Favorite Bluest Eye Passage

My favorite quote in the whole book is, "Wicked people love wickedly, violent people loved violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe" (Morrison 206). I really like this quote because it explains why a lot of the terrible things in this book happen. most people perceive love as nurturing and good, but Morrison introduces the idea that love is only as good as the lover, and that just like people, love can be evil too. While Cholly's actions are seen as disgusting and sinister, Cholly, who has never been able to truly comprehend love, is trying to display his love for Pecola in the only way he knows how. In a similar fashion, Soaphead Church thinks that his molestation of kids is "love". Soaphead is a sinner who thinks of himself as better than god, so his love cannot be good, in accordance to the line previous to the quote, "love is never any better than the lover" (Morrison 206). In addition to that, love can also be destructive, in the sense that people often think that being beautiful equates to being loved. We see throughout the book, examples of the self-destructiveness of beauty standards, and love only heightens the desire to be beautiful. Though we all know love is usually positive, in the entire book there are no relationships in which the participants truly love each other, which would bring one to believe that Morrison is trying to show how negative love can really be