Form and Content

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The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl immersed in poverty and made “ugly” by the American culture of the early 1940’s that defines beauty in terms of such actors as Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers, and Shirley Temple. Her mother beats and abuses her, and her father rapes and abandons her. Toni Morrison introduces the novel with a two-page parody of the Dick-and-Jane reader; the monotonous sentences of the reader repeat with increasing speed until the words run together. The parody is followed by a one-page interior monologue from the main narrator, Claudia MacTeer, who sets the scene for the four sections that make up the rest of the novel: “Autumn,” “Winter,” “Spring,” and “Summer.” The subsections are introduced by run-together lines from the Dick-and-Jane parody.

“Autumn” begins with Claudia MacTeer’s bleak sketch of her own home and impoverishment and moves toward Pecola’s brief stay with Claudia’s family after Cholly, Pecola’s father, burns the Breedlove home. While staying with the MacTeers, Pecola begins to menstruate and learns that she can now have a baby if some man loves her. “Autumn” ends with a sketch of three misanthropic “whores” who, unsentimentally, provide Pecola with the little warmth that she experiences.

“Winter,” a shorter section of the novel, begins by sketching the face of Claudia and Frieda’s father and then sketching his nakedness, which the daughters see accidentally. Because Mr. MacTeer’s nakedness is nonthreatening, it leaves Claudia and Frieda more astonished than offended. In contrast, the section ends with Pecola’s misery in the home of Louis and Geraldine, elitist African Americans who regard people such as Pecola as trash. Pecola has been lured into the home by their mean son, Junior, who promises to give Pecola a kitten. Once there, Junior, who is jealous of his mother’s blue-eyed, black cat, throws the cat in Pecola’s face and locks her in the room. When Junior discovers that Pecola likes the cat, he hurls the cat against the wall, leaving it unconscious when Geraldine arrives home. Junior blames the cat’s near-death on Pecola, and Geraldine, enraged by Pecola’s impoverished ugliness, calls Pecola a “black bitch” and tells her to get out.

“Spring,” comprising almost a third of the novel, begins with Claudia’s father beating up Mr. Henry, their roomer, for fondling Frieda, another scene contrasting the father-daughter relationship in the Breedlove family. Most of “Spring,” however, focuses on flashbacks to the earlier lives of Mrs. Breedlove and Cholly. In Mrs. Breedlove’s narration, she traces the loss of her romantic illusion and recollects the details of making love with Cholly in their youth. Her section ends shortly after her recollection of an orgasm. In Cholly Breedlove’s narrative, Morrison avoids interior monologue but uses an external first-person perspective to reclaim Cholly’s history in Georgia as an infant abandoned by his insane mother and reared by his Great Aunt Jimmy. Though Cholly’s story includes his marriage to Mrs. Breedlove, the final sexual image refers not to her but to his rape of their daughter.

“Spring” concludes with the pregnant Pecola seeking out Soaphead Church to petition him for blue eyes. Soaphead affirms Pecola’s desire to have blue eyes so that she will no longer be ugly. As Pecola’s rite of passage, Soaphead tricks her into poisoning his landlady’s dog, an animal that offends Soaphead’s sensibilities. Concluding “Spring,” Soaphead writes a letter to God on Pecola’s behalf and then sleeps dreamlessly while Pecola drifts into madness and his landlady finds her poisoned dog.

“Summer,” the shortest section of The Bluest Eye, is narrated by Claudia. She and her sister try to sell marigold seeds to earn a bicycle, and as they listen to neighborhood gossip, they piece together Pecola’s story. Pecola is pregnant with Cholly’s child. Cholly has fled. Mrs. Breedlove has beaten Pecola. Claudia and Frieda are disillusioned that no one wants the baby to live. As a petition for Pecola and the baby’s life, Claudia and Frieda bury the money for the bicycle and plant the marigolds. Yet the marigolds do not grow. Claudia speculates that maybe she planted the seeds too deep but that maybe “the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year.”

