Pecola and the Natural World in Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s first novel published in 1970 has been widely studied from almost every perspective. Critics have explored issues such as racism, trauma, child abuse, cultural standards, class and gender relationships, mental illness, and mass media power, to name a few. This essay addresses a topic that has received little attention so far: the relationship between Pecola and Lorain’s natural surroundings. The few moments when Pecola interacts with plants and animals reveal a different side of her—a Pecola who stops being a victim, a departure from the predominant portrayal in most readings of the novel. Instead, she emerges as an active and productive agent in Lorain’s impoverished urban landscape, regardless of the misery where she is forced to live. This, I argue, explains the presence of flowers among the waste in the novel’s final image. While the garbage that surrounds Pecola is a metaphor for her being abandoned by everybody, flowers testify to Pecola’s capacity to resist and bear fruit in some way. Through the lens of African American environmental history, a perspective hitherto unexplored in interpreting this specific text, I show how Pecola’s capacity to form profound and meaningful connections with plants and animals in a hostile environment is linked to the historical experiences of African Americans in the New World.