Morrison's Bluest Eye Essay: Self-Definition

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

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by

Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, have no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,

In the novel, “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison the unorthodox structure and undermining content inspired and continues to inspire controversy. Morrison’s creative narrative approach addresses many issues of racism and identity. Through the course of the novel some vulgar subjects are also introduced, such as incest and pedophilia. In the book the point of view founded by the characters following their upsetting lives helps portray the theme of battling internal conflicts formed through extended metaphors and horrible societal circumstances.

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is a story about the life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who is growing up during post World War I. She prays for the bluest eyes, which will “make her beautiful” and in turn make her accepted by her family and peers. The major issue in the book, the idea of ugliness, was the belief that “blackness” was not valuable or beautiful. This view, handed down to them at birth, was a cultural hindrance to the black race.

Although written decades apart, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye both explore the trials and tribulations that young black girls must endure as they begin to step into womanhood. While the burdens that the protagonists in each of these texts differ in some key ways, one of the most interesting things that both Woodson and Morrison depicted was a sense of difficulty in coping with these changes, and rather than having any semblance of mastery over their circumstances, these young protagonists would instead project their emotions onto something else as they try to discover what causes their suffering.

Those who judge character through beauty are blind. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye determines how the individuals are alienated from their society through physical appearances. Throughout The Bluest Eye, the factors that determine, contribute, and provide an escape from, segregation are discussed. This novel emphasizes the unfortunate life of protagonist Pecola Breedlove by exhibiting her class conflict, mental state, physical attractiveness, and much more.

The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel written by American author Toni Morrison. The novel depicts a year in the life of an 11 year-old black girl named Pecola who believes that having blue eyes would make her beautiful and worthy of the love of others. Throughout the novel, Morrison takes us through the perspectives of important figures in Pecola’s youth, including her father, Cholly, who drunkenly rapes her and leaves her pregnant. Morrison explores the psychological repercussions of a young black girl who is raised in a society that base their ideals of beauty on “whiteness”. I will be using a blend of Frye’s fictive modes and Hero From Across the Sea and Female Archetypal Imagery in order to demonstrate how Toni Morrison in her novel The Bluest

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is not as clear-cut as the physical traits may suggest. Culture has a major role in deciding when that change is. Some cultures use a specific age, while others acknowledge physical changes. Regardless, cultures around the world understand that there is a distinct difference between adolescence and adulthood. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye tells a story from the perspective of Claudia, a black girl growing up in the 1940s. Morrison uses Claudia as a narrator during her youth, and again when she is a grown woman. Morrison uses the shifting perspective to show that the abilities to understand and reflect are what separate women from girls. The Bluest Eye focuses on the idea of the ideal child and

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.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye possesses a level of violence, depravity, and anger of almost every character introduced. The main narrator of the story, Claudia, will be the topic of this essay. Throughout the story it is revealed that Claudia has some underlying anger, towards the Eurocentric view of beauty, and white girls in general. This essay will explore the repressed anger of Claudia in Toni Morrison’s

The Bluest Eye concentrates on the key contemporary American issues: racial and sexual politics. More distinctly, the novel centres on the impact that socially constructed views of race have on gender relations within the black community. As Butler-Evans highlights, “race rather than gender had become the overriding sign for the oppression of black people” and Morrison