The final scenes focus on Pecola’s madness and on her obsession with having the bluest eyes. Claudia, as narrator, reveals that the baby is dead; that Pecola’s brother, Sammy, left town; that Cholly died in a workhouse; and that Mrs. Breedlove still does housework. Claudia realizes that Pecola’s beauty was turned ugly by society and that “[l]ove is never any better than the lover.” Claudia ends with the lament “it’s much, much, much too late.”

Context

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Toni Morrison, the 1993 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is best known for her novels and literary criticism. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, was followed by Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), and Jazz (1992). Morrison won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon, and she won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Beloved. Best known of Morrison’s critical writing is Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992).

According to an interview with Morrison, The Bluest Eye began as a short story for a writer’s group. It was written during a time of loneliness, following her divorce, when she was parenting her two preschool-age sons. In the interview, Morrison talks about her interest in focusing her novels on friendships between women, as she does in Sula. Morrison rejects the notion that friendships between women are “subordinate” to other “roles they’re playing.”

Reviews of The Bluest Eye were mostly favorable, though the work was somewhat overlooked until Morrison’s other novels began to form a body of work. Many critics then looked at The Bluest Eye as background for Morrison’s later explorations of racial, gender, and cultural issues. For example, Sula, the central character in Morrison’s second novel, is unconventional and unbound by social codes, and Jade, the fashion model in Tar Baby, rejects the romantic myth. Increasingly, Morrison’s women seek freedom and autonomy. Like Claudia MacTeer in The Bluest Eye, they reject romantic myths, beauty myths, and roles of acquiescence. Yet The Bluest Eye is more than groundwork for Morrison’s later novels: It deserves to be read for itself.

Historical Context

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Civil Rights and Race Relations
Although Toni Morrison set her novel The Bluest Eye in the 1940s in the North, the ideas that inspired the book are rooted in the Civil Rights Movement, which was losing momentum in the late 1960s when she wrote The Bluest Eye. Many historians consider 1963 the peak year of the Civil Rights Movement due to several pivotal events: the assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, mass demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama, Alabama Governor George Wallace's attempt to block school integration, and the March on Washington highlighted by Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. When Morrison published The Bluest Eye in 1970, the Civil Rights Movement was still ongoing; however, after its peak in 1963, there was increased white backlash. Additionally, national attention shifted to other issues, such as the ongoing Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam War, student protests at Kent State University and other colleges, and the exposure of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam by American soldiers. Amid these events, the March on Washington likely felt like a distant memory to black activists who struggled to have their voices heard. Progress appeared to stall as Congress passed bills to halt the bussing of students for racial balance in integrated schools, and Governor Wallace urged Southern governors to defy integration orders from Washington. As historian Harvard Silkoff states in his book The Struggle for Black Equality; 1954-1992, "The movement had secured basic civil rights for African-Americans, yet much remained to be done."

One of the key slogans of the Civil Rights Movement was "Black is Beautiful." This phrase aimed to boost the self-esteem of Black individuals who felt inferior to white beauty standards. However, Morrison criticized this slogan in her 1974 essay, "Rediscovering Black History." She wrote, "The slogan provided a psychic crutch for the needy and a second (or first) glance from whites. Regardless of those questionable comforts, the phrase was nevertheless a full confession that white definitions were important to us (having to counteract them meant they were significant) and that the quest for physical beauty was both a good and worthwhile pursuit. When the strength of a people rests on its beauty, when the focus is on how one looks rather than what one is, we are in trouble."

Morrison hoped that Black communities would instead draw strength from their solidarity, rather than from power, wealth, or physical attractiveness. This theme is further explored in her novel, Song of Solomon. While the creators of the "Black is Beautiful" slogan undoubtedly had good intentions, Morrison's perspective highlights the dangers of placing too much emphasis on physical beauty. This focus can be harmful to Black children like Pecola Breedlove, who, whether in the 1940s, 1970s, or 1990s, see society idolize figures like Shirley Temple and believe that achieving such beauty is the key to solving their problems.

