THE BLUEST EYE BY TONI MORRISON

NOTES BY D. HERNANDEZ

The beginning is taken right from a 1st grade reader. This paints the picture of an ideal white family and lifestyle. This is constantly pumped into the minds of the children- black and white- rich and poor! These black, poor, children are disgraced by themselves and their race. They feel ashamed.

The fact that there is repetition makes it like mantra with brainwashing qualities. "Quiet as it's kept" is the first sentence. The author herself often heard parents say this when they spoke of scandal and they didn't

want the children to hear. o What they are talking about is Pecola's being pregnant from being raped by her father. o There is a comparison with the marigold seeds that did not thrive as did her baby. The girls planted the seeds in the

"black dirt" which is what Pecola considers herself. The narrator is Claudia- the younger sister. These sisters were dirt poor but they were loved and knew that they were loved. It is described as syrup which is sticky and sticks

the family together as a unit. There is love. There is stability. o This is what is different between this family and the Breedloves'.

Mr. Henry Washington is a boarder at their home and he is very nice to the girls- eventually, too nice... Claudia's mother has taken Pecola in after her father set the house on fire. The Breedloves were explained. They all have serious issues.

o Cholly is an abusive husband but the wife is also abusive. Their family is outdoors and this is really bad. Pecola is taken in by the other family and the sisters are glad to have her and want to "save" her. The girls have no trouble with her

because she is also not assertive- she has NO self-esteem... at all. An ideal stereotype for a child was Shirley Temple. Claudia hates Shirley. Pecola and Frieda love her. The baby dolls are all white and she always dismembers her dolls. Pecola drinks a great deal of milk. This is all psychologically symbolic. It is symbolic of "white" "mother" "security". Also, she drinks

it out of the Shirley Temple glass. She felt that if she had blue eyes, she'd be loved and she would be a different person with a different family.

Pecola's parents while she is staying with Claudia and Frieda, they don't check on her at all. Saturdays are not fun- that’s the day you clean the house. At the end of the chapter, the sisters have a different respect for Pecola because she gets her period.

o Pecola asks if she can have a baby now.o Frieda tells her yes. o Pecola asks howo Someone has to love you.o How do you make someone love you?

Pecola doesn't know love. The next chapter opens with a reader description of "home" The Breedloves live in one room in an abandoned storefront with no running water, etc. The name "Breedlove" is ironic since they don't breed love. Symbolic of this bleak life is their broken sofa that was delivered broken and wouldn't be replaced.

o It is a problem. It gives them no joy. The next chapter opens with a reader description of "family" The whole family knows that they are ugly. Mother and father Breedlove constantly fight each other

o The mother doesn't leave because she wants to be a martyr. It is a masochistic relationship. She wants him to keep on beating her, etc. At one point she knocks him senseless and could have killed him but then covers him with a blanket

Brother is always running away from home. Pecola watches this all as the parents fight and cowers away. She wishes she would disappear. She wishes she had blue eyes and

was pretty because maybe they wouldn't do this around a girl who is so pretty. Cholly

o His behavior as a man, father, husband, and person, has been profoundly traumatized at a young age because he was having sex with a girl and two white man watched on and cheered him on.

o If he would have taken his anger out on these men, he'd be killed. SO he later took the anger out on the girl. o This is the incident which will distort his attitude toward women profoundly.o AND even before this, his parents threw him away. They didn't want him.

The children have a very cold relationship with their mother. They call her "Mrs. Breedlove". Pecola is like the dandelion heads. People think that she is ugly. They don't want her. Pecola then goes to the candy store and she wants to purchase Mary Janes.

o At the store, the storekeeper tries to avoid her. He doesn't want to look at her. He avoid touching her hand when he hands over the candy.

o She is ashamed and angry. Shame is as destructive or more destructive as anger because you have to hold it in and it festers.

o When she trips on the pavement, she sits and has the Mary Janes and it shows her lack of self-confidence. Miss. Marie, China, and Poland

o Maginot Lines is a WWII term. It was a bulwark defense. The reference is that Miss. Marie is huge.o The prostitutes are kind to Pecola and they all share rejection in common and are all outcasts. o They cope with their rejection by taking it out on their clients and their wives.o Pecola asks herself if they are real.

