‘ They had looked about themselves, saw nothing to contradict the statement saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. The master had said, ‘ You are ugly people. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly you looked closely and could not find the source. Mostly narrated by the protagonist’s foster sister, we follow Pecola’s life, which is a veritable series of unfortunate events: She’s a young black girl who develops an inferiority complex, convinced as she is by her family and reactions of others that she’s ugly and worth less because of her dark skin. The Bluest Eye has an interesting structure, being divided into seasons, and with most chapters epigraphed with fragments from a Dick and Jane story somehow pertinent to what’s to come. Morrison has a special way of telling a story: She’ll reel the reader in with a horrible, shocking revelation right at the start, and then work her way back up to it layer by layer.

Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. “Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another-physical beauty. She writes about the ugliest things with poignant authenticity, rendered in the most beautiful prose, and in this remarkable debut, the abstract idea of what’s considered physically “beautiful” is actually the central theme. It would be wrong of me to presume that I, as a white person, could ever properly understand the African American experience, but Morrison’s works sure feel like I’m being granted a realistic glimpse of it. Toni Morrison’s first novel, set in her own home town in the years following the Great Depression, deals, as would all her later works, with the consequences and trauma of racism.

Toni morrison the eye