When we talk about Toni Morrison and her novels, it's tempting to talk about race since her work addresses this subject in such a powerful way. However, in an interview, Morrison stated that she was actually writing "about the same thing...that is, the way people relate to each other and miss it or cling to it...or are tenacious about love” (Otten 653). In his debut novel, The Bluest Eye, Morrison tells the story of two families informed and affected by love in radically different ways. While love is generally thought to involve pleasure, pain is often used in conjunction with love in the novel, modifying and complicating it. By locating pain and love in the same feeling, Morrison seems to suggest that love, when it is at its most sincere and poignant, is tinged with a certain kind of pain. She examines the interaction between pain and familial and sexual love in her novel The Bluest Eye, leading the reader to realize the different ways in which love and pain interact with each other and that love , by nature, is inherently painful. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe novel begins in the fall, where Claudia, who has caught a cold, talks about the routines and rituals in which her mother indulges in making it better. The scene is full of potential pain: Claudia remembers her mother's hands being "big and rough" as she rubbed Vicks ointment on her small chest and her younger self being "rigid with pain"; she remembers her mother's misplaced anger as she spoke to the vomit "calling [her] name: Claudia" (11). The love Claudia's mother shows her is complex, involving both care and punishment, soothing and reprimand. Claudia claims that she did not know that her mother "was not angry at [her], but at [her] illness", complicating her memory and the role her mother played in this scene, as well as in her childhood (11). In retrospect, however, Claudia realizes that the pain her mother caused her, the rough hands and scolding were all expressions of love. Claudia wonders: “But was it really like that? As painful as I remember it? Only slightly. Or rather, it was a productive and fruitful pain… So when I think of autumn, I think of someone who has hands and who doesn’t want me to die” (12). Claudia, although she remembers the pain of being weak and sick, also remembers "her feet coming into the room, her hands repinning the flannel, readjusting the quilt, and resting for a moment on [her] forehead" ( 12). The bed was painful and humiliating, the care and love Claudia receives from her mother in particular made this pain an integral part of her illness. Claudia experiences the pains of illness in conjunction with familial love, making the acts of love she encounters all the more poignant and precious. She remembers her mother's hands, rough at first, then gentler later, tucking her in and checking the fever on her forehead. Comparing the pain she experiences at her mother's harsh but loving nature to the tenderness of affection and emotion behind these actions, Claudia feels her mother's love more than the concomitant pain, as in his memories bear witness, which are softer in texture. that bitter.Claudia also remembers spring in her childhood and how the pain of punishment changed. Her parents disciplined her and Frieda differently in the spring, using new saplings and still green branches to whip the girls.Claudia informs the reader that “there was a nervous nastiness in those long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest stroke of a hairbrush” (97). Her parents' petty, damp anger in the spring makes Claudia yearn for a different kind of pain. She doesn't long for a soft pillow, a warm bath, or even the rough love of her mother's worn hands. Instead, Claudia knows that pain is inevitable because it comes with her parents' love for her and her sister. So instead, she develops a preference for pain, ranking the familiar pain of fall as superior to the newer, more unpredictable pain of spring. Claudia therefore creates a sophisticated and complex hierarchy of pain, in which the absence of pain is not a problem because the absence of pain means the lack of love, and Claudia would prefer the pain of love to the absence of one or the other. Pecola's experience with familial love is entirely different; it implies pain in a darker sense, and while it may be easier to dismiss Pecola's situation as one of hatred or evil, the love is still there, shining faintly in the embers of his broken family. While the MacTeers are fiercely protective and loving of their daughters, the Breedloves don't know how to love their children, because they hate themselves. The Breedloves were always told that they were ugly and that perceived ugliness, often rooted in racial identity, simply breeds more ugliness and pain. In the book's pivotal scene, Cholly Breedlove rapes Pecola and, interestingly, we are not given Pecola's point of view. , but rather Cholly's. By introducing us to Cholly's point of view, Morrison once again emphasizes the importance and presence of love in the scene. By presenting the scene through her eyes, we can see Cholly's intentions, fueled and informed by the desire to love her child. If the scene were presented to the