The Bluest Eye Research Paper

The opinions of others, wether one notices or not, greatly affect his or her life. In Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl with dark brown eyes, is deemed ugly. Although she does not possess ugliness; she “put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to [her]” (Morrison 38). Pecola believes she is ugly because she does not meet the societal beauty standard. Pecola convinces herself that all her struggles are rooted in the fact that she not beautiful. If Pecola was white, blond, and blue-eyed her life would be different—it would be better. Pecola believes that having blue eyes would change her entire life. Though she would not be given different friends or a different family, those same friends

In this novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the author depicts a culture in which white people and white lifestyles are idealized and the standards for beauty are very generalized around whites. In this novel, the author questions the truths by which white standards of beauty are held and depicts the impact and growth it has on her characters and the long-term effects of these “beauty standards”. Claudia was much better able to handle rejecting the white, middle class America’s standards of beauty. Claudia and Pecola are similar in the sense that they both suffered from racist beauty standards and abuse growing up. However, Claudia was always the stronger of the two and did not feed into the standards of beauty set in her society.

In Toni Morrison’s novels, The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child, the main characters, Pecola and Bride, both display elements and the fetishization of whiteness within the black community. Pecola and Bride’s propensity to embrace whiteness and mask their blackness speaks to the pervasive nature of white culture over that of others. The use of masks, disguises, and dreams of being more white to attain society’s view of what is beautiful is a major theme that two texts share and the primary characters strive to achieve, while one character questions the infatuation with whiteness and its pervasive dominance over all other cultures within the United States. The fetishization of whiteness by those in minority communities within the U.S. damages minority’s in many ways, from many sides, and has traditionally forced the black community into compliance with white standards at their own expense.

In The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s uses her critique of racism so that white readers can imagine or understand what it feels like to be the on the other side of what is not considered beauty as Pecola, Claudia, and Freida suffer from the stigma of ugliness and being African-American (Bump). Through Morrison’s ability to convey the truth to readers about how beauty is socially structured, she uses Claudia, the narrator, to signify the search for the truth, “..the edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me. We do not, cannot, know the mean-ings of all the words, for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in timbre” (Morrison). We all were the ages of

In her society she is seen as an outcast, and feels as if she is undesirable. With her only true friends being Claudia and Frieda, she begins to wonder what her life could be like if she wasn’t African American. The tarnished love she acquires from her household and family leads her to believe that she will not be accepted by her community as well. Her life did not meet the ideal standards she set in her head and she believed “If those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). This quote shows Pecola’s desire to be white, and have the bluest of eyes so she can be different and completely unlike what she is now.

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye writes the book while she was teaching at Howard University. She decided to center the book around an eleven year old African American who is coming of age and accepting one’s beauty. Pecola’s family does not show her the love and affection that an eleven year old needs in a community full of people who are racist. In the world that Pecola grows up in she believes that she is ugly because she is not classified as a beautiful white girl with blue eyes. The racism that is shown in the book can affect the way she sees herself because the more Pecola hears what people are saying about her the more she is going to believe them. Throughout Pecola’s experiences she has taken her bad experience making them

And as a black girl/little woman living in this society where “blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned” beauty is what “the world said was lovable” (Morrion, 21), Pecola has always been told that she is ugly, with her visit to Yacobowski’s store being the most telling example, during which she detects in the way he saw her a complete “absence of human recognition—the glazed separateness” (Morrison, 48). And in this environment, Pecola grows up drinking from a Shirley Temple and eating Mary Jane candies, because she believes that “to eat the candy is somehow to . . . eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane” (Morrison, 50). As far as this little girl is concerned, she is not truly human until she has blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. This belief is a result of being birthed into and then living in destructive dominant culture that marks “blackness” as contemptible, as entirely “other”, as less than human. So, convinced in her unworthiness, Pecola prays “fervently” (Morrison, 47) for blue eyes, so that not only she would feel more human, the world around

In the 1960s a second wave of feminism rushed through America; focused on dismantling barriers in the workplace and changing the image of the ‘ideal woman.’ However, many women of color were not included in the feminist movement. Toni Morrison recognizes the feminist issues concerning black women and “interrogates and deconstructs the long-held stereotypical images of black women” through characters in her book (Chick). Her portraits are complex and revealing in the way they go beyond the simple patriarchy. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses historical context to represent the ideals of beauty and the psychological effect it has on the adolescent mind. Growing up