This is the start of her insanity. Autumn is the season of death. This is symbolic of her "dying".

WINTER Maureen Peal

o She was a "dream child"o She is a mulatto so she was favored both by the black and white communities. o Even within the black community there is discrimination.o Her hair was braided into two "lynch ropes"o All of the blacks are already self-destructive. They are "lynching" themselves because of their worship of the white

standards. o Claudia and Frieda hate her but are also fascinated by her. o They call her six-finger-dog-tooth-meringue-pie o Her family "believes in suits"

They are making the system work for their own benefit. They file racial discrimination suits and receive monetary settlements.

o Then a bunch of boys come up and begin taunting Pecola about her family. They are actually in the same boat but instead of turning the loathing onto themselves, they direct it elsewhere.

o Maureen also insults them. Frieda and Claudia try to beat her up but Pecola just does nothing and tries to fade away. She has no self-

esteem to fight back with. She takes the abuse and internalizes it since she doesn't know anything else to do with it.o When Maureen runs off, her green socks make her look like "dandelion stems that had somehow lost their heads."o At the end of the chapter, Claudia realizes that Maureen is not the enemy- the perceptions of white society is- "What

makes her pretty and not them." The Next Chapter: Primer about the ideal little cat. Remember that the season is winter which is perfect to go along with the cold description of Geraldine. Geraldine is softened only by the cat- not even her husband or even her own son.

o She could deal with her son's physical needs but absolutely not emotional needs. o SO Junior hated his mother… obviously! He took the anger out on the cat.

Geraldine's home and family must always be immaculate and perfect because she worked her whole life to separate herself from families such as Pecola's.

Pecola goes into the house and takes a liking to the cat (1) because she never had an ounce of affection and (2) because the cat had blue eyes.

Naturally when Geraldine comes home, Pecola is blamed and is abused. This is another blow to her lost ego.

SPRING Frieda gets molested and they go to see Pecola at her mother's work place.

o In the spring, Claudia and Frieda know that punishments are harsher since they are beat with new branches rather than a belt. The parents are harsh, but they still love them and it is a well-rounded and balanced thing going on.

o Mr. Henry is a pedophile and he touched Frieda. The parents beat him up and kicked him out. o The girls do not really understand this but they knew that it was wrong. o The sisters thought she would be "ruined" like Miss. Marie. Miss. Marie is fat but China and Poland are not since they

drink whiskey. Now they want to get whiskey from Pecola since her father drinks. They go to do so by going to the house where Pecola's mother works for a white family. When they go there, Pecola drops the pie and burns herself. Her mother is more worried about the floor and

the white kid than her own daughter and begins to verbally abuse them. Then they are sent out. THEN to top it all off, the white girl calls her Polly. The mother ends the chapter by denying her own flesh and blood.

Now Mrs. Breedlove's background and story is revealed o She is one of a large family and when she was little she stepped on a nail and her foot never really healed back. It made

her feel unworthy and it affected her development and she developed a compulsion. She becomes a control freak since she couldn't control her foot problem.

o Even at a young age, Polly lined everything and anything up.

o Her family lived in Kentucky. o She drops out of school at 15 after WWI and is still keeping house but with less enthusiasm.

She loses enthusiasm as she has a sexual awakening and is distracted by these things. She is ready for someone to come into her life and it won't take much for her to respond to the very first man who is kind to her and looks beyond her deformity which she is very self-conscious about.

She first saw Cholly and he tickles her foot, she was happy. He used to be thin with light eyes and he whistled. Cholly used to be kind and gentle and did treat her well for a while BUT he still has so many issues. They married and moved to Ohio so that Cholly could find work. Soon after they get married, Mrs. Breedlove loses her front tooth.

This will be symbolic of their future together. Cholly begins resenting her dependency and she is lonely. She has no nice things.

