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Major Themes
Stephen Coulter believes that the major themes portrayed in the novel are “an examination of a young black girls growing self hatred, racism of the American standard of beauty and child abuse.” Toni Morrison herself explained, “I thought in The Bluest Eye, that I was writing about beauty, miracles, and self-images, about the way in which people can hurt each other, about whether or not one is beautiful.”

Background
Toni Morrison, began writing The Bluest Eye in a writing group she joined while teaching at Howard University. She said it was “Fun with colleagues. But then they stopped letting us bring in ‘high school essays’ etc; so I would have to write something new.” So she wrote a little passage that was later incorporated into The Bluest Eye. When Morrison moved to Syracuse, New York, she would work on the story in the evenings because the plot gave great interest to her. Morrison commented, “I felt compelled to write this mostly because in the 1960s, black male authors published powerful, aggressive, revolutionary fiction or nonfiction, and they had positive racially uplifting redirect with them that were stimulating and I thought they would skip over something and thought no one would remember that it wasn't always beautiful, how hurtful racism is. I wrote The Bluest Eye because someone would actually be apologetic about the fact that their skin was so dark and how when I was a kid, we called each other names but we didn't think it was serious, that you could take it in, so the book was about taking it in, before we all decide that we are all beautiful, and have always been beautiful; I wanted to speak on the behave of those who didn't catch that right away. I was deeply concerned about the feelings of being ugly.”

So Morrison used children because they are vulnerable, females, black females at that, because they were always lesser. The novel was difficult for her to write because it was depressing, so she surrounded the protagonist with characters more like herself and her sister. Morrison also said “I internalize the sound to know what I leave out, which was most important to me; it makes a powerful difference what I didn't say.” Also Morrison explains how she wrote the novel while she raised two sons, and treated them better than other single mothers have treated their own.

Reception
Critiques compared The Bluest Eye mostly to her other novels. Brooks Bouson argues that “Morrison protects readers from the traumatic, shame-leaden subject matter of her novel by making them part of a conspiracy.” Enotes said that The Bluest Eye received modest reviews upon its first publication. Madonne M. Miner also gave commended Morrison by giving her props to her creative emerge because she could imagine being in the midst of the novel.