The book's controversial topics of racism, incest, and child molestation have led to numerous attempts to ban the novel from schools and libraries in the United States.

[1] In 1941, in Lorain, Ohio, nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer and her ten-year-old sister Frieda live with their parents, a tenant named Mr. Henry Washington, and Pecola Breedlove, a temporary foster child whose house was burned down by her unstable, alcoholic, and sexually abusive father.

The novel, through flashbacks and various vignettes, explores the younger years of both of Pecola's parents, Cholly and Pauline, and their struggles as African Americans in a largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.

When asked about her motivations for writing The Bluest Eye in an interview, Morrison stated that she wanted to remind readers "how hurtful racism is" and that people are "apologetic about the fact that their skin [is] so dark".

[8] Jan Furman, professor of English at the University of Michigan, notes that the book allows the reader to analyze the "imprinting"[8] factors that shape the identity of the self during the process of maturing in young black girls.

[10] She argues that because the novel takes place in a time of World War II social sentiments, the "Dick and Jane" primer emphasizes the importance of raising children so as to mold the future of the United States.

[11] In the article "Racism and Appearance in The Bluest Eye: A Template for an Ethical Emotive Criticism",[12] Jerome Bump explains how the novel suggests that physical beauty is a virtue embedded in society.

Literary critic Lynn Scott argues that the constant images of whiteness in The Bluest Eye serve to represent society's perception of beauty, which ultimately proves to have destructive consequences for many of the characters in the novel.

[14] Harihar Kulkarni, an author of a book on African-American feminist fiction literature, recognizes that these Euro-centric ideals of family and beauty present in The Bluest Eye are shown to be transferred generationally, often between female relationships.

[17] Critic Allen Alexander argues that religion is an important theme in The Bluest Eye, since Morrison's work possesses a "fourth face" outside of the Christian Trinity, which represents "the existence of evil, the suffering of the innocent".

[18] In the essays "Disconnections from the Motherline: Gender Hegemonies and the Loss of the Ancient Properties; The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby" and "Maternal Interventions: Resistance and Power; The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Paradise", Andrea O'Reilly, a women's studies professor, proclaims that African-American women pass on cultural knowledge to successive generations through the process of motherline: "the ancestral memory and ancient properties of traditional black culture".

[21] Kochar asserts that the powerful white characters psychologically abuse people of non-white cultures and races, which results in a dominant theme of violence in the novel.

[22] Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye breaks the long tradition of narratives that discuss the hardships of war and depression in the 1940s, and according to University of Oxford professor Tessa Roynon, who studies African-American literature, she brings forth a unique and untold point of view in American historical fiction.

[24] Critics like Abdellatif Khayati, professor at the Moroccan Cultural Studies Center, and librarian Sandra Hughes-Hassel argue that The Bluest Eye serves as a counter-narrative, a method of the telling the accounts of people whose stories are rarely told and deliberately hidden.

[21] One example of this is that historically racist ideologies influence the character Soaphead Church in the novel, as University of Oxford professor Tessa Roynon, who studies African-American literature, explains: "the racial theories of Hume, Kant, Jefferson, and others, derived from innovations in classificatory systems by scientists such as Linnaeus, have been collected in useful readers such as Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze's anthology Race and the Enlightenment (1997).

"[24] As Khayati explains, these perpetual racist beliefs shape Pecola's self destructiveness, and she is suspicious of even her own blackness, and desires the characteristics of a white person, like those in the Dick and Jane primers.

"[13] Romagnolo argues that just as Pecola's rape is concealed throughout the story, the novel exposes a history of failed pursuits of hiding the racist and sexist establishments that directly provoke each character's hardships.

[27] Anne Salvatore, a professor of English at Rider University, interprets this failure of the "anti heroine" as a stark contrast to the typical bildungsroman, where a male character defeats obstacles and grows from experience.

[29] Early critics were also ambivalent about Morrison's portrayal of the black woman as an object in society rather than a person, only ever going so far as to bring this fact to light and rarely commenting past it.

[32] As time passed, more reviews and analyses were written in praise of Morrison's writing of the "colonization of the mind", her critique of white versus black beauty standards, and even began to analyze her use of simplistic language, calling it a stylistic choice rather than a pitfall of the novel.

[29] Despite initial controversies surrounding the subject matter of The Bluest Eye, Morrison was eventually recognized for her contributions to literature when she received the Nobel Prize in 1993, over 20 years following the original publication of the novel.

The ban was enacted in response to a complaint received by a parent of a ninth-grader student who was on the board and who took issue with the novel's sexual content, specifically the scene of Pecola's rape.

[46] In February 2007, a group called LOVE (the Livingston Organization for Values in Education) challenged four books in the Howell High School curriculum, including The Bluest Eye, Black Boy by Richard Wright, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Freedom Writers Diary.

The National Coalition Against Censorship published a letter in response to the criticism, claiming that the scenes which involve sex "represent small but essential parts of the novels, consistent with the kind of material that high school students frequently read.

[49] In 2013, a group of parents challenged The Bluest Eye's inclusion in Legacy High School's AP English curriculum due to the book's sexual content and "subject matter" of a girl getting raped by her father.

[50] In a formal petition submitted to the superintendent, parent Janela Karlson claimed the introduction of sexually graphic material including rape and incest could be developmentally harmful to minors as supported by scientific research.

"[54] The American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter to Ms. Terhar, explaining the book was "a bold, unflinching look at the pain and damage that internalized racism can inflict on a young girl and her community".

[53] In July, 2014, East Wake High School in North Carolina removed The Bluest Eye from their reading lists due to what was deemed inappropriate content.

The committee incorrectly identified Toni Morrison's prize-winning book, along with others, as violating a state statute for distributing “indecent material” that is “harmful to minors” age 16 and under.

[64] In 2024, the book was banned in Texas by the Katy Independent School District on the basis that the novel is "adopting, supporting, or promoting gender fluidity"[65] despite also pronouncing a bullying policy that protects infringements on the rights of the student.