* The Blues Eye Review


* I Am Not My Hair, India Arie f/Akon
“I was the source of so much laughter” It's like India and Akon are singing about me. For as long as I can remember, people have been laughing at me. Laughing at my hair, laughing at my family and how we're poor, laughing at the way I look. Not only have I been the source of laughter, I AM the source of so much laughter. (Pecola)

This song is about people who have been constantly ridiculed for how they look. Just like Pecola Breedlove (a major character in the novel), India Arie and Akon are made fun of because they aren’t what the people around define as “beautiful”.



Behind Blue Eyes, Limp Bizkit

One on hand I totally understand this song. All people do is talk about me and make fun of me. They have no idea what its like to feel so ugly, to hate yourself. I'm sure the other girls have families who love them. Mothers who shower them with TLC and fathers who protect them. Not me. All my family knows is how to yell and hurt each other. But on the other hand, how could it be painful to have beautiful blue eyes. Oh how my life would be so different, so much better if I had them. I understand Limp Bizkit's pain, but I think they are also kinda ungrateful. I would never even dreaming of complaining if I had even one blue eye. (Pecola).



Hole, Kelly Clarkson

This song is about someone who is empty, has no faith, and has pretty much given up on everything. Pecola, because of her lack of beauty along with her familial relationships, is also empty and lacks faith. If Pecola were to sing a song about how she felt about her life, this could easily be her song.



Beautiful, India Arie
I wanna go to beautiful. Everywhere around me there is so much ugliness. I see it when I look at my family, I see it in the disgusted eyes of those who talk about me. But most of all I see the ugliness when I look in the mirror. And I want to go to beautiful. I want to go and never come back. (Pecola)
In this song India Arie is singing that she wants to go to a place called "beautiful" where the sky will "open to her prayers". All Pecola wants out of life is to have her prayers answered and get the blue eyes that she desperately desires. In a sense, Pecola wants to go to "beautiful" as well.



Security, Joss Stone
I saw how they were breaking her. How there sharp words and brutal looks were killing her soul, snatching every bit of life that she was desperately clinging to. Anybody would crack under such pressure. I dont want to add to Pecola's pain anymore. She's human just like the rest of us. She bears so many burdens with no way to release. I wanna help her. I can't take any of it back, but I wanna be her security. (Claudia MacTeer)

*important lyrics*
"A loss that would have thrown/ A hole through anybody's soul/ And you were only human after all/ So don't hold back the tears my dear/Release them so your eyes can clear/ I know that you will rise again/But you gotta let them fall/ I wish that I could snap my fingers Erase the past but no/You cannot rewind reality/ Once the tape's unrolled"
At the end of "The Bluest Eye" the reader gets a sense that Claudia (the narrator) understands Pecola's sadness. Claudia has been around for almost all of the tragedies that have wounded Pecola. At the end it seems that Claudia wishes that something more could be done to help ease Pecola's burdens.


Unpretty, TLC
This song is more about self-esteem and self-perception. In "The Bluest Eye" this is a major factor in Pecola's life. Throughout the book Toni Morrison writes that it is really that Pecola is exceptionally ugly, but that she believes that she is ugly, and carriers herself like she is ugly, and this self-perception influences how everyone else looks at her. The message of this song is basically that you can fix whatever you think is physically wrong with you but until you deal with the internal issues, you will remain "unpretty". I think this is also one of the messages that Pecola's character illustrates to readers.



Beautiful, Christina Aguilera
All is well with life. I have my blue eyes. I'm not ugly anymore. They are the bluest in the entire world. (Pecola)
This song is kind of representative of what Pecola believes at the end of the book. Christina sings that she is beautiful no matter what people say. Once Pecola begins to believe that she has blue eyes, she thinks she is beautiful and that her problems are over, despite the fact that she has become almost invisible to everyone else. More importantly, I think that if there was any one message that readers should get after reading "The Bluest Eye" it's represented in this song.