Though her pregnancy is a critical detail in the story, Pecola’s disfavor with her appearance is pronounced in the way she dreams of having white skin and especially blue eyes. Claudia, one of young girls that narrates describes Pecola’s love for Shirley Temple as she states, “Frieda and she had a long conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was. I couldn't join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley” (Morrison 35). Pecola’s idolization of Shirley Temple indicates how culture, controlled by the dominant race, created the desire in young black girls to achieve the image of “whiteness”. Prejudice reigns in the means in which these young girls see beauty. Carolyn Gerald comments on this interaction between the young girls and societies

In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison portrays the psychological murder of the most vulnerable and fragile member of society, a little black girl, in order to criticize and condemn the influence of racial discourses upon the self, to the extent that they can demolish the sense of identity. These discourses are based on stereotypes which in the novel take the form of the canon of white beauty, being the blue eyes the epitomized image. In order to make the reader aware of this fact, Morrison brings a powerless and voiceless figure, Pecola Breedlove, to the centre of attention in order to condemn why and how she considers rejection (of herself, and it implies her identity too) as legitimate. As a consequence, she is unable to cope with reality and, therefore, she needs to construct an invented world to survive, which leads her to live in madness.

The novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, reveals thetragedy of beauty in society and its role in African-American segregation from white culture. Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist of the novel, is an eleven-year-old girl who, like the rest of her black community, has adopted the belief the whiteness was the standard of beauty. In this world contaminated ofdamagingwhite values, Pecola desiresblue eyes, believing that they would bring her beauty, love and social acceptance, and thereby allowing her to transcend her miserable situation of abuse from her family and community. However, Pecola’shopes of achieving this aspiration fall apart when her fatherrapes and impregnates her. This calamity forces her further into an imaginary world that shields

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison brings to light the often unrecognized struggle that many people in the black community face. She exposes the “whitewashing” that has been prevalent in society for decades and the societal imposition of impossible beauty standards. Morrison uses the book to show us the psychological tolls on children and adults that stem from these unattainable goals. Children, like Pecola Breedlove, are so indoctrinated by society and the quest for superficial “perfection” that they lose sight of what truly matters. Those desires for superficial superiority even carry over into adulthood, as seen by Mrs. Breedlove’s “skin deep values.” The Bluest Eye even shows that anyone and everyone is affected by the desire to become perfect; even the Maurine Peals of the world have their own insecurities.

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is a novel born from the author’s experience with a little black girl who wanted blue eyes, an effect of “racial self-loathing” (Morrison 210). The novel explores a similar, but much more extreme story: the story of Pecola Breedlove. Pecola is a little black girl living not only in a world that divides itself by race and is prejudiced against black people, but also amidst a family that holds conflict and divisions within itself. Morrison’s novels are known for their themes of racial ideology, beauty standards, and identity (Lister), and The Bluest Eye is no different. Through the subject of its story and the author’s use of language, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explores the dangers of racially-based beauty

Through the character of Pecola Breedlove, Morrison “highlighted the plight of a black girl in a society dominated by the white.”(Kochar) Pecola feared that her parent’s constant bickering and fighting is because she’s ugly. Pecola yearns for blue eyes so she can be beautiful, because in today’s society beauty is morality and she’s afraid of being neglected by society. “It occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes… were different that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different,” (46) she thought that if her eyes weren’t dark brown but a different color (blue) she’ll get to experience a mother’s love and she wouldn’t bear her father’s child because they’ll seer has innocent child who they’ll try to protect and keep safe, but instead he abused her for minor incidents she had no control over, like getting burned by her blueberry pie. Pecola was always a victim of her parent's abusive behaviors, and

One of the significant themes that Morrison 's, The Bluest Eye scrutinizes is the relationship between race and beauty. Rather how the predominant racial society’s point of view about beauty serves to degrade, ignore, and criticize different races by that compelling the affection of the domineering group by attaining the constancy of its eminence over less popular groups viewed by society. The Bluest Eye depicts the story of an eleven-year-old black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who desires have blue eyes on the grounds that she sees herself and is viewed by most of the characters in this novel as “ugly.” The standard of “beauty” that her peers aspire is personified by the young white child actress, Shirley Temple, who has desirable blue eyes. White standards of beauty, an affection of the “blue-eyed, blonde haired" look, are forced upon black individuals from society, who personalize such social standards, tolerating rejection as real, and undeniable, and, being not able to meet such standards, are degraded in their own eyes, producing self-hatred, and internalized racial disgust. This perception of their own inadequacy and the mediocrity of their race, when all is said, is strengthened every day through their connections with white individuals and admired culture in their general surroundings. Morrison reveals insight into the shielded and implicit truth that everybody to some degree is racist. In The Bluest Eye, by utilizing