Ready Reference Treatise: The Bluest Eye

“The Bluest Eye” by Nobel Prize winning American author Toni Morrison was first published in 1970. While writing this novel, Toni Morrison was teaching at Howard University and raising her two sons on her own.

The story covers the time period of about one year; it revolves around the life of a young black girl named Pecola. The story is set in the time period after the Great Depression.

Pecola develops an inferiority complex resulting from her complexion in Lorain, Ohio, against the backdrop of America’s Midwest in that period.
The narrator of the parts of the story is Claudia MacTeer. The story is told from her perspective first as a child and then as an adult. It is also told from the perspective of a third person, omniscient viewpoint.