Research Paper On Pecola

Pecola evaluated herself ugly, and wanted to have a pair of blue eyes so that every problem could be solved. Pecola was an African-American and lived in a family with problems. Her father ran away because of crime, her brother left because of their fighting parents, and was discriminated simply because she has dark-skin. Pecola is a passive person. She is almost destroyed because of her violent father, Cholly Breedlove, who raped her own daughter after drinking. Because of this, Pecola kept thinking about her goal- to reach the standard of beauty. However, she was never satisfied with it. Pecola believed once she become beautiful, fighting between her parents would no longer happen, her brother would come back, and her father would no long be a rapist. No problem would exist anymore.

She thought that if she had blue eyes, the blue eyes of the accepted white ideal, she would be beautiful and therefore loved. The acquisition of the blue eyes she so fiercely covets signifies Pecola's step into madness. It was a safe place, where she could have her blue eyes, and where she could be accepted.

In the aftermath, there is a dialogue presented between Pecola and an imaginary friend. The dialogue includes conflicted feelings of Pecola’s rape, and her deluded thoughts of her wish for blue eyes has been granted. She believes that the changes in behavior of the people around her are because of her new eyes, and not the news of her rape. Claudia speaks for a final time, and describes the recent phenomenon of pecola’s insanity. She also suggests that Cholly, (who had since died), may have shown Pecola the only affection he could by raping her. Claudia believed that the whole community, herself included, have used Pecola as a way to make themselves feel beautiful and happier.

With some background knowledge on Pauline, the mother of Pecola, it’s easier to understand some of Pecola's core traits. There are parallelisms between Pecola and Pauline. They find their reality too harsh to deal with, so they become fixated on one thing that makes them happy, and they ignore everything else. Pecola's desire for blue eyes is more of an inheritance that she received from her mother. One of Pauline’s own obsessions was back when she was fascinated with the world of the big pictures. As long as they can believe in their fantasies, they're willing to sacrifice anything else.

Pecola’s misery is so complete, so deep, that she convinces herself that her only hope for a better life rests in changing her eye color. Even more pathetically, "Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes … Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope" (Morrison 46). Pecola was doubly tragic in that she placed all her hope in something which could never really happen and, despite her earnest belief, change nothing if it did.

Toni Morrison tells us why it’s important to stay with your family and not to leave and how a family can change one thing in life. Toni Morrison’s progress of the differences between the main characters’ families, houses, and attitudes toward society’s belief in a white standard of beauty reveals what allows Claudia to grow and survive and inhibits Pecola from doing the same. It is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent Black girl Pecola Breedlove, who is obsessed by the White standard of beauty and longing fora pair of blue eyes. Why does she long for blue eyes?

Pecola's schism has created an imaginary friend for her because she has no real friend. Her imaginary friend represents an escape from reality as the researcher thinks. The researcher shows that Pecola wants a person who will pay attention while she talks about her new blue eyes. Her imagination that she obtains blue eyes recompense the horrible memory of the events in her life.

Pecola convinces herself that her eyes are now blue, making her beautiful in society’s eyes, but combined with her rape, the effects are even more disastrous than before. Fitting the standards of beauty and her rape has literally destroyed Pecola’s sanity. She “step[s] over into madness” as she loses her mind at the hands of society, talking to thin air and believing that she has blue eyes in an attempt to save herself from the horrors of society (206). In addition, people see her spending her days “flail[ing] her arms like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly” and “walking up and down, up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear” (204). Pecola, “a little black girl [who] yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl,” suffers at the hand of society and its rejection towards her, driving her into the deepest pits of despair and self-loathing (204).

Internalized racism, a hidden racism, affected the minds of many people. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola hated herself for not living up to the standards of beauty. Near the beginning of the book, the narrator comments, “It occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different... If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too.” (The Bluest Eye 46).

The setting and imagery are all based around hate,cruelty and irresponsibility of black people among themselves. These people feel no sort of compassion for Pecola’s plight, there is no love for the black baby in contrast to the love and care that is being bestowed on the “White baby dolls.” The writer Toni Morrison uses words like “the flared nose, kissing-thick lips, and the living, breathing silk of black skin,” to describe the baby, although the baby shares the same features with the same people who surround it without any form of pity or positive emotion for it and it’s mother. This shows that it is not the white community that destroys pecola but her parents and the black people around her.

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Morrison presents a young black girl, Pecola, who embodies the issue of racial self-contempt in the 1940s. Pecola prays for blue eyes because she longs to be viewed with the same beauty as that of white people; however, as Morrison states, “Implicit in her desire [is] racial self-loathing.” (Morrison 210) She hates her dark skin and her dark eyes because she has conformed to her society’s definition of beauty: light skin and light eyes. On the other hand, Morrison introduces Claudia, another black girl who demonstrates the opposite outlook. Claudia sees Pecola’s wish for blue eyes as radical and shameful; namely, she is “astonished by the desecration” (Morrison 209) that Pecola wants to impose on her body.

The story begins with the description of Pecola's family :"they live in a storefront because they were poor and black and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly" (Morrison 38). Unfortunately, Pecola's feelings of ugliness are reinforced by her own parents; her father Cholly’s ugliness came from his " despair, dissipation, and violence directed toward pretty things and weak people" (Morrison 38). Pecola states the following regarding her Mother Pauline: "But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly" (Morrison 126). Pecola was doomed to a life of self doubt and

Instead they start to insult her and break down her self-confidence. And that what happened with Pecola in THE BLUEST EYES. Her family didn't feel happy with her, and always says that she is ugly; what makes her believe that she is extremely ugly, but she doesn't know why. She always looks at the mirror and asks herself why they say that she is ugly. In addition to the family, Pecola’s friends, classmates and teachers also think that she is an ugly girl, just because of her skin

Pecola knew that as long as she remained invisible, she would not be dragged into fights or given any unwanted attention that may negatively impact her, whether it be from her mother, father, peers, etc. In the article, “The Danger Lurking Within: The African American Woman in Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eyes,” authors Gladys, P. V. Annie, et al. write, “The African American woman find themselves doomed under rejections both from society and from family. As a result of this they feel alienated and frustrated. […] Pecola innocently considers: "If she looked different, beautiful, may be Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too" (34). Each night she used to pray fervently for blue eyes” (Gladys, P. V. Annie, et al., 3). Pecola learned that invisibility was something to be strived for due to her home life, just as Bride learned that attention, accolades, and wearing masks around strangers was to be strived for, for her benefit. These two characters are ultimately products of their home lives.

Pecola drinking milk from a cup with a picture of Shirley Temple on the side of it. Shirley Temple was a young white actress who Pecola was infatuated with. While Pecola was obsessed with drinking the whiteness of the milk from the whiteness of Shirley Temple’s picture on the cup. Pecola was preoccupied drinking what she considered this ideal figure of beauty.