Morris 1

https://eee.uci.edu/programs/humcore/Student/Fall2009/LectureNotes/week10/Toni-Morrison-abstract-image-Pecola.jpg
I would not think it all a stretch to say that "The Bluest Eye" is the darkest and most depressing book we have read in this class so far. While it is kind of pointless to quantify "depressing" in regards to pieces of literature, I think it is important to note the dilemmas we are dealing with in this novel are so real, so human, that they send shills down the spine.
On that note, it was fascinating to read the opening sections of this novel and then read Professor Bump's analysis of the family structure in the book. Certainly, I have never encountered issues in my family that are in any way comparable to my own experiences. Pecola's subsequent adoption by the MacTeer's is overshadowed by Pecola's depressing background in her poor black families. Her alcoholic father treats his family like (excuse my language) shit. Her mom only keeps the family together under extreme stress from her husband and the constant fights between them reach consistent violent levels. I cannot imagine anyone growing up in this environment and having functional social skills, but than again I am applying my own expectations of an ideal family life. Which was what so illuminating about Professor Bump's piece. What exactly IS the ideal family dynamic?
On one level it is important to note that there is no universal method of raising a family. Past experiences will invariably rear their heads in the progression of family relationships, and as Professor Bump notes that the "unfinished business of previous generations, buried in the psyche, strikes the individual without warning, against her will, sweeping her up in an all too familiar phase of the family dance" (Course Anthology 351)http://web.centre.edu/smart/images/supplementary/alcoholism.gif

In many ways, Pecola's family cannot help be the way they are. Her parents need each other, but they are also each other's downfalls. Their constant bickering is not really mostly an expression of how they feel about themselves. In many ways, Cholly (Pecola's dad) seems to exert his anger on Pecola's mother seemingly because she is the only receptive vessel of his anger and hatred. This is a constant in his life, like when two white men caught him having sex with a girl and forcing him to finish as they watched. "But for some reason Cholly had not hated the white men; he hated, despised, the girl" (Morrison 42). It is easy to see how under these conditions one would frequently go into fits of uncontrollable rage. I know not how such an episode would effect me, and I shudder to think about it.
In this way the tragedy of The Bluest Eye is not so much the failures of the characters to treat each other with respect and to establish "proper" family dynamics. Rather, the sadness derives from the inevitability of it all, the fact that in many ways the conditions which the residents of this Ohio town could not escape their fates.
Like Native Americans, African-American history is paved with horrifying and embarrassing incidents of violence, repression, and racism. Racism was an institutional disorder of American society, and if affected all of American culture everywhere (including the Mid-West). It is thus rather depressing that people are so willing to shove off dysfunctional Black families because they see it as the fault African-American culture. What they fail to realize is that centuries of intolerance and repression and have created this "culture" which they so despise and as such, they should hear life through the eyes of people in these situations. Only once we realize the difficulties that these people have to go through on a daily and lifelong basis, we will be able to appreciate their tenacity and resilience.