Bluest Eye Metaphors

The characters within The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, all attempt to conform to a standard of beauty in some way. This standard of beauty is established by the society in which they live, and then supported by members of the community. Beauty is also linked with respect and happiness. Both people who reach the standard of beauty, and those who try, are never really satisfied with who they are. This never-ending race to become beautiful has devastating effects on their relationships and their own self-esteem.

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about

The first white character majorly presented is the neighbor Rosemary, who is depicted as being a beautiful little white girl on the outside, but spiteful, petty, and childish on the inside as she repeatedly attempts to get Freida, Claudia, and Pecola in trouble (Morrison 30). This theme of beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside persists as the novel progresses. One of the character that represents this most clearly is Maureen, a light-skinned black girl who comes to school with girls in the Winter (Morrison 62). Because of her pale skin, she is treated better than the other African American girls at the school, like Frieda, Pecola, and Claudia, and it is clear that she internalizes this superiority (Morrison 63). The internalized superiority becomes clear as she spends time with the girls, teasing and taunting them all the while, and ultimately saying, “‘I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos! I am cute (Morrison 73)!’” In saying this, Maureen is stating that to be black is to be ugly, and, by that same measure, denying the reality of her own blackness. This shows the subjective and fluid nature of standards of beauty resting in whiteness, and also how, within the novel, being beautiful by mainstream white standards leads to flaws in

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place in Ohio in the 1940s. The novel is written from the perspective of African Americans and how they view themselves. Focusing on identity, Morrison uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, dictation, and symbolism to help stress her point of view on identity. In the novel the author argues that society influences an individual's perception on beauty, which she supports through characters like Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove. Furthermore, the novel explains how society shapes an individual's character by instilling beauty expectations. Morrison is effective in relaying her message about the various impacts that society has on an individual's character through imagery, diction, and symbolism by showing that

After she meets Pecola, her concerns go to Pecola. She explains about each and every incident that occurs to Pecola and the reasons behind leading to those incidents. According to Claudia, the narrator of the story, not just Pecola but it was the Breedlove family members who treated themselves the uglier rather than the society. Only the difference is that they make a different mindset deal with it. The narrator vividly mentions by saying, “Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction/And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it” (Morrison 39). This explains more of what they were dealing with. It is impossible to make them believe that they aren’t relentlessly and aggressively ugly (38). Being young, vulnerable and more importantly, female, Pecola is the one who gets abused frequently and endures the damage in greater

The simple statement “he is black and I am white” shows the classification that human beings create in a negative way. Segregation and discrimination is a major part of this story in a way that even an innocent little girl is set to thing that she is better than someone else due to the simple fact that she was born in to white

In her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison illustrates the varying yet interconnecting experiences of African-Americans in a prejudice society. The novel, told by Claudia and an omniscient third person narrator, contains a variety of literary techniques that help tell the story of Pecola, her family, and her town. One of these techniques Morrison often implements in this text is the use of metaphors. For instance, in the first chapter, Claudia explains “there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941,” (5) and that they, Claudia and her sister Freida “thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow,” (5) but she realizes that their “seeds were not the only ones that did not sprout; nobody’s did,” (5). As she continues, the narrator draws the comparison between the marigold seeds and Pecola’s baby stating: “We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father dropped his in his own little plot of black dirt,” (6). The marigolds failing to sprout that year represent a disruption of nature that also occurs when Pecola’s baby is not born. In the eyes of young Claudia and Frieda, Pecola’s child, like the seeds, dies because of the manner of each planting. She later reveals however that the reason for the marigolds not sprouting was the “unyielding earth,” (6). Considering the comparison of Pecola’s baby to the marigold seeds, the unyielding earth refers to the difficult society that

Slavery, segregation, and discrimination are commonly viewed as some of the primary struggles African Americans contended with. However, in Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eyes, it reveals struggles not commonly discussed about, such as internalized racism within black society and the internal conflict with one’s own blackness. Throughout the novel, characters repeatedly try to consume whiteness as a mean to escape their own blackness. They submerge themselves with the notion that the white, Eurocentric culture is the superior culture, and being white means being beautiful and powerful. In doing so, they gradually disconnect and disassociate themselves from their own African American heritage.

The Bluest Eye is an award winning novel written by Toni Morrison. This novel touches many difficult stereotypes of family, race, and beauty. The novel begins with a Dick and Jane story, and it gives a depiction of the ideal family. This family had a big house, a full family with both parents, were happy, and had a pet dog. The mother was described as very nice, and mothers have typically been seen as caring or nurturing.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison strongly ties the contents of her novel to its structure and style through the presentation of chapter titles, dialogue, and the use of changing narrators. These structural assets highlight details and themes of the novel while eliciting strong responses and interpretations from readers. The structure of the novel also allows for creative and powerful presentations of information. Morrison is clever in her style, forcing readers to think deeply about the novel’s heavy content without using the structure to allow for vagueness.

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, depicts characters desperately seeking to attain love through a predetermined standard of beauty established and substantiated by society. Morrison intertwines the histories of several characters portraying the delusions of the ‘perfect’ family and what motivates their quest for love and beauty. Ultimately, this pursuit for love and beauty has overwhelming effects on their relationships and their identity.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison narrates the lives of two families, the MacTeer family and the Breedlove family. The novel digs into the themes of love, envy, and weakness, while maintaining a thick and interesting plotline. These themes are conveyed thoroughly through Morrison’s literary style. Toni Morrison’s powerful writing and structural techniques add depth to the novel, enhancing certain emotions while developing a riveting plot.

The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. On the contrary, the less privileged division is represented by the MacTeer family and the “relentlessly and aggressively ugly” Breedlove family (The Bluest Eye 38). Tension between the divided African American society is clearly represented by such characterizations throughout Morrison’s novel.

In The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the reader struggles through a multitude of themes that are difficult to comprehend and accept as reality. Brutal racism, physical and sexual abuse, mental insanity, impossible standards of beauty, and intense bullying and harassment are present to leave the reader grappling with and making sense of the stories told. Cholly Breedlove, the main character’s father, both experiences and perpetuates abuse in many forms. His character embodies the cyclic effects of hatred of the black body and spirit.

Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye in order to discuss race, gender, and class. She does a careful and intentional dance along the axis of oppression she is speaking on. Her pointed stories of abuse, self loathing, and rape are juxtaposed to the soft imagery of nature. The book is separated into four sections named after the seasons. Rarely does a page go by where Morrison does not wax poetic about marigolds, or set a scene with forsythia. And yet, though she uses these images to soften the setting in which atrocities take place, they are often used in such a manner that the harshness of the events bleed into the imagery. Creating the malevolent force that is nature in the novel, and the streak of ironic imagery that runs through Morrisons writing.