While reading The Bluest Eye
over the last couple of days, I felt waves of relief and a slow but
definite release of pressure. I felt this way because, for the first
time this semester, I was reading about characters who are flawed,
messed up, imperfect, and far from heroic. In short, I donÕt feel like
there is a hero in The Bluest Eye. As the narrators changed and
my perception of the characters developed, protagonists earned the
readersÕ empathy and antagonists were hated, but no heroic figure
emerged. The book forced me out of my comfort zone, but for once it
wasnÕt because I was so inferior to the characters or advice that I
felt guilty in my own skin for not living up to these great people.
Instead, my comfort zone was intruded upon by characters so far from
heroic that when I related to things they said, I was forced to
question my own thought process.
The first and
most obvious process I related to was PecolaÕs desire for blue eyes.
Her plight mirrors many emotions I myself felt as a child when I didnÕt
think I could ever be happy without dark brown hair. I donÕt know what
put that into my head, but I used to wish more than anything that I
could just for a couple days have black hair. Of course, this proved
highly unlikely since my hair was a light shade of blond, but just like
Pecola, I was so convinced that a different hair color would fix all my
problems that the thought consumed me. ÒEach night, without fail, she
prayed for blue eyesÓ (46).
Although I cannot relate well to the girlsÕ experience with racism they suffered at the hands of white people (or even other black children who had Òcontempt for their own blacknessÉÓ (65)), I felt a strong revulsion to the prim, perfect girls from towns with names like Mobile, Aiken, Newport News, Marietta, and Meridian. ÒThe dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotionsÓ (83) which these ÒproperÓ black ladies skillfully avoid seems to make them robotic. The total and undeniable lack of passion they feel, exemplified most vividly in the description of how these ladies Ògive him [their husbands] her body sparingly and partiallyÓ (84). If there is any clues as to heroes in The Bluest Eye these women, although the most respectable presented, fall the furthest from hero to me. They totally defy Ram DassÕs carefully explained need to shed roles for they are the very definition of a role and they take great comfort in a role. When Pecola is accused of killing one such ladyÕs cat, the description of PecolaÕs eyes (those detested, permanent fixtures on her face) provides the greatest contrast to the lady and cause the lady much fear. ÒUnblinking and unabashed, they stare up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in betweenÓ (92). Thus, Pecola can share in the suffering needed in a hero or leader, as asserted by Rinpoche in Compassion in Medicine and Ram Dass in How Can I Help?
So since Pecola has all of these heroic type abilities and
characteristics, she provides the most likely hero in the book.
However, she is NOT a hero. She could have become one, but her
lamentable rape and subsequent pregnancy coupled with her unsupportive
background and her inability to rise above it prevent her from becoming
a hero. Mrs. Breedlove at least has the dreams and love a hero
possesses, but she too was cut short by the freedom of Cholly. ÒBut to
find out the truth about how dreams dies, one should never take the
word of the dreamerÓ (110). None of the characters can rise above their
life and live in their dreams; all, I believe, could have related to
the poem we read in the anthology: ÒThere is such thing as life &/
it is not this bleak intermission/during which I scurry for bread &
lodging/ or judge myself by my failuresÓ (Young in Bump 145). The
characters all judge themselves by their failures, and do not yet have
Martin Luther KingÕs dream to share.