Literary Style

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Point of View and Structure
The perspective in The Bluest Eye is primarily first-person, narrated through the eyes of Claudia MacTeer. Sometimes, she recounts events as a nine-year-old child, and at other times, she reflects as an adult. When Morrison uses the adult Claudia as the narrator, it offers moments of introspection for her. For instance, although Claudia is the same age as Pecola and should empathize with her, as an adult, she reflects on how she and her community treated Pecola as a scapegoat and realizes they failed to love her properly. Additionally, the novel features a third-person omniscient narrator who provides background on characters like Cholly and Pauline, helping readers understand the experiences that led them to their current state of self-loathing. The entire narrative is essentially a flashback from the adult Claudia's perspective, interwoven with scenes from the third-person narrator. The book is divided into four sections, corresponding to the four seasons, which is fitting since the primary characters, who are nine-year-old girls, would naturally measure time by the changing seasons.

Setting
The setting of The Bluest Eye is a fictional version of Lorain, Ohio, during the 1940s. Morrison herself grew up in Lorain, the daughter of Southern migrants who moved North in search of work, much like the Breedloves and MacTeers in the novel. At this time, schools remain segregated, and the community is still recovering from the Great Depression. Although little is mentioned about the white neighborhoods in Lorain, characters such as Rosemary Villanucci and Mr. Yacobowski serve as reminders of their existence. Instead, Morrison focuses on the worlds of the MacTeers and Breedloves. Despite both families being poor, the MacTeers are in a better position due to their loving and stable family environment. Claudia describes their home early in the book as "old, cold, and green … peopled by roaches and mice." However, the material shortcomings are offset by the love within the family. For example, even though Mrs. MacTeer complains when a sick Claudia vomits on her bed, her care is evident as she later "padded into the room, repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on [Claudia's] forehead." In contrast, the Breedloves are equally impoverished but are plagued by violent conflicts between Pauline and the drunken Cholly, lacking love for their children or each other.

Symbolism
The most prominent symbols in The Bluest Eye are the famous female film stars of the 1940s, such as Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers, and particularly Shirley Temple. These women epitomize the beauty ideals upheld by white society, a standard that ultimately leads to Pecola's downfall.

In addition to these symbols, three other significant ones are present in the novel: marigolds, the seasons, and the "Dick and Jane" reader. Marigolds are referenced at both the beginning and the end of the book. Frieda and Claudia believe that the marigolds they plant fail to grow because Pecola is pregnant with Cholly's child. While this interpretation is insightful, Claudia offers a broader perspective on the marigolds' failure. After initially blaming herself and Frieda, Claudia reflects, "It never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding." This unyielding earth metaphorically represents the world Pecola, Claudia, and Frieda inhabit—a world that rejects blackness and idolizes white beauty. While Claudia and Frieda survive through their family's love, Pecola is crushed by this environment, much like the marigold seeds that cannot thrive in unwelcoming soil.

In the novel's final paragraph, Claudia remarks about the earth, "Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live." Though she speaks of the earth, her words poignantly describe Pecola's fate. Pecola is emotionally and mentally destroyed by her father, by a society that values whiteness, and ultimately, the community directs its scorn not at Cholly or the oppressive beauty standards but at Pecola, the ultimate victim.

In the novel, the changing seasons also carry symbolic significance. Morrison organizes the book into four sections, each aligning with a different season. Fittingly, the story begins with autumn. For children like Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda, autumn represents "beginnings," notably marked by the start of the school year. This section indeed features many "beginnings," including Claudia and Frieda's first encounter with Pecola. Winter, traditionally a time of desolation, is when the girls meet Maureen Peal. She serves as a reminder that life feels empty without beauty that attracts admiration. This section also depicts Pecola being tormented by Geraldine and her son, Junior. One might expect renewal in the section called "Spring." However, the title is used ironically. In this part, degradation takes place: Frieda is fondled by Mr. Henry, Pecola is scolded by her mother for spilling cobbler at the Fisher home, and she is raped by her father. This section also reveals the ongoing decline in the lives of Pauline and Cholly Breedlove since their youth. The section titled "Summer" is the briefest in the book. Contrary to expectations of joyful children enjoying summer's delights, it portrays an isolated, insane Pecola.

