Abstract
The Bluest Eye was written by Toni Morrison. It is the first of her novels and contains a number of autobiographical elements. The story is set in the town called Lorain. This was the town in which Morrison had earned her early childhood. It is a story which is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old girl Claudia Mac Teer. Morrison associates her childhood with that of Claudia's as the novel is built around the phase of 1941 which was circling around the time of America's Great Depression. In Morrison's association with Claudia, it is revealed that the MacTeer family just like the Morrison's family struggled to make ends meet during the time of the Great Depression. Morrison grew up listening to her mother singing and her grandfather playing the violin, just as little Claudia does in the novel. In the novel's epilogue, Morrison explains that the story developed from a conversation that took place between herself and an elementary school girl who was fascinated and longed to have blue eyes. Morrison was pondering about this conversation in the 1960s and the highlight of that year was the formation of the cultural movement ?Black is Beautiful'. This movement was working towards reclaiming the African-American beauty. In the light of this scenario and the act of dwelling into a basal angelic conversation did Morrison's first novel ?The Bluest Eye' arrive.
