The Bluest Eye
Submitted by Jean Trounstine (profile)
Reprinted from Success Stories pub. by the US Dept. of Education.

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is a difficult but rewarding text for students outside prison and certainly for groups of female inmate readers. Like The Merchant of Venice, it provides a way into their lives. However, unlike Merchant, The Bluest Eye is a novel, and I do not adapt it for the stage. Still, it requires innovative techniques to engage students.

Summary of Story

The story details the life of two young girls as they seek to understand their growing up and the community around them. It contrasts the worlds of rich white Ohioans with the poor blacks of rural Lorraine; the tough but normal childhoods of sisters Claudia and Frieda McTeer and the traumatic growth of their friend, Pecola; the trust and playfulness of youth in the face of adult alcoholism, racism and sexual abuse. Pecola yearns for blue eyes; that is, she yearns for what she, as a black girl, cannot have. Raped by her father and unprotected by her mother, Pecola eventually "gets" those blue eyes. It is Claudia and Frieda, and thus the readers, who learn from her sad tale. We are the ones who can change the cycle of despair.

Morrison's language, poetic and filled with a sense of place, draws students in, but also demands a focused reader. Because they are so drawn to Pecola's yearnings, women inmates often lose pieces of Claudia's story. I have found questions a way to broaden the book, allow students to reflect on their lives in connection to its themes, and engage the women in the idea that because of Pecola, there is hope for the community.

Pre-Reading Activity

When the book is assigned two weeks before we begin the discussion, I tell them a bit about Toni Morrison and some of the subjects of the book. It seems important to let students know that they will be reading about the roots of racism and abuse so that they might recognize the potential power of the book on their psyches. I also think it is important to establish a class community before introducing this text since it asks us to tackle issues about which the women have strong feelings. This endeavor requires trust and a certain degree of bonding.

Post-Reading Discussion

When the group has gathered, we begin by each taking a turn responding to the text. No one interrupts while each reader has a chance to say whatever she feels and thinks about whatever aspects of the text she chooses. The initial comments give students a chance to hate Cholly, the rapist father; pity Pecola; ignore the sisters; wonder why we read such a depressing hook; or, occasionally, ask for what more they can read of Morrison's. This is where we really begin, with the intention to let them discover that there is more to the hook through all our eyes. This prediscussion response also sets a tone: we all have a right to our opinions; we all have responses that will be valued; we each need to listen as well as be heard.

Using a "Dick and Jane" reader from the 1950s, I read aloud, show-and-tell pictures, and then ask students to consider what Morrison is doing with the opening of her text. This opening, a sort of "Dick and Jane" run wild, repeats itself throughout the text. Morrison takes the idea of the American family and condenses it in order to show how most of us do not have "white picket fence" perfection. Most students have overlooked this because they don't understand it; the focus suggests looking closely is valuable. After looking again at the language, they begin to figure out how Morrison is setting us up to understand that, unlike in "Dick and Jane" readers, there is no perfect house, no white picket fence, and certainly no perfect family. They start to enjoy finding all the broken passages in the text that they overlooked first time around.

I ask them to think about who Claudia is and what the difference is between her background and Pecola's. They surprise themselves by remembering details: Claudia's mother took care of her when she was sick; her family took in Pecola; her father protected them when the boarder, Mr. Henry, "touched" Frieda. They begin to think about Claudia as more than teller of the tale. Each character comes under scrutiny, as we attempt together to uncover the multitude of Morrison's truths.

How do we learn to feel ugly?

What does Pecola's life show us?

As rapidly as the questions come, they begin to fill in the blanks with "mean neighbors like Maureen," or "parents that tell us we're worthless like Pauline." Often, I ask them to underline language that they like, phrases that stick out. Maureen Peal, the little girl who taunts Pecola, has "lynch rope' braids," someone will always say; and I ask them why Pecola is taunted by both the black and white community.

It would be easy if we could let our students rest with partial understandings of reality, but great literature does not afford that. Morrison allows us to understand the rapist. Asking the women what happened to Cholly forces them to look past their hate. As they begin to see him, too, as a troubled child, a black man beaten down by a white society, they open themselves to more than one way of looking at the world. Pauline, too, presents them with a dilemma.

Why does she abuse her child?

How do you then explain that beautiful passage of tenderness between Cholly and Pauline?

What does Morrison want us to think?

One woman was so furious at Pauline for staying with Cholly that she said she would have preferred her indentured servitude as a maid to the white missus. The class challenged her insistence on that way of seeing. Morrison makes us see that there are no easy answers.

As the women sort through their new understandings from our discussion, they begin to offer new responses. They comment on how hard it is for all these characters to survive. They talk about how even the bluest eyes don't bring happiness or ensure fitting in. They stop considering some characters "bad" and others "good." Even Soaphead Church, the minister-gone-wrong who provides Pecola with her prized eyes, has a story worth telling. And hating a character tells us something about the hater as well as the character.

"Where is the beauty in this book?" I ask them over and over, not with that question but with all the questions, finding that we are unsilencing the silenced for all of us. "Claudia is a tree, and all the rest of them are bamboo," one woman said at the end of a class. Another replied, "It may be too late for Pecola, but it is not too late for us."