Morrison uses excerpts from the "Dick and Jane" reader as symbols in her book. The novel begins with three passages from the "Dick and Jane" reader, a textbook used to teach children to read from the 1940s through the 1960s. According to critic Phyllis R. Klotman, these three versions on the first page of The Bluest Eye reflect the three different lifestyles depicted in the story. The first version features standard text with proper punctuation and capitalization, representing the ideal white family, exemplified by the Fishers in the novel. The second version uses the same words but lacks punctuation and capitalization, symbolizing the MacTeer family, which, while stable and loving, is economically disadvantaged compared to a family like the Fishers. The third version is entirely fragmented, with no punctuation, capitalization, or even spaces between words. This version represents the dysfunctional Breedlove family. A newspaper article marking the seventieth anniversary of the "Dick and Jane" series notes that the authors were aware that the life depicted in the series was quite different from the reality many children faced in the 1940s. However, they believed that, "when such deprived children lose themselves in stories about Dick, Jane, and Sally, and live for a time with these happy storybook characters, they experience the same release from their problems that the adult does when he loses himself in a good book or movie." Morrison, however, has observed what these authors did not: that being constantly exposed to an unattainable fantasy world does not provide an escape but rather fosters self-hatred, misanthropy, and insanity. Critic Susan Blake has articulated this by stating, "Pecola's story is a parody of the general fairy tale that she and her mother believe in," a fairy tale very much like the lives of Dick and Jane.

Expert Q&A

What are some examples of syntax in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison?

The syntax in The Bluest Eye shows how Toni Morrison captures the authentic way her characters speak, which contrasts with the syntax used in the narrative voice. Dialogue often incorporates vernacular and slang as well as dropped words and incorrect verb conjugation. For example, "upside the head" means "hit," and men are referred to as “dogs” to characterize loose ethics.

Literary Techniques

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The Bluest Eye clearly showcases the innovative and original talent that Morrison would become known for. Remarkably daring for a debut novel, it is rich with technical innovations in voice, perspective, and thematic associations.

One of the most striking innovations is the recurring use of the "Dick and Jane" story from an elementary reader to introduce various sections of the novel. This archetypal happy family, presented to children as a model lifestyle to emulate, serves as a standard. The elements that constitute this family's happiness are exactly what the MacTeers strive for and what the Breedloves cannot attain. The happy pets of Dick and Jane also foreshadow significant disillusioning events in Pecola's life, such as Junior harming his cat and Soaphead tricking her into poisoning a dog.

Furthermore, Morrison uses alternating typefaces to repeat many of the "Dick and Jane" stories. Critics have noted that the orderly, properly punctuated version reflects the lifestyle and aspirations of Dick and Jane, or families like the Fosters—European-Americans empowered by wealth and social status. The single-spaced, punctuation-free version, which combines several simple sentences into a run-on paragraph, represents African-American families aspiring to the Dick and Jane ideal, like the MacTeers and Geraldine's family. The final version, where syntax is distorted by the lack of spaces even between words, symbolizes the chaos of the Breedloves, who live in a store and have no hope of achieving the American dream. Subsequent iterations of the "Breedlove version" of the "Dick and Jane" story are printed in ALLCAPS, without spaces between words and sentences, and blocked typographically, often ending with incomplete words—highlighting the unattainability of the dream for families like the Breedloves and the restrictive cultural stereotypes imposed on them.

Morrison also structures the narrative around a seasonal myth. Pecola's story begins in autumn, with each section corresponding to a season. Similar to many mythic works of the 20th century, such as T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922), this seasonal myth is laced with modern irony. For instance, spring, typically a season of birth and new beginnings, coincides with Cholly's drunken assault on Pecola, resulting in a tragic pregnancy. The events of Cholly's departure, the Breedloves' alienation, the baby's death, and Pecola's descent into madness unfold in summer, traditionally a time of growth and abundance. Thus, Morrison follows the modern mythmakers' trend by infusing traditional mythic associations with irony.

