Sunday, November 28, 2010

For The Bluest Eye

Beauty was not something to behold , it was something one could do .



But to find out the truth about how dreams die , one should never take the word of the dreamer.





Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly , violent people love violently, weak people love weakly ,stupid people love stupidly, but the love of free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gifts of love. The loved one is shorn , nuetralized frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye.


These are the rose petals from a fine novel called The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. They are adequate to suggest how the novel is. Aren't they? They dig our psychology and bring out a truth from inside us . And this is what we expect from a good writer , to hold up a mirror to our life and mind also. 


The novel is actually a tragic poetry . And in her own phrase , "a patchwork quilt of reality". It is a maze and you must confuse yourself in order to not to lose the meaning.


Pecola , the ugliest girl among ugly Black people fancies to have blue eyes , thinking that it will make her beautiful.But author indicates at the end that none can make her beautiful than the will and efforts of her own self. She hallucinates herself and talks to that image as a friend,  feels happy about herself , now having blue eyes. But it is certainly not as tragic. What really a tragedy is that she gets pregnant by her own father. But to one's surprise narrative folds in such a manner that you are not at all surprised  by what has happened.


I finished the novel today and was eager to share it on FB . So I shared one quotable line from novel. And so came to discussion with one friend about how we felt after reading the novel . And this was my reply -


What makes me cry is ... we are not different from these characters ... our life is not different ... if they are pitiable so are we... if they are ugly so are we... if ... wat matters ... some people are born complicated and put in complicated situations ... others cant understand them ... what makes me feel awkward is that I wud have reacted / felt same way as they did , if put in that situation...
It was a tragedy ... with not the air of tragedy.




The book is psychologically true and technically beautiful. One can not miss one quotable line as there are many. Same about psychological truth. And technically speaking the novel is wonderful. It moves like soothing music. It is most sensuous prose work I have read. And it feels like amazing... 

I wont say I have understood the work completely . Sometimes less understanding is more understanding... as I think so :) 

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