The Guiltiest Hand

a cute little stick man carrying his not
so cute guilt

Remember how in elementary and middle school, when we were learning about bullying, they said if you didn't stand up to the bully you were just as bad as one? As any normally-functioning human, it was because you had a sense of guilt. Did you really want to be the reason a poor kid gets beat up?

They say that guilt is one of the heaviest things a soul can carry. That it stays with you always. Voltaire once said, "Every man is guilty of the good he did not do."


Even I still catch myself feeling guilty about things that nobody probably remembers or cares about. Like not inviting some friends to a party, saying something that stung in an argument, or even that one time I made my brother cry in Chicago when we were little. Guilt is like this little book you carry with you, adding new names and events to it each day. But the book never runs out of pages. It just gets thicker and heavier and you still have to carry it every day.

the cause of my Chicago-based guilt

To me, I think that is what The Bluest Eye came from. Although yes, I know it is a fictional story, Morrison is definitely living with some kind of guilt about not changing the world for the better. "It's too late. At least on the edge of my town... It's much, much, much too late" (Morrison 206).

If we are guilty of the good we have not done, then there is a lot to be guilty about. Look at the world around us. It's being torn apart by terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and just mean people in general. So with this book, Morrison forces us to take a look at ourselves. Is it too late? Can we still right our wrongs? Or must we carry this guilt forever?

Looking back on the novel, I think Morrison used it as a medium to not only ease her sense of guilt, but to bring us into touch with our own.

Lyrics of the week: "Do I divide and fall apart? Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark... And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?" from Jesus Christ by Brand New.