The Bluest Eye

Synopsis

Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio.

Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterised her writing.

'She revealed the sins of her nation, while profoundly elevating its canon. She suffused the telling of blackness with beauty, whilst steering us away from the perils of the white gaze. That's why she told her stories. And why we will never, ever stop reading them' Afua Hirsch

'Discovering a writer like Toni Morrison is rarest of pleasures' Washington Post

'When she arrived, with her first novel, The Bluest Eye, she immediately re-ordered the American literary landscape' Ben Okri

Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

About the Publisher

Vintage

Vintage is a highly respected paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, publishing writers like Philip Roth, Martin Amis and Toni Morrison. There are many Booker and Nobel Prize-winning authors on the Vintage list such as Kingsley Amis, A S Byatt, J M Coetzee, Ismail Kadare, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Iris Murdoch, Roddy Doyle and Ben Okri, to name a few.

Summary

Chapter 1: Autumn

* Summary: Claudia MacTeer introduces the story, set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941. She describes the cold, dreary autumn and the prevailing sense of poverty and racial segregation.
* Real example: "We were the only ones swinging in the bitter November wind, our voices high like birds trying to fly above the snow."

Chapter 2: Pecola Breedlove

* Summary: Claudia introduces Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who is the subject of constant ridicule and abuse. Pecola prays to Mary Jane, the white Virgin Mary, for blue eyes, believing that they will make her beautiful and loved.
* Real example: "She had eyes that were like the brown stones of the unpaved streets... eyes that seemed to cry even when they didn't."

Chapter 3: Geraldine

* Summary: Claudia describes Geraldine, Pecola's mother, as a woman who has given up on life. Geraldine has been abused by her husband, Cholly, and is now unable to protect Pecola from his violence.
* Real example: "'She had no teeth... She had no lips either. She had a thin line that pressed together so hard that her mouth looked forever set in a thin, hard, disapproving line.'"

Chapter 4: Cholly

* Summary: Claudia introduces Cholly, Pecola's father, as a deeply flawed and abusive man. Cholly is unable to control his anger and frustration, which he often takes out on his family.
* Real example: "His biceps were fat like sausages, and his thighs and calves were thick. He was a mountain of a man, and he used his size to intimidate."

Chapter 5: Soaphead Church

* Summary: Claudia describes Soaphead Church, a traveling con man who preys on the hopes and dreams of desperate people. Soaphead tricks Pecola into believing that he can make her wish for blue eyes come true.
* Real example: "'He was a handsome man, tall and dark, with an educated voice and a clever tongue.'"

Chapter 6: Pecola's Bluest Eye

* Summary: Pecola's wish for blue eyes is finally fulfilled, but the result is not what she expected. Her blue eyes are met with confusion and fear, and she is ultimately driven to madness and self-destruction.
* Real example: "She had them, alright. She had blue eyes. Bright, shining, beautiful blue eyes. But they were so out of place in that wrinkled, tired face."