The Bluest Eye
(Toni Morrison)
One of the most harrowing books ever written and read. The novel details the life of Pecola. Black, ugly, unloved and alone. Pecola, for as long as she can remember, longs to have blue eyes. The bluest eyes, she longs to be like her idle Shirley Temple, the all-American dream. She longs to be beautiful, she longs to be loved, she longs to be wanted. Pecola becomes obsessed and, eventually insane, from the desire to possess and see through blue eyes. Pecola believes that once she has blue eyes she will be able to attain a white type of beauty, a beauty she sees as idyllic, a beauty that will challenge the way she is habitually treated, being black, and will therefore change her miserable life and her bitter existence. Blue eyes symbolize the beauty and happiness that she associates with the white, middle-class world and that if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.The novel is almost impossible to read as each page is permeated with pain and misery. Page by page, line by line, there is no respite from the anguish, no redemption, the wretchedness is inflicted covertly and overtly underlying each line, shrouded in misery and affliction. The degradation and sense of mental sickness that develops through the characters and the tragic events makes the novel an almost insufferable read. Certain lines and ideas are repeated through the novel with a haunting echo, one of these being the marigolds which cannot grow. Like Pecola, certain flowers, the soil cannot nurture. Throughout the novel, the reader never truly knows Pecola, she is alone and detached and the reader wishes to get close to alleviate her pain but it is impossible and she leaves a haunting mystery.
Resumos Relacionados
- The Bluest Eyes.
- Adam
- 'beneath The Eyes Of Deception."
- Black Beauty
- My Valentine
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