One unique aspect of this novel is Morrison's use of multiple perspectives to narrate the Breedloves' story. Claudia MacTeer narrates the opening section of each seasonal chapter. As a character, Claudia is directly involved in Pecola's life; she is a friend who mourns Pecola's tragic fate. However, due to cultural differences (Claudia's father, like Morrison's, held multiple jobs to support the family), she can never fully comprehend Pecola's experiences. Ultimately, she must admit her own failure to meet her friend's needs and her psychological exploitation of Pecola. Claudia offers a compassionate but not entirely reliable account of the events.

The other sections are narrated by an omniscient voice that aims to provide a compassionate view of each character's background: Cholly's youthful humiliation, Pauline's joy in nature, Geraldine's determination to ascend socially, and even Soaphead's family's efforts to avoid contamination. However, this sympathetic tone is complicated by the narrator's portrayal of each character's horrifying actions without outright condemnation. This narrative approach suggests that, despite the atrocious acts committed by individuals like Cholly, Pauline, and Soaphead, these behaviors stem from human desires, and the wrongdoers are victims of both others' and their own past experiences. This concept is particularly evident in Soaphead's story, a significant portion of which is presented in epistolary form. Soaphead writes a letter to God, detailing his mistreatment of Pecola, narrating key events, attempting to justify his exploitation of the child's suffering, and ultimately blaming God for creating misery in an imperfect world. Although Morrison likely does not intend The Bluest Eye to be a critique of an unjust universe—her irony suggests that Soaphead is trying to evade responsibility through his narrative—she encourages readers to contemplate the responsibilities of living in an imperfect world that allows racism and economic injustice to affect everyone.

Social Concerns

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In many respects, the synergy between Morrison and the emerging concerns of her era were hinted at by her debut novel, which remains highly regarded in certain circles. In The Bluest Eye, the central social issues revolve around the impact of cultural icons on the consciousness of minorities. African Americans in the novel are conditioned to view themselves as ugly or inferior due to the cultural ideals imposed on them. The novel's narrator questions this perspective by describing the main family living in an abandoned store: "They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly" [italics added]. The protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, is almost entirely destroyed by her own and her family's self-hatred, stemming from their inability to meet white America's beauty standards. As the title implies, Pecola feels inferior because she lacks the aesthetic qualities endorsed by white culture. She believes that only by possessing blue eyes can she feel complete. After enduring numerous assaults on her self-esteem, including being snubbed by classmates, her mother's clear favoritism towards the white child of her employer, and a rape by her drunken father—an attempt to express love that results in pregnancy—Pecola, still in her early teens, succumbs to madness. She deludes herself into thinking that God has given her the bluest eyes to compensate for her utter lack of self-worth and companionship. The novel concludes with a heartrending dialogue between Pecola and an imaginary friend about her supposedly extraordinary blue eyes.

Every member of Pecola's family and community is affected by racial stereotyping. Her father, Cholly, was brutally humiliated by Southern whites during a sexual encounter in his youth, diminishing his sense of autonomy and manhood. This pattern continues as he struggles to maintain employment and support his family in an economic climate where African Americans are the last hired and first fired—an issue Morrison addresses more directly in Sula. Cholly's moral decline is marked by excessive drinking, spousal abuse, and ultimately incest, culminating in his embodiment of a fundamental racial stereotype: the absent African-American father. Whether Morrison intends for Cholly's mistreatment of his family to be understood through his traumatic adolescent experiences at the hands of whites remains ambiguous. In two flashbacks to their courtship, Pauline remembers Cholly as a vibrant young man who later deteriorated into a moral and paternal failure. However, the omniscient narrator reconstructs Cholly's past as a series of defeats that lead to a desperate existential freedom: "Abandoned in a junk heap by his mother, rejected for a crap game by his father, there was nothing more to lose."