This is when she gets the job she still has in order to get out of that apartment. This isn't the best place for her to work because her employer complains about what they have to

someone who has nothing. It is all petty and pretentious Cholly once makes a violent scene and so her employer tells her to leave her husband or leave the job. She has

to leave the job without ever receiving her pay to pay the bills. Pauline now finds out that she is pregnant. Cholly surprises her by not drinking as much and being kinder. Then Pauline starts going to the movies to escape. This is very destructive, though, because it was always

romances between the white majority. Now she just lets herself go completely. She tried to kill him and so the violence actually began really early in the marriage. "He didn't hit me too hard

because I was pregnant." When she is giving birth, an older doctor is showing new doctors the way to do things. He says that black

women are easy because they feel no pain during child birth; they are just like horses. Then when Pecola was born, even her own mother thought she was ugly. If your own mother thinks that, then

Pecola never really had a chance at all. Now Pauline needs to go back to work. She became the ideal servant to a new, petty, family. She is living the

picture perfect life that she sees in the movies. Just like she let herself go before, she let her own house go. She is needed there. The Fishers reinforce her image. Every once in a while, Cholly shows her some respect which kept her from leaving him on a number of

occasions. In time, she begins to embrace her role as martyr. Cholly's Story

o His mother throws him out with the trash when he was first born. He was rescued by his great aunt who raises him. She does do her best and does care about him but it's not exactly the best environment for him to be in either.

He asks about his father and why she didn't name him after him. Aunt Jimmy named him Cholly after her brother Charlie. Blue Jack is this guy he works for and befriends who becomes his father figure. Aunt Jimmy eventually dies. At the funeral, Cholly has a traumatizing encounter with Darleen. She kind of initiated this whole thing, too,

which is another reason he took it out on her. To him, sex is equated with love as well as hate and anger. He decides to run away because he is afraid that Darleen might be pregnant.

He goes to find his father since he thinks he'll have some advice. He is rejected by him. He has been rejected by everyone in his life.

He didn't cry at the funeral, but he does cry now. It is all coming out in a major catharsis.o Once he has nothing to lose, he is dangerously free.

He comes home and sees Pecola doing the dishes. He feels that her misery is striking him with guilt since he can not help her. This guilt becomes anger and hatred. Anger and hate = sex to him.

He wanted to brake her neck... but tenderly. He also knows that Pecola still loves him which makes him feel more guilty and more furious. He knows that he

is messed up and not lovable or valuable. Next he sees her scratch her leg with her toe which was what Pauline was doing when he first fell in love with

her. He then raped his daughter and the face of her mother was looming over her. When Pauline comes home, she will blame Pecola for this.

Soaphead Churcho He is a pedophile. He is a Misanthrope (hateful of all humanity).o His hate for people led him into a service for them. o He became a priest then a social worker and finally the best an interpreter of dreamso In relation to self-hatred and self- racism, his ancestors began having kids with whites in order to whiten their skin tone.

When they ran out of whites to marry, they began inbreeding and therefore their descendants are deviants and are messed up- such as Soaphead.

o As a "dream interpreter" he has had a lot of people coming to him to ask for many different things. He never had anyone ask for blue eyes.

Pecola, now noticeably pregnant, asks for this. He says yes out of a want for power- he likes playing God- he even wrote a letter to God. In exchange, he wants her to get rid of an annoying dog (like in Rent)

She is messed up and truly believes that her eyes are blue now. Spring is a time of planting but the planting is only as good as the seeds and as good as the soil.

o Cholly is a bad seed. o The baby that Pecola is carrying- there is a blessing that it died. (Although it is very disturbing to her)o Now there is no hope for Pecola. She loses her mind. She is lost.

SUMMER Frieda and Claudia are going door to door selling seeds which is when they hear the gossip about Pecola. The black community is not any more compassionate than her mother. The sisters want the baby to live even though everyone

wants the baby to die since it will just be ugly. They want it to live because they still like Pecola and they also feel it is one more strike against the whites.

They plant the marigold seeds, bury the money, and say prayers for her. In the last chapter, Pecola has gone mad and is talking to herself. She converses with herself about her "blue eyes". You also find out that Cholly had raped her a second time. In the summer, Pecola is not thriving and the marigolds do not bloom since the sisters buried them too deep. In the end, the only two people that loved her were outcasts- her father and the Maginot Line (a prostitute).

AFTERWARD Racial demonization can take place in the most delicate person of society. Morrison understands that it is a very heavy example- it

is not an overall example but an extreme one. The extremity stemmed from a crippled black family unlike the average black family or even her own family.

o This is what happens in an extreme. All young girls had the same vulnerability. She also wanted to explain what made the bad characters what they were. She wants the reader to understand everything. She

wants them to understand they everyone is a victim of self-loathing.