant with her father’s baby, and she can no longer go to school. She feels that all the talk and stares are caused by jealousy over her wonderful eyes; instead of the stigma she carries within herself. The people in her town curse her and her baby, her mother pretends the rape never happened, her “sisters” are afraid to talk to her, and her Fancy Ladies disappear from her life. Pecola is now invisible to everyone.

Her baby comes too early and dies. News of her father’s death makes way back to town, but no one seems to care. Pecola has wrapped herself up into the fantasy of beauty and has no attachment to the world around her. Everything that motivates her is the assurance that she is beautiful. She spends her days wandering in the town dump, eating out of trash bins and dancing through the piles of rotting refuse. She could care less, because she has the bluest eyes in the world. She is beauty.

If Pecola had been born to another family, she wouldn’t have been christened ugly at birth. If her mother ‘d loved her for whom she was instead of what she looked like, her spirit would have had a chance to thrive. If her father would have given her bread instead of a stone, she could have had a life. If her community had reached out and held fast, she could have been transformed by their love. Pecola remains to be what her dim world made her: ugly in appearance, sick of mind, ill in spirit, sexually demonized by rape and wandering in the town dump. Like Hamlet, Pecola’s father dammed her to death before she had a chance to live. Madness and death are the “sisters” she now holds on to.

The Bluest Eye tells the “how” of Pecola’s life, the “why” is revealed by the people left to tell the rest of her story. The debt of violence, death and despair is too expensive for anyone to pay – even if they have the bluest eyes.