More clearly, Pauline has declined in her northward journey, transitioning from someone who felt at home in nature to a laborer trapped in a painful marriage. She finds solace with the white family she works for and compensates for her frustrations as a wife and mother by indulging in self-righteous religious indignation. In one of the novel's most poignant and articulate scenes, Pecola, accompanied by two friends, visits Pauline at work and accidentally spills a hot dish on the floor, severely burning herself. Because the Fosters' white daughter is upset, Pauline abuses Pecola both physically and verbally before turning to comfort her employer's child. This act reinforces both her and Pecola's sense of ugliness and reasserts Morrison's theme about the distortion of fundamental relationships, such as maternal care, when tainted by false standards of beauty and loyalty.

Pauline is also swayed towards racial self-loathing by broader cultural symbols. She finds refuge from her own miserable life in a converted storefront within the Fosters' luxurious home, dedicating herself to order and elegance at work while neglecting her own home. Pecola's friend Claudia, who narrates the episode where Pauline shows preference for her employer's daughter, notes that at work, Pauline "looked nicer than I had ever seen her, in her white uniform…."

Central to the novel's themes, Pauline reinforces her belief that she and her family are unattractive by frequenting the cinema. There, she finds an escape from discrimination and the absence of a supportive African-American community, much like Cholly does with his drinking. However, the films she enjoys are created by white directors for white audiences and feature white actors. These films reflect the values of middle-class white America, implicitly devaluing any significance Pauline might find in her own culture. Although not necessarily the films' intended message, they imply that "white is right" and "black is not beautiful." This is what Pauline perceives in these films, which serve as a complex symbol for her—representing what is wrong in her life, an ideal life she can only experience secondhand at the Fosters, and a psychological escape she needs when facing the grim reality of her own life. Consequently, this reinforces her unhappiness and despair. When recounting her story, she explicitly describes the movies as an unattainable ideal: "White men taking such good care of they women, and they all dressed up in big clean houses.… Them pictures gave me a lot of pleasure, but it made coming home hard, and looking at Cholly hard." Through Pauline's narrative, we see an example of Morrison's artistry. Pauline is unaware that by sharing her sorrowful story, she highlights how false cultural images can undermine our potential for genuine human relationships by promoting unattainable ideals, making the lives they ridicule even more miserable, and further hindering our ability to take corrective action. Pauline offers care and affection to the Fosters, who symbolize the wealth and power of the oppressor (without any indication of reciprocated love), while she perpetuates Pecola's self-hatred and instills in her son Sammy a "loud desire to run away."

A final cultural symbol that demeans the lives of African Americans is prevalent throughout The Bluest Eye, serving as a key technical and thematic element. Certain chapter sections begin with a variation on the "Dick and Jane" story once found in many elementary school reading textbooks. In Morrison's text, these images form another layer of negative cultural indicators: education endorses a carefree, Euro-American image of middle-class life. Like the movies, schools reinforce a cultural notion of what is good and desirable—but unattainable for the Breedloves, who are poor and perceive themselves as ugly.

Compare and Contrast

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  • 1940s: The United States entered World War II in 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The war ended both the Great Depression and American isolationism. The U.S. government's concern over the Soviet Union as a leading communist power initiated the Cold War.

    1960s: The United States was involved in several international conflicts, including the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and the Vietnam War starting in 1965. Widespread protests, especially on college campuses, reflected the low public opinion of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. By 1968, U.S. involvement peaked with around 500,000 troops in Vietnam, and approximately 58,000 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in the war.

    Today: The 1990s saw a significant shift in foreign relations with the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, signaling the end of the Cold War. The only major military conflict that the United States was extensively involved in during this period was the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

  • 1940s: During World War II, households listened to the radio for an average of 4.5 hours daily, with 30 percent of airtime dedicated to war coverage. However, popular serials featuring heroes such as Dick Tracy and Superman also aired. Movies remained popular, with about 100 million people attending each week.

