I just finished reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, a book recommended to me by a friend. Although I purchased it a couple of years ago I didn’t pick it up to read until last week. Frankly, given the nature of the content, I thought it would take a long time to wade through it as I am a white male and it is about a black female. But I found it a compelling and fascinating read.
The book certainly has more than its fair share of elements which might not be suitable for small children, or for brooding members of the conservative prudery, but it is truthful and sometimes the truth is not pretty. Sometimes the most truthful thing we can do is to stare the ugly reality of life in its eyes and not blink. For when we do we find we are usually left with only one of two options: return to our fantasy world where reality is custom made, or embark upon a journey where we encounter reality as it is realizing it might not leave us unchanged.
As a white male living in a place of relative wealth I have not been forced to encounter the reality of poverty in any substantial way, nor have I been forced to endure the reality of prejudice in any substantive manner. I have lived a fairly secure and cloistered life, but I realize that is a minority experience of the world. The Bluest Eye tells the story of a little black girl named Pecola, born into poverty and born with the added burden of being ugly, terribly ugly. The story meanders through the lives of those people influential upon her life, leading up to the moment when she is impregnated by her father, adding substantially to her troubles more than one can imagine. As a
A simple story of one person’s demise is not interesting in and of itself unless the story is told as brilliantly as this one is gripping us from cover to cover. For all the pain this simple story exposes, I found it difficult to put the book down for the author gives us ample reason to find compassion for Pecola and her life. But even more gripping than Pecola’s life are the lives and responses of those who contributed to her fall. Painfully, this area is where the honest reader may find their readiest identification. As in real life, this book rarely gives us such black and white borders to define both the antagonists and protagonists.
I have found that people often want to ask why someone has found themselves in such an abysmal situation before then proceeding to attempt a fix of the problem. We think we can change the course of natural events or find a guilty party to punish for the unnatural ones, but often there is no easily identifiable person to whom we can point our fingers and no easy fixes leaving us at a loss for what to do. Whether it was Toni Morrison’s purpose or not, (I happen to think it was), I believe we are shown through The Bluest Eye that there are times when the only thing we can do is love one another. But we must remember that we are not called to love only those who are like us, only the beautiful, or only the well-known and privileged; we are called to love everyone. This means that to truly love we will often have to step out of our comfort zone and hold the ugly and grotesque, not because we feel good about it, but because they need it, and because that is what God wants of us.
If you read The Bluest Eye, I’m sure it’s possible you might get something a bit different out of it, that is the way of good art and fine literature. Even so, I’m quite confident if you read this book you will at least begin to understand a little bit more of the person on the other side of life who deserves the same love for which we all so deeply long.
The Bluest Eye can be purchased at Amazon.com by following this link.
