The Bluest Eye - 張婉儀

The marigolds are nowhere to be found in Lorain, Ohio in 1941, not because the seeds were planted too deeply but something terrible happened to Pecola Breedlove. The land is being hostile to certain kinds of flowers to keep them from being alive, just like the society to certain kinds of peoples.

Pecola, an 11-year-old African American girl, is living a hard life. Pecola’s father, Cholly, is a man of drunkenness and violence. Her mother, Pauline, looks down on and feels ashamed of her own family. Sam, Pecola’s brother, keeps running away from home in response to the disharmony in the house. The Breedlove family are labelled as the ugly one. Being neglected and humiliated, Pecola, who lives without self-esteem, fervently longs for a pair of blue eyes, blue enough to run away from unfairness, to raise affection, and to embrace the happiness.

Looking into Pecola’s haunted eyes, eyes haunted by the blue eyes, Cholly feels helpless. Racism deprives Pecola of the happiness she deserves as a child. Cholly himself is impotent as a father. He rapes her own daughter out of a combination of love and hate. After he rapes her for the secod time, Pecola is pregnant and moves to the edge of the town. No one shows compassion for Pecola except for Claudia and Frieda. They try to look for eyes creased with concern, but in vain. At last, they decide to make a miracle, planting flower seeds. If the flowers bloom, the miracle will happen, and Pecola's baby will survive. However, the marigolds never bloom.

Everyone is born with his/her own unique beauty. However, people are always obssesed with fashion and internalized by some kinds of popular ideology of the society, for example, the grade school reading primer Dick and Jane, decribing an model bourgeois family, contrasted to Pecola’s existence; in Pecola’s case, the blue eyes of the white people, or simply whiteness. For Pauline, whiteness is beauty, which is why she loves the white girl more than her own girl, revealing her earnest assimilation to the white bourgeios culture. And for Pecola, blue eyes mean acceptance. Both of them are internalized and huanted by the white-oriented ideology. They are the victims of racism.

However, not every sin comes from the outside world. Claudia’s self-assertion is a perfect contrast to Pecola’s self-abhorrence. Claudia’s parents are stern but loving. Her mother takes good care of her when she is ill. Her father stands out for her when she is in difficulty. Familial, or more specifically, parental support, that Pecola lacks of, still counts. Claudia is well-raised. She does not follow like a sheep, and she approves and accepts her own culture by showing her severe loathing for Shirley Temple and white baby dolls. It seems that Pecola’s tragedy could be predictable from the very beginning.

In The Bluest Eye, prejudice of skin colors has ruined the fairness. Everyone is created equal and should not judged by their colors. People are not supposed to depreciate themselves because the bluest eyes may not see the fairest world.