    1960s: Television replaced radio and provided coverage of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and American politics. By 1970, 95 percent of American homes had a television, a higher percentage than those with a refrigerator or indoor toilet. Popular shows included family-oriented sitcoms like "Leave It to Beaver" and police dramas such as "The Untouchables."

    Today: Television continues to be a significant part of daily life, delivering live news events to our homes. According to Nielsen Media Research, Americans in 1995 watched over eighteen hours of TV per week. The introduction of video cassette recorders made recording TV programs or watching movies at home popular. Computers have also emerged as a new form of entertainment, with Americans spending countless hours playing computer games, emailing, or "surfing" the Internet.

  • 1940s: Unemployment dropped dramatically from 14.6 percent in 1940 to 1.9 percent in 1945, as the demand for supplies and the absence of soldiers created job opportunities, particularly for women and minorities.

    1960s: Unemployment remained stable at around 5 percent, with a slight decrease in the late 1960s due to the Vietnam War.

    Today: Throughout the 1990s, the unemployment rate has stayed between 5 percent and 7 percent, as the U.S. economy has become increasingly dependent on global trade.

  • 1940s: Public schools were still segregated. Although segregation in the armed forces officially ended in 1948 and new laws were introduced to combat hiring discrimination, segregation and discrimination persisted in practice.

    1960s: The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s saw actions such as lunch counter sit-ins, school and college integrations, and nonviolent protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., all aimed at securing equal rights for black Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 officially banned discrimination in all public accommodations and hiring practices.

    Today: Race relations remain strained. Public schools are integrated, but issues of racial balance continue to challenge school districts. Tensions often lead to civil unrest, as seen in the riots in Los Angeles after an all-white jury acquitted four police officers of most charges in the beating of black motorist Rodney King.

Literary Precedents

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The Bluest Eye belongs to a notable tradition of African-American literature that explores the challenge of asserting cultural and personal values against the backdrop of European-American cultural and economic dominance. Works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, and James Baldwin present powerful male African-American perspectives on this struggle. Although Morrison has mentioned in interviews that she was not familiar with the work of female African-American writers addressing similar themes while she was writing The Bluest Eye, she later discovered her literary connection with pioneers like Zora Neale Hurston and Paule Marshall. One might wonder how much the reevaluation of writers like Hurston and Marshall is influenced by the success of Morrison's novels.

Another American literary tradition relevant to The Bluest Eye is the depiction of children as victims of cultural insensitivity. Ernest Hemingway once said that American literature begins with Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and the theme of the adolescent as a victim seems to originate there as well. Similar to Pecola, Huck is also victimized by a dysfunctional family and societal norms dictating respectable behavior. Notably, Huckleberry Finn also tackles the issue of racism. Huck's pivotal decision to help Jim escape slavery, despite believing it to be morally wrong by his society's standards, mirrors Pecola's struggle. Both characters suffer from abusive families, rigid societies, and low self-worth. However, unlike Huck, Pecola's story ends in defeat rather than triumph. For Twain, Huck's innate goodness allows him to rise above societal racism, whereas Morrison portrays Pecola as being crushed by her culture's values—perhaps because she internalizes them.

In this way, The Bluest Eye examines the theme of the child as an innocent victim of a declining culture. This theme is particularly modernist and places Morrison's novel alongside other modernist works like J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) and E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel (1971), which also explore the spiritual and psychological victimization of children by a disoriented culture.

Media Adaptations

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  • In 1994, an abridged version of The Bluest Eye was recorded by Morrison and actress Ruby Dee on two audio cassettes. This version, available from Random House Audiobooks, has a runtime of three hours.
  • In 1981, Michelle Shay recorded the unabridged text of The Bluest Eye. This recording, available from Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, is distributed by the National Library Service and has a total duration of 704 minutes.

Bibliography and Further Reading

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Sources
Bayles, Martha. "Special Effects, Special Pleading," in The New Criterion, Vol. 6, No. 2, January 1988, pp. 34-40.

