In the final chapter of The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Morrison
described Pecola as “ beating the air, a winged but grounded bird, intent on
the blue void it could not reach-could not even see-but which filled the valleys
of her mind” (204). The substance of
this sentence symbolizes that as a human, Pecola was given all the personal
tools necessary for her to reach the daily blue coating of the stars. She had intellect, emotions, and the physical
components of the average human; nevertheless, she could not grasp her goal and
obtain the “blue void” (204) that would assuage her pains. For Pecola Breedlove was inhibited of success
by all the components that formed the collection of actions and concepts around
her – every aspect of Pecola’s life restricted her ability to obtain success. It formed a life-consuming inability, a
simplistic restriction that presented itself as groundedness. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison explained
“how,” not “why,” (2) this restriction was solidly composed. Consequently, once this restriction had been
buried “too deeply” (206), Morrison delved into the repercussions of the
restriction on the pathetic child.
Pecola existed as a bird, and through her feathered meat cawing behind
the meaning of this deformed symbolism, Toni Morrison plucked Pecola raw,
therefore showing the bare life of a black girl in the 1940s.
In
the continued symbolism of the final chapter, Pecola had wings. However, she and “her ugliness” (205) were
unable to use her bodily tools to achieve flight. Pecola, “winged but grounded,” never became
one with the “blue void” that stalked her mind like the prey she herself was
(204). Morrison purposely shrouded the
cause of Pecola’s inability in ambiguity to underlying peck at the vast
possibilities of reasons for Pecola’s suffering. Pecola’s wings could have cracked and
crumbled, loosely remaining hinged to her core, when “Cholly loved her,” when
he “loved her enough to touch her, envelop her, give something of himself to
her” (206). Pecola’s wings could have
broken and bent as her father’s stiff member penetrated her and gave her
life. Perversion could have bred the
inability to preform. However, the cause
of the effect that reflected itself in the inability could have additionally
been due to the actual ground where Pecola’s talons scraped for “the thing
[that society] assassinated” (206). The
earth itself could have deprived Pecola of flight.
The
year the “black dirt” (1) failed to produce the life once granted by its own
perversion, the earth and its own soil, aborted their mission to “nurture
certain fruit,” to germinate “certain seeds,” and to blossom “certain kinds of
flowers” (206). The world where Pecola
remained grounded, refused to provide the certain
necessities of further development and success from its very ground. The earth disliked the ugly girl and the
sooner it could rid its surface of the bulging imperfection, the better. For with the eradication of the blemish, the
natural world order would return – the comparisons to her “ugliness,”
“inarticulateness,” “poverty,” and “frailty” (205) would fade into “the blue
void” (204) and “the fantasy of [their] strength” (205) would remain just that,
a fantasy. Morrison created a physical
world of hatred for Pecola. This world
deprecated development by honoring imagination, by ironically granting bird
form to a flightless girl, and by cruelly creating blue eyes for an ignored
individual. The bird Pecola’s mind
inhabited, was inhibited from flight, yet similarly repressed from pecking the
ground for certain types of fruits, seeds, and flowers because those cultivated
appendages of the earth never reached out from “among the garbage and the
sunflowers” (206) to be able to be grabbed.
Only
garbage and sunflowers discharged from the “edge of [the] town” (206). However even if the fruits, seeds, and
flowers of earth’s womb did survive following fertilization, Pecola would still
be unable to clutch them. Pecola no
longer carried the trait, the ability, to seize; she was physically limp and
mentally numb. The physical components
that once failed to distinguish Pecola from the society around her ironically
vanished into the “blue void” (204) Pecola could not physically or mentally
conceive. For Pecola might have had
wings and blue eyes but she was nonetheless categorized as the victim [who] had
no right to live” (206). Pecola socially
died; she solely coalesced her buried feathers while “her head [jerked] to the
beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear.” She unknowingly deafened herself, and in so,
retracted her position as a pureblooded amalgamation of
live atoms, one that could resist the urge to grab the gifts of the earth. However Pecola was no longer
pureblooded. She was a collection of hows and other perverse qualities – a
canvas of splattered blood and love from the “wicked,” the “violent,” the
“weak,” “the stupid,” and the “free” (206).
Pecola carried the eyes of a
stranger, the physique of a bird, and the incestuous blood formed from the deposit
of her father. Pecola was a rag doll –
unlike that of Shirley Temple, for Pecola was played with. She was played with in the dirt and she was
played with on the sofa. She was played
with in the kitchen and she was played with in the mirror. She was manipulated, seen, yet habitually unheard. She was known – known until her very
substance metamorphosed into a bird of no melody; and in that instant, Morrison
climactically reconstructed Pecola’s story into an allegory for many – Morrison
manifested the silently chirped song of the black girl.
- J. A. Kind
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