reader through Pecola's eyes, we would almost certainly be unable to see past the pain caused by the rape. As Cholly sees Pecola washing the dishes, looking defeated and intimidated, he tries to love her the only way he knows how. Even if he initially feels uncomfortable, this “discomfort eventually turns into pleasure.” The sequence of his emotions was revulsion, guilt, pity, then love” (161). Cholly then rapes his daughter, trying to ease her pain by replacing it with his love. The scene even causes some physical pain in Cholly: “Getting away from her was so painful to him that he cut it short and tore his genitals from the dry port of her vagina” (163). Pecola internalizes the pain of the rape, ultimately driven mad by her suffering and lack of action, as evidenced by her internal monologue and implied split personality near the end of the book. She is deprived of the pleasure of sex and must instead experience the pain of rape, a violation by her father who only seeks to love her. Cholly's love, in this case, breeds pain. In an interview, Morrison claimed that “sometimes good looks like bad; and sometimes evil resembles good,” but “evil is as useful as good” (Otten 664). For many readers, the evil of Cholly's act conceals his underlying love for his daughter. However, Morrison wants us to view rape as a desperate act of love. Morrison explained his intentions behind her father's rape of Pecola: "I want you to look at him and see his love for his daughter and his helplessness to ease her pain. In that moment, his embrace, the rape, is everything the gift he has left” (Otten 654). As difficult as it may be, we must consider the rape ofPecola as a perverse and very misdirected act of love. Even Claudia recognizes Cholly's actions as loving, albeit years after the rape: "Cholly loved him." I'm sure he did. In any case, it was he who loved her enough to touch her, to envelop her, to give her a little of himself” (206). Morrison goes on to say, “people do all sorts of things under the guise [of love]. Violence is perhaps a distortion of what we want to do. With the best intentions in the world, we can do enormous harm” (Otten 652). Even though Cholly's love is distorted, destructive and harmful, it is still love. As he bites the flesh of his daughter's leg and forces himself on her, he believes he loves Pecola, regardless of the pain he inflicts on her. In his attempt to relieve her pain, he tragically causes more pain. Since the book's point of view is primarily that of a young girl, the idea of ​​romantic or sexual love is both entirely unfamiliar and equally appealing; Claudia, in particular, is intrigued by the idea of ​​loving a man and being loved by a man. Even after finding Frieda very distressed and emotional after being assaulted by Mr. Henry, Claudia can't help but wonder what it was like to be touched by a man, disregarding Frieda's emotional state. her sister and asking frank questions about how the assault felt. , even displaying his dissatisfaction at “having nothing to pinch” (100). Claudia searches for romance and pleasure in her sister's pain, convinced that it is there somewhere. Claudia finds romantic suffering romantic and is unable to distinguish between the kind of love she envisions and the aggression Frieda experiences. Claudia finds Frieda crying and assumes Mr. Henry has physically hurt her, asking her sister, "What did he do?" Come closer and pinch them? (100). Claudia assumes that Mr. Henry's "love" must have hurt Frieda in some way because love seems to be closely linked to pain. Claudia's notions of pain and love are also illuminated by the blues song her mother sings. As a child, Claudia heard her mother “sing about the hard times, the bad times and the times when someone went away and left me. But his voice was so sweet and his singing eyes so melting that I found myself regretting those difficult times, longing to grow up without “a slim di-i-ime to my name”” (25). While the song her mother sings is full of sorrow and pain, the pleasure Claudia derives from her mother's singing and the beauty of her voice causes Claudia to long for the kind of love that breaks the heart. In that moment, Claudia realizes the power and promise of love: at the very least, it will break the heart and cause so much pain that the only relief will be a song. Claudia yearns for a romantic love so deep that it leaves her in pain: “I looked forward to the delicious moment when “my man” would leave me, when I “would hate to see the evening sun go down…” because then I would know “my man has left this town”. The misery colored by the greens and blues of my mother's voice took away all the sadness from the words and left me with the conviction that the pain was not only bearable, it was sweet” (25-26). Claudia learns from her mother's bittersweet song that true love is painful; the song is complex, talking about painful things in a haunting and beautiful way. Claudia, like the reader, realizes that the wonderful complexity of love lies in its complicated relationship with pain. Pecola also doesn't know what love is, both sexual and familial. As she sits with the prostitutes who live above her apartment, Pecola reflects on the nature of 2009.