Blake, Susan L. "Toni Morrison," in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Fiction Writers After 1955, edited by Thadious M. David and Trudier Harris, Vol. 33. Gale, 1984, pp. 187-99.

Cormier-Hamilton, Patrice. "Black Naturalism and Toni Morrison: The Journey Away from Self-Love in The Bluest Eye," in MELUS, Vol. 19, Winter 1994, pp. 109-28.

Dee, Ruby. "Black Family Search for Identity," in Freedomways, Vol XI, 1971, pp. 319-20.

Donelson, Ken. "'Filth' and 'Pure Filth' in Our Schools—Censorship of Classroom Books in the Last Ten Years," in English Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, February 1997, pp. 21-25.

Frankel, Haskel. "Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye," in New York Times Book Review, November 1, 1970, p. 46.

Gant, Liz. "The Bluest Eye," in Black World, Vol. 20, May 1971, pp. 51-2.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Amistad Press, 1992.

Heinze, Denise. The Dilemma of "Double-Consciousness": Toni Morrison's Novels. University of Georgia Press, 1993.

Iannone, Carol. "Toni Morrison's Career," in Commentary, Vol. 84, No. 6, December 1987, pp. 59-63.

Klotman, Phyllis R. "Dick-and-Jane and the Shirley Temple Sensibility in The Bluest Eye," in Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 13, No. 4, Winter 1979, pp. 123-25.

Leonard, John. "First Three Novels on Race," in New York Times, November 13, 1970, p. 35.

MacPherson, Karen. "It's Time for Cat, Moon, Dick, and Jane to Celebrate," in Arkansas Democrat Gazette, March 2, 1997, J1,8.

Morrison, Toni. "Afterword," in The Bluest Eye. Plume, 1994, pp. 209-216.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Pocket Books, New York, 1970.

Morrison, Toni. "Rediscovering Black History," in New York Times Magazine, August 11, 1974, pp. 14-24.

Naylor, Gloria. "A Conversation: Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison," in Conversations with Toni Morrison, edited by Danille Taylor-Guthrie. University Press of Mississippi, 1994, pp. 188-217.

Null, Gary. Black Hollywood: The Black Performer in Motion Pictures. Carol Publishing Group, New York, 1975.

Ogunyemi, Chiwenye Okonjo. "Order and Disorder in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye," in Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1977, pp. 112-120.

Otten, Terry. The Crime of Innocence in the Fiction of Toni Morrison. University of Missouri Press, 1989.

Samuels, Wilfred D., and Clenora Hudson-Weems. Toni Morrison. Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1990.

Further Reading
Denard, Carolyn C. "Toni Morrison," in Modern American Women Writers, edited by Elaine Showalter, Lea Baechler, and A. Walton Lite. Macmillan, 1993, pp. 209-27. Denard's essay offers a comprehensive analysis of Morrison's novels along with biographical details.

Koenen, Anne. "The One Out of Sequence," in History and Tradition in Afro-American Culture, edited by Gunter H. Lenz. Campus Verlag, 1984, pp. 207-21. In her interview with Koenen, Morrison discusses motherhood, romantic love, her frustration with explaining black life to whites, and the black liberation movement of the 60s.

Kuenz, Jane. "The Bluest Eye: Notes on History, Community, and Black Female Subjectivity," in African American Review, Vol. 27, No. 3, Fall 1993, pp. 421-32. This study explores how engagement with mainstream culture can lead to "an abdication of self" among minorities.

Samuels, Wilfred D., and Clenora Hudson-Weems. Toni Morrison. Twayne, 1990. This book serves as an excellent introduction to Morrison's work for students and includes a comprehensive bibliography.

Sitkoff, Harvard. The Struggle for Black Equality: 1954-1992. Noonday, 1993. Sitkoff’s book documents pivotal events and explores the lives of key figures in the Civil Rights Movement.

Smith, Amanda. "Toni Morrison," in Publishers Weekly, August 21, 1987, pp. 50-51. In this interview, Morrison discusses the importance of family and community in her upbringing and her transition from editing to writing.

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