The Bluest Eye

Morrison designs The Bluest Eye to make us sympathize with even the most violent and hurtful characters, which means that this question has many possible answers. Pecola is the most obvious candidate for our sympathy, because she undergoes a shocking amount of abuse. She is forced to witness her parents’ violent fights, she is mocked or ignored by her classmates, she is tormented by Junior, she is raped by her father, and she is used by Soaphead Church. But to some degree, Pecola remains a shadowy, mysterious character—we are not given as much insight into how she thinks and feels as we are into other characters, who may therefore receive the greater share of our sympathy. Both of Pecola’s parents are sympathetic because the narrator goes to great lengths to explain how they have become the kind of people they are. Pauline’s story is partially narrated by Pauline herself, which makes her more sympathetic because we are given a vivid glimpse into the pleasure and suffering of her life. Although Cholly does not narrate any part of his story, he endures so much hardship—starting from the moment he is born and discarded by the train tracks—that we cannot help but feel sympathy for him. Claudia is yet another candidate for the most sympathetic character, simply because we experience so much of the story from her point of view and she is the one who helps us makes sense of it all.

Unlike To Kill a Mockingbird, in which an African-American is persecuted by whites simply on the basis of skin color, The Bluest Eye presents a more complicated portrayal of racism. The characters do experience direct oppression, but more routinely they are subject to an internalized set of values that creates its own cycle of victimization within families and the neighborhood. The black community in the novel has accepted white standards of beauty, judging Maureen’s light skin to be attractive and Pecola’s dark skin to be ugly. Claudia can sense the destructiveness of this idea and rebels against it when she destroys her white doll and imagines Pecola’s unborn baby as beautiful. Racism also affects the characters of the novel in other indirect ways. The general sense of precariousness of the black community during the Great Depression, in comparison with the relative affluence of the whites in the novel, reminds us of the link between race and class. More directly, the sexual violation of Pecola is connected to the sexual violation of Cholly by whites who view his loss of virginity as entertainment.