As a child, I wished I had blue eyes. My brother had blue eyes, as did my father and (at the time) all of my paternal cousins. All the pretty songs were about blue eyed girls*. My understanding of hair and eye color was still hazy, so I felt a little cheated that I had somehow ended up with blonde hair and brown eyes, as most blonde girls I had ever known or heard about had blue eyes. Instead, I had eyes so brown they bordered on black that consistently photographed red anytime a flash came within ten feet of my face.
My desire for blue eyes, though, faded in time. The same cannot be said for the young girl at the center of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove. The story of Pecola is told by people around her, illustrating just how passive Pecola is in her own life. However, where my lusting after azure irises was basically rooted in vanity, Pecola's wish has it's roots in a culture that values light skin and eyes above all else. A culture that tells her that as long as she is dark, she will never be beautiful. A culture that is responsible for a series of events that lead to her being shamed, traumatized, and finally broken by the cruelty of the world. Pecola's downfall cannot be laid at the feet of any one individual (though her father comes close), but rather at the feet of American society.
Through telling the story of Pecola, Morrison tells the story of a wide swath of black individuals living in America post Depression. The tiny details that are given to even the most inconsequential characters in Pecola's life paint an extraordinary picture of incredibly ordinary lives, and Morrison's ability to alter the narrative voice to match the person narrating that particular part of the story is masterful. The Bluest Eye is a beautiful novel, though difficult to read at times.
*Fun Fact: By the time we reach adulthood most brown eyed girls hate the song "Brown Eyed Girl".
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