From the beginning of the novel, it talks about how Morrison uses Pecola as a vehicle to explore the significance of the color blue and how being blue eyed would change everything for the better. As the story progresses, the back story is revealed, a reverse movement in the timeline of the novel.īlue is shown to be a desirable ‘end’ that the blacks wish to attain, an established standard of beauty and superiority that controls the community’s attitude towards those beholding it and those who lack it. The novel begins with Pecola Breedlove living with the Macteer family without any explanation as to why she left her family. ‘The Bluest Eye’ revolves around two families, the Breedlove and the Macteer, their stories juxtaposed making their narratives inseparable wherein the plot becomes comprehensible in this intertwining of separate episodes. She is not a character devoid of her environment, in fact, she is an end result of racial conflict between the whites and the blacks. Although, Pecola is an individual with her own personal experiences of oppressions yet she can be seen as a figure born out the pain of struggles of the black girls, an image that reflects them all. The novel can be seen as a journey of a young black girl named Pecola who is oppressed a number of times by the white community and also, by her own community of blacks. The blue, hence, becomes a reminder to the Blacks of a lack that puts the whites in an unquestionable superior position. The omnipresence of this color makes it powerful and authoritative. Blue, here, symbolizes the colonial power of the whites where they stand superior to the blacks and the colored people. Like the title of the novel suggests, the story revolves around either directly or indirectly to the color blue. The minute detailed descriptions by Morrison successfully weaves out a visually intense novel portraying the struggles of the Black community in the 1940s. The novel is a product of Claudia’s innocent understanding of her childhood experiences critiqued by the narratorial voice of her present adult self. Through the eyes of a nine year old, Claudia Macteer, almost a mirror image of the author herself, Morrison uses this character as a vehicle to explore the different ideas of race, gender and community. ‘The Bluest Eye’ is a novel that has been conceived by Morrison in her recollection of a conversation she had had in her childhood with a friend who desired to have blue eyes. Morrison adopts an autobiographical style of writing in which she selects the town where she grew up as the center stage for the development and progression of the plot. The novel is constructed in the timeline of the 1940s America with the location set in Lorain, Ohio. ‘The Bluest Eye’ written by Chloe Anthony Wofford under the pen name Toni Morrison was published in 1970. “…all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.”