50 Fun Facts About The Bluest Eye

Which flowers do Claudia and Frieda MacTeer plant, believing blooms will save Pecola's baby, in The Bluest Eye?

Marigolds never come up that year, and the adult Claudia opens the novel admitting that she and her sister long blamed themselves for the failure.

Which child star's face is on the cup Pecola Breedlove keeps refilling with milk at the MacTeers' in The Bluest Eye?

Shirley Temple enchants Pecola so much that she drinks three quarts of the family's milk just to keep holding the cup, while Claudia cannot stand the star.

In which Ohio town on Lake Erie, Toni Morrison's own birthplace, is the novel The Bluest Eye set?

Lorain is where Morrison was born in 1931, so she was ten years old there in the autumn of 1941, when the story begins.

Which award did Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye, become the first Black woman to win in 1993?

The Nobel Prize in Literature reached her 23 years after her debut novel appeared, and no Black woman of any nationality had won it before.

Which series of school reading primers supplies the opening passage and chapter headings of The Bluest Eye?

Dick and Jane's cheerful white family opens the book, and garbled scraps of the same passage head the later chapters, an ideal home set against the Breedloves' own.

Which penny candy does Pecola buy from Mr. Yacobowski's grocery store in The Bluest Eye?

Mary Janes carry a picture of a smiling blue-eyed girl on each wrapper, and Pecola buys them from a grocer who hesitates to touch her hand when he takes her pennies.

Which pet does Geraldine cherish more than her own son, Junior, in the Winter section of The Bluest Eye?

A cat gets all the tenderness Geraldine withholds from her family, so Junior turns his resentment on the animal and then blames Pecola when it dies.

Whose television book club chose The Bluest Eye in 2000, selling another 800,000 paperback copies of the novel?

Oprah Winfrey chose four Toni Morrison novels in six years, and Morrison called the club a reading revolution.

What does Claudia MacTeer do to the blue-eyed baby dolls she is given at Christmas in The Bluest Eye?

She takes them apart piece by piece to find what the whole world thinks is lovable about them, and the adults scold her as ungrateful.

What does Cholly Breedlove do to his family's home that sends Pecola to stay with the MacTeers in The Bluest Eye?

He sets it on fire and lands in jail, so Pecola is lodged with the MacTeers while her mother stays with her employers and her brother with another family.

Which Swedish-born film star's name does the boarder Mr. Henry playfully give a MacTeer sister in The Bluest Eye?

Greta Garbo is one nickname and Ginger Rogers the other, a bit of flattery that wins both girls over as soon as the lodger moves in.

Which famous chain of wartime border forts lends its name to Miss Marie, Pecola's upstairs neighbor in The Bluest Eye?

The Maginot Line is what Claudia and Frieda call her, copying the adults, while Pecola simply says Miss Marie and is treated kindly by her.

Which two countries share names with Miss Marie's fellow prostitutes, living above the Breedloves in The Bluest Eye?

China and Poland joke and tell stories with her upstairs, and the three women are among the very few adults who show Pecola any affection.

Which treat does Maureen Peal buy for Pecola, but not for Claudia and Frieda, in The Bluest Eye?

Ice cream goes to Pecola alone, and Claudia, who had assumed she would be treated too, walks on embarrassed and empty-handed.

With what does Frieda MacTeer strike a boy to break up the circle taunting Pecola in The Bluest Eye?

Her schoolbooks come down on Woodrow Cain, and the boys finally drift off because they do not want to brawl in front of the admired new girl.

How does Mr. Henry explain the two prostitutes Claudia and Frieda catch him entertaining in The Bluest Eye?

His Bible study group is the lie, and the sisters agree to keep it from their mother, who detests the two women.

In what kind of converted building do the Breedloves live, beneath three prostitutes' apartment, in The Bluest Eye?

A storefront is home to the whole family, and the novel lists what the building later became: a pizza parlor, a Hungarian bakery, a real estate office.

Which piece of Breedlove furniture arrived already torn, yet still had to be paid off monthly, in The Bluest Eye?

The sofa split down the back before delivery and the seller refused to take it back, so it sits in the front room as a daily reminder of being cheated.

What has Sammy Breedlove, Pecola's older brother, done at least twenty-seven times by age fourteen in The Bluest Eye?

He has run away from home again and again to escape his parents' fights, and near the end of the story he leaves for good.

Which word does Claudia MacTeer use for homelessness, the fate that briefly befalls Pecola, in The Bluest Eye?

Outdoors is how Claudia describes Pecola's plight when the girl arrives at the MacTeer house as a temporary foster child, her own family scattered.

Which pet name does the Fisher family's little girl use for Mrs. Breedlove, her housekeeper, in The Bluest Eye?

Polly is the nickname the white family gives her, and she keeps their big lakefront house in perfect order while she stops cleaning her own.

What does Pecola accidentally knock off the counter in the Fishers' kitchen, scalding her legs, in The Bluest Eye?

A berry cobbler splatters the spotless floor, and Mrs. Breedlove slaps her daughter and then comforts the crying white child, promising to bake another.

Which 1930s film star does Pauline Breedlove copy when fixing her hair in The Bluest Eye?

Jean Harlow is her model during her first pregnancy, when lonely afternoons at the movies teach her to measure every face against the screen's idea of beauty.

What does Pauline Breedlove lose at the movies, souring her on glamour, in The Bluest Eye?

A tooth comes out in the cinema, and from then on she stops caring how she looks, and the quarrels with her husband start up again.

What did Pauline Breedlove step on at the age of two, leaving her with a lifelong limp, in The Bluest Eye?

A nail through her foot in Alabama left it crooked, and with ten brothers and sisters around her she blamed the limp for making her feel overlooked at home.

In which state do Pauline and Cholly Breedlove meet and marry before moving north in The Bluest Eye?

Kentucky is where her family had gone looking for work, and Cholly wins her there by tickling her injured foot as she leans on a fence.

Which relative rescues the abandoned four-day-old Cholly Breedlove and raises him in The Bluest Eye?

His great-aunt Jimmy takes him in and names him Charles after her own brother, and her death in his teens leaves him with no one.

To which Georgia city does the teenage Cholly Breedlove travel in search of his father in The Bluest Eye?

Macon is where he finds the man in an alley, too absorbed in a game of craps to care who the boy is, and the rejection breaks him.

What does Soaphead Church have Pecola feed his landlady's old dog as a supposed omen in The Bluest Eye?

Poisoned meat rids him of an animal he loathes, and when the dog convulses Pecola takes it as proof that her wish for blue eyes has been granted.

To whom does Soaphead Church address the long, boastful letter he writes after Pecola's visit in The Bluest Eye?

God, the letter claims, is jealous of him, because he has made Pecola believe she has the blue eyes she begged for.

From which part of the world did the light-skinned Soaphead Church emigrate to America in The Bluest Eye?

The West Indies gave him a family proud of an English nobleman in its ancestry, and he tried the ministry and other studies before setting up as a fortune teller.

What does Mr. MacTeer throw at the boarder Mr. Henry while driving him from the house in The Bluest Eye?

A tricycle flies at the lodger and then a gun comes out, after Frieda tells her parents that he touched her.

What do the MacTeer sisters seek at Pecola's home in The Bluest Eye, hoping it will stop Frieda being ruined?

Whiskey is the cure they settle on after a neighbor's remark leaves them thinking that ruined means growing fat, and Pecola's father is known to keep plenty.

What had Claudia and Frieda MacTeer been saving to buy before they give up their seed money in The Bluest Eye?

A bicycle was the goal of a summer spent selling seed packets, and the sisters bury the money as an offering, promising to be good for a whole month.

With whom does Pecola Breedlove discuss her new eyes throughout the final Summer chapter of The Bluest Eye?

An invisible friend of her own invention is the only company left to her, one who says Pecola never needed her before and worries with her that other eyes may be bluer.

Where does Cholly Breedlove die, as Claudia MacTeer reports in the closing pages of The Bluest Eye?

In a workhouse is all Claudia says of his end, which comes after the baby's death; Mrs. Breedlove, she adds, still keeps house for white families.

As what does the adult Claudia MacTeer say her whole town used Pecola at the end of The Bluest Eye?

A scapegoat is her verdict: neighbors felt prettier and luckier beside the girl's misery, and Claudia counts herself among them.

Besides Claudia MacTeer, who tells parts of The Bluest Eye, such as the early lives of Pecola's parents?

An omniscient narrator steps in for what a nine-year-old could not know, such as the youth of Pauline and Cholly, and one part even speaks in Pauline's own voice.

What does the primer passage lose in its third printing, after punctuation has gone, as The Bluest Eye opens?

Its word spacing vanishes, leaving one unbroken run of letters, and one critic reads the three versions as the Fisher, MacTeer and Breedlove households.

Under which first name was Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye, born in Ohio in 1931?

Chloe Wofford became Toni after taking the baptismal name Anthony at twelve, and Morrison was the surname of the architect she married in 1958.

Which Toni Morrison novel about two women's friendship followed her debut, The Bluest Eye, three years later?

Sula was nominated for the National Book Award, a sign of how quickly her standing rose after a first novel that had sold slowly.

Which organization has ranked The Bluest Eye among America's ten most challenged books in several different years?

The American Library Association has placed it in that yearly top ten at least five times since 2006, usually over objections to its sexual content.

The Bluest Eye grew from a short story Toni Morrison took to a writers' circle at which university?

Howard was where she taught English at the time, and the story of a girl who longed for blue eyes stayed with her until she expanded it years later.

Which day job did Toni Morrison hold while writing The Bluest Eye at four each morning as a single mother?

Textbook editor at a Random House division in Syracuse paid the bills for her two sons, and she later became the firm's first Black woman senior fiction editor.

Which newspaper gave The Bluest Eye an admiring review by critic John Leonard soon after its 1970 publication?

The New York Times review called its prose close to poetry, yet sales stayed slow until colleges put the novel on Black studies reading lists.

Which Chicago theatre company commissioned Lydia Diamond's stage adaptation of The Bluest Eye, premiered in 2005?

Steppenwolf developed the play through its programme for young adults, and the production reached an off-Broadway stage the following year.

Which hip-hop duo of Mos Def and Talib Kweli drew on The Bluest Eye for the song Thieves in the Night?

Black Star put the track on their 1998 debut album, and Talib Kweli wrote in its liner notes that he first read the novel in high school at fifteen.

Which flaw in the admired Maureen Peal do Claudia and Frieda discover with relief in The Bluest Eye?

Sixth-finger stumps on her hands, where extra digits were removed, feed the mocking names the sisters invent for the rich new girl.

Which weeds does Pecola think pretty on her walk to buy candy, then decide are ugly, in The Bluest Eye?

Dandelions puzzle her on the way there, since people call them ugly; after the grocer looks straight through her, she angrily takes the world's side.

What do Claudia and Frieda MacTeer gather beside the railroad tracks with their family in The Bluest Eye?

Coal gathering leaves Claudia sick after one such trip, and her memory of her mother nursing her, scolding all the while, shows a home with love in it.