Exploring the Motif of Eyes in The Bluest Eye

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, eyes undoubtedly stand for a wide range of themes. For one, there is the obvious motif of eyes as an indicator of beauty. For some families, beautiful eyes are indicative of not only external beauty, but of class and of elegance. To some degree, they are indicative of calm and sources of jealousy. In chapter 5, Junior indicates his jealousy through destructive means. When he invites Pecola into his house, and she is awestruck by his beautiful cat with blue eyes, Junior throws it against a radiator and kills it.

In that instance, our understanding of blue eyes seems to shift. Not only because of the profound level of jealousy that the characters seem to exhibit towards that characteristic, but also in its indication to the reader that those without blue eyes are the outcasts, or the misfits. Those with blue eyes are the ones who are accepted and even appreciated. They are beautiful because of their eyes, but welcome because that beauty seems to indicate calm and acceptance, even if it might also stand for weakness.

The Breedloves, on the other hand, seem to be the quintessential example of how eyes, and therefore physical, can be alienating for some if their eyes are portrayed in a negative light. The Breedloves seem to almost bask in their ugliness, choosing to accept themselves as such and live as such. But that ugliness doesn’t just reflect in the way they live – it reflects in their eyes, too. Morrison highlights their eyes at the beginning of chapter 3, describing them as, “small [and] set closely together under narrow foreheads” (38). She fails to even comment on the color. They are just small and ugly.

And certainly, that’s part of the reason why Morrison focuses on eyes. The purpose of eyes in the novel is two-fold: Eyes are both meant to give us a physical characteristic of the characters in which they are portraying, and they also provide us into the souls of those respective characters. For Junior, eyes stand not only as a point of jealousy, but also as a point of anger. They anger him not simply because they are a beautiful, brilliant color, unlike his own, but also because they have garnered more love and acceptance than he has ever in his entire life, even from his own family. They stand for something that he has never received and for that he wants to destroy them.

For the Breedloves, they certainly indicate ugliness, but they also indicate defeat. The Breedloves have small eyes because, unlike those with blue, glimmering eyes, they have given up. The doors to their souls are closing because they have given up.

And that seems to be at least part of what Morrison is trying to convey through the motif of the eye. Those with blue eyes are not only accepted, they are lauded. And for those that refuse to accept their beauty, they are sources of jealousy, anger, and even despair. They represent happiness.

Closed, dark eyes, like the Breedloves’ eyes, indicate fear, defeat and something that is decayed or decaying. They represent the rage, sadness, and destruction with which most of the novel stands for.