Ari Armstrong's Web Log (Main) | Archives | Terms of Use
Review and Study Guide for Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye
A girl internalizes racial self-loathing as those around her completely destroy her.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Alfred A. Knopf, 2025 (originally published 1970)
Reading Notes
I discuss this book in some detail in my June 10, 2026, article for the Colorado Times Recorder. As I note there, the book is controversial because it discusses the brutal rape of a child as well as other instances of sex assault against a child. The book also discusses adult sex, domestic abuse, and parents beating their children. This is not a book, then, for young children or even for especially sensitive adults.
Morrison's novel, her first, is a form of social criticism. It aims to describe certain social pathologies in order to shame or horrify readers into corrective action. As Morrison writes in the 1993 afterword, "The weight of the novel's inquiry on so delicate and vulnerable a character could smash her and lead readers into the comfort of pitying her rather than into an interrogation of themselves for the smashing" (p. 211).
I want to emphasize this: Morrison's book, despite the horror of its subject, is beautifully written. Just as a literary work, on the level of language, this book is astonishingly good.
As Morrison writes in the afterword, the central hook of the story, Pecola's desire for blue eyes, came from one of Morrison's childhood experiences (p. 209). Morrison writes, "Implicit in her [an elementary school friend's] desire [for blue eyes] was racial self-loathing." She continues, "Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her" (p. 210).
Questions for Discussion and Review
1. The only people in Pecola's life who show her any kindness are the two sisters she briefly stays with and the three prostitutes who live in an apartment above her residence. How is it that all the other people in Pecola's life, especially her father and mother, come to fail her so completely? In what ways to ordinary people, not just the book's main villains, contribute to Pecola's destruction?
2. What does Claudia's desire to "dismember" the "blue-eyed Baby Doll" (p. 20) say about external expectations of beauty and different people's responses to those expectations?
3. What is the function of the Dick-and-Jane text? Is the inclusion of that text effective as a literary device?
4. The Breedloves become "ugly" because of "their conviction" that they are ugly. They saw "support for it [that conviction] leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance." Mrs. Breedlove converted her self-perceived ugliness to "martyrdom." "Sammy [Pecola's brother] used his as a weapon to cause others pain." And Pecola "hid behind hers" as "her mask" (p. 39). Is such self-perceived ugliness a plausible central motivation for a character, as Morrison makes it out to be here? Might the focus on the outside gaze serve to excuse the rationalizations and bad choices of some of the characters?
5. Cholly's ugliness was "the result of despair, dissipation, and violence directed toward petty things and weak people" (p. 38). Undoubtedly Cholly had some extremely traumatic experiences in childhood. Despite Cholly's later horrific crimes, the reader can empathize with Cholly as he experiences racism and his father's rejection of him. To what degree do bad experiences explain or even excuse later misdeeds? Does Morrison take a position on that question?
6. Morrison writes of Pecola's mother, "She needed Cholly's sins desperately" (p. 42). Why did she?
7. Pecola says, "Please, God, please make me disappear" (p. 45). And "each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes" (p. 46). Why does Pecola so completely internalize racial self-loathing whereas Claudia fights it?
8. Why does Morrison put the three prostitutes in the story?
9. The girls have a totally wrong view of the biology of menstruation (p. 70). What does this say about sex ed and shame over sex-related topics?
10. Morrison describes certain black women as learning "how to behave" and "how to get rid of the funkiness . . . of passion . . . of nature . . . of the wide range of human emotions" (p. 83). What problem does Morrison see here, and is she fair to the real-life women she probably had in mind?
11. Morrison poetically describes the green switches of Spring with which mothers beat their children (p. 97). Mrs. Breedlove says she "couldn't seem to stop" beating her children (p. 124). How does the pervasive violence against children described in the book interact with the other themes?
12. Contrast Mrs. Breedlove's treatment of Pecola with her treatment of the white children she cares for. What explains the difference?
13. How does Soaphead Church know what will destroy Pecola, and why does he treat her as he does? What explains his evil?
14. Strangely, although the sisters "hurt for" Pecola and hope for her baby to live (p. 190), they do not in the end make an effort to befriend Pecola or try to save her. Why not?
15. What is the function of the marigolds in the story?