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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
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The Bluest Eye (original 1970; edition 2005)

by Toni Morrison (Author)

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13,320233450 (3.92)593
Fiction. African American Fiction. Literature. HTML:The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedloveâ??a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all othersâ??who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfil… (more)
Member:MHanover10
Title:The Bluest Eye
Authors:Toni Morrison (Author)
Info:Plume (2005), 215 pages
Collections:Your library, Currently reading, Wishlist, To read, Read but unowned, Favorites
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Tags:to-read

Work Information

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)

1970s (152)
Read (111)
AP Lit (234)
2024 (4)
To Read (429)
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» See also 593 mentions

English (221)  Spanish (6)  German (1)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  French (1)  Finnish (1)  Swedish (1)  All languages (232)
Showing 1-5 of 221 (next | show all)
This is an amazing, important work of literature and contribution to humanity. Toni Morrison's writing is astoundingly good, making it hard to put the book down. The subject matter, at times, can be very heavy and difficult to digest, causing much pondering and reflection after reading. This book is not to be approached lightly or trivialized. ( )
  eg4209 | Mar 9, 2024 |
This book is extraordinary in its success at evoking a time and place. The premise is simple: a poor young black girl grows up with a simple wish: to have blue eyes so she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children. The book’s enormous power is due, I think, largely to Morrison’s mastery of the English language. So much so that I have trouble imagining how this work could possibly be translated. It seems to me to be so inextricably intertwined with a place and time and with a vernacular use of English that it seems untranslatable. (I think, as an aside, that that is a great topic for another thread: how much works can be so much a part of the place and language and time as to be inaccessible to readers who read the work in a different place and a different time and a different language. Examples that pop to mind: Bely’s Petersburg or Goethe’s Faust, though of course the list is endless.) This is Morrison’s first book and it impressed me enormously. In the words of a goodread’s reviewer, it is a “haunting, poignant and unforgettable elegy to the horrors that American slavery spawned.” Although that reviewer was describing Morrison’s Beloved (not this book), I think the same observation holds true. This is a remarkable work: remarkable for its writing and for its clear-eyed, heartbreaking nostalgia for certain aspects of a world that is both gone and irretrievably still with us. ( )
  Gypsy_Boy | Feb 16, 2024 |
Grim and disturbing, but beautifully written. ( )
  AdioRadley | Jan 21, 2024 |
A nihilistic pedophilic nightmare of a book with an unhealthy fixation on racism.

My low rating is mostly because of reasons listed below.

We open on absolute scummy neighbors making up fights with other neighbors and imaginary talks. Then they drop Pecola's father has raped her while whining their flowers didn't grow this year but nobody's grew this year. I don't like that. What an awful intro character, these characters are terrible people and I want almost all of them to get hurt or injured.

There is a deep romanticization of suffering equaling beauty and grace. That to suffer makes you skilled or a better person. They believe if they suffer, they will be better people for it.

I cannot forgive that.

It's obviously a dated book with racism galore. I don't really care about that. It's obvious I will just beat a dead horse discussing it. But on the opposite end, it says misery and ugliness are not based off or exclusive to race. But the racism is directed towards all races and not just African American people.

There's some weird implication of the prostitute and the cat. I don't know if it's a euphemism about another woman or beastiality. It's unclear.

The Bluest Eyes has an absurd amount of pedophilia and incest. Not for a plot reason,but just existing. It even cuts from a scene of incest and child abuse as well as CSA to a pedophiles point of view and him talking about how he pays little girls for their time. A disgusting scene that has no reason to exist yet is in this book. There's no reason for this much pedophilia, and it does not drive the plot, it is just disgusting and creepy and wrong.

I'm not one for a pedophilia in most books even if it is for a plot reason, but this is by far some of the worst I've seen.

Pecola falls pregnant from the rape. They victim blame her for what they assume was willing. They think that if she fought harder she wouldn't have fallen pregnant or none of this would happen. Disgusting behavior that I cannot ignore. They all began gossiping about it like it's the local news. And some of them start saying that maybe she just doesn't want the baby because it's black. but she's black, obviously they don't understand how babies work or where they come from. And one even says that she should be happy that the baby's father is her father because she knows who the father of the baby is.

I hate this plotline.

The baby dies and everyone but Pecola is awful. This book ends without any hope. I'm not opposed to a hopeless ending, I've read a couple of books with really good hopeless ending, but this just felt mean and cruel and nasty to be mean and cruel and nasty and nothing else.

This is an extreme amount of racism towards everyone not just white people or black people, this book hates everyone just about, and everyone is a terrible hateful person who doesn't deserve to exist. I don't feel bad for anyone but Pecola.

An awful slog and I don't wish this book on anyone.

2 stars.

Too much graphic disgusting material. ( )
  Yolken | Jan 11, 2024 |
“Lonely was much better than alone.”

I’ll acknowledge from the start that this is a classic and is therefore on the majority of ‘must read’ lists. I’d heard so much hype that I admit I had high expectations, yet this just did not do it for me. Yes, it made me uncomfortable, as it should. Yes, it made me stop, think, and ask why, as it should. Still, it was disjointed and difficult to follow and very much read like a first novel. 200 pages should not have taken this long to wade through. ( )
  moosenoose | Dec 13, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 221 (next | show all)
I have said "poetry." But "The Bluest Eye" is also history, sociology, folklore, nightmare and music. It is one thing to state that we have institutionalized waste, that children suffocate under mountains of merchandised lies. It is another thing to demonstrate that waste, to re-create those children, to live and die by it. Miss Morrison's angry sadness overwhelms.
 
Deeply poetic novel explores racial and sexual feelings.

added by vibesandall | editCommon Sense Media
 
Searing and haunting... [The Bluest Eye] is a unique piece of literature because it is both timeless and relevant

added by vibesandall | editThe Guardian, Bernice McFadden
 
I imagine if our greatest American novelist, William Faulkner, were alive today he would herald Toni Morrison's emergence as a kindred spirit... Discovering a writer like Toni Morrison is the rarest of pleasures

added by vibesandall | editThe Washington Post
 
A profoundly successful work of fiction... Taut and understated, harsh in its detachment, sympathetic in its truth...it is an experience

added by vibesandall | editDetroit Free Press
 

» Add other authors (8 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Morrison, Toniprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
ĆœantovskĂœ, MichaelTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Balacco, LuisaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bofill, MireiaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cousté, AlbertoIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dee, RubyNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dorsman-Vos, W.A.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hallén, KerstinTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
HĂ€upl, MichaelForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
LĂĄzĂĄr JĂșliaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pilz, ThomasTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Rademacher, SusannaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Schmidt-Dengler, WendelinAfterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Schneider, HelmutContributorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Thigpen, LynneNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vink, NettieTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
To the two who gave me life
and the one who made me free
First words
Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.
Quotations
And it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates,the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes.
But we listened for the one who would say, “Poor little girl,” or, “Poor baby,” but there was only head-wagging where those words should have been. We looked for eyes creased with concern, but saw only veils.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Please distinguish between this complete 1970 novel and any abridgement of the original Work. Thank you.
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Fiction. African American Fiction. Literature. HTML:The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedloveâ??a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all othersâ??who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfil

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