The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

Title: The Bluest Eye

Author: Toni Morrison

Country: USA

Year: 1970

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Pages: 216

First sentence: Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.

The Bluest Eye embodies why I usually give an author a second chance if I did not like the first of their books I pick up. I read Song of Solomon a few years ago, and was not very impressed. Something about Toni Morrison stuck with me, however, and I vowed to give her another chance someday. With this, her first novel, she has completely won me over.

Told mainly from the perspective of Claudia and her sister Frieda, The Bluest Eye is a story about their friend Pecola, a young black girl growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941. By the second sentence of the novel, the reader has a glimpse of the direction the novel is set to go: 

We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby that the marigolds did not grow. (p. 1) 

What follows is a heart-breaking story about the slow destruction of one girl's hope in life.

What Pecola hopes for, wishes for more than anything, is blue eyes. Immersed in a culture that placed a higher value on lighter skin--even amongst the African-American community--Pecola's poverty, unruly hair, and dark skin leave her open to ridicule by her peers:

It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth. They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds--cooled--and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path. (p. 65)

Pecola is ignored by teachers in the classroom. On the playground and in the streets she is taunted and spat upon by other young children. When she encounters that "higher class" of black person (lighter skin, educated, polished), she is viewed as follows:

She had seen this little girl all of  her life. Hanging out of windows over saloons in Mobile, crawling over the porches of shotgun houses on the edge of town, sitting in bus stations holding paper bags and crying to mothers who kept saying "Shet up!" Hair uncombed, dresses falling apart, shoes untied and caked with dirt. They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between. (p.92)

This is a story about many things. Race relations in the 1940's. Child abuse. Bullying. The theme that struck the most resonant chord with me the treatise on beauty; why and how a young, innocent child can be considered ugly by her whole community. The last paragraph of the novel--I won't share it here, after all, it is the last paragraph--will haunt my mind for a long time to come.

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Title: Great Expectations
Author: Charles Dickens
Country: Britain
Year: 1861
Rating: 5 out of 5
Pages: 484

First Sentence: My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.

I have only read Dickens once before, an that was not of my own volition. I read A Tale of Two Cities in 10th grade, and really loved it. For some reason, I never went back. I always meant to, and when My Year of Reading Dangerously came about at Estella's Revenge, and Great Expectations was January's book, I figured I couldn't put it off any longer.

I will admit, it was a slow start. For the first 50 pages or so, I wasn't entirely captivated. Then I really became interested and engaged with the characters, particularly Miss Havisham, and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the novel.

As many of you probably know, since Great Expectations started out as a weekly serial, there is never a lack of suspense. Dickens' writing is intricate and detailed, and there are more twists and turns than many of the other books I have read from his time period. His ability to hone in on the nuances of human behaviour, particularly through Pip's fallibility, is a highlight in what I consider to be a true masterpiece. Great Expectations covers virtually every aspect of the human condition, and causes the reader to consider their own human nature and "great expectations". Highly Recommended.

So throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise. (p.218)

The Year of Reading Dangerously

From: All 0f 2008
Host: Estella's Revenge

Estella's Revenge is jumping into the world of reading challenges, and Heather and Andi have an exciting one planned for 2008. The goal of the challenge is to read authors that intimidate you. To help out, they have 12 official selections, and each month will form a discussion around that book. I plan on choosing some of Estella's selection, and mix it in with some of my own if I have already read a book, or in the case of Margaret Atwood, would not consider intimidating, since she is my favorite author. I am especially looking forward to the book discussions! My choices are highlighted in red.

January: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (finished 3 January 2008)
February: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (finished 12 February 2008)
March: (Atwood for Atwood's sake)Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood
I am substituting Shakespeare
April: (Poetry) Transformations, by Anne Sexton
May: (Southern) Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote a book by Flannery O'Connor or William Faulkner
June: (Russian) Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov a book by Dostoevsky or Tolstoy
July: (adolescent) The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier - or- Island of the Blue Dolphins
August: (Graphic Novel, Pulitzer winner) Maus I and II, by Art Spiegelman
September: (Independent) The Secret Lives of People in Love, by Simon Van Booy
October: (Contemporary/Jewish) The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
November: A Month of Classic Short Stories, Various - watch for a list
December: (Dusty) The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell