Don't give the power to the soil

After being told that her book wasn't worth publishing and struggling for her voice to be heard, Toni Morrison's words entered the realm of literature. She wrote to give courage to black females and give them a story of her own childhood to relate to. She told a tale of idea of beauty, of culture, and an individual's struggle of embracing herself, or the lack of.

The Bluest Eye was finally published in 1970 by Plume Books and now is a national best seller and an Oprah Book Club book. Toni Morrison also received a Nobel Peace Prize in literature. Her story is of a girl embedded in her juvenile memories. Pecola Breedlove grew up in a household of hate, violence, and abuse. It broke her spirit to trying to obtain the impossible.
What I commend the most within this novel is the ability to see through Claudia's (the narrator) eyes to another time. I was not a daughter of black family growing up in Ohio in the time of the perfect Shirley Temple dolls beautiful white models. However, through Morrison, I saw, if even just a glimpse, of what Pecola struggled with personally. It hurt me to think a girl as young as her could truly, and whole heartedly, desired to, "rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes." (pg. 174) as Soaphead Church explained. At one point in her youth, she thought dandelions were pretty and could not understand why others thought of them as weeds. When you outward expression of hatred towards these flowers begain, so did her internal decline of herself. As she saw in movies, only pretty girls had blue eyes and their life was only one to dream of. She, on the other hand, had the worse life a small girl could imagine. she thought if only she had blue eyes would the world see her as beautiful too. The fertility of the soil was mentioned and that merigolds did not grow the season Pecola's baby was to be born. Pecola always felt like she was from bad soil as well and would never grow into a flower.

I think anyone can read this book and be motivated to define who they are rather than be defined by someone else. Especially in today's society, our youth lack the self-exploration that I remember in myself. They are defined even more by what is pretty or where they stand in society. Society sets standards, but there is nothing locking an individual into a poor, or rich for that matter, life. You make of it what you want and you get out what you put in. I wish not to seem to over-look the idea of white privilege and that some individuals recieve "benefits" in society, but how will we ever change this if we don't start somewhere now and work towards greater equality? I talk of allowing individuals to establish their own values, or virtues. Morrison says in an interview, "The virtues are things you work for. To be forthright. To be educated. To be in control. To be diplomatic. To be healthy. To be graceful. These are the things you can work for. You can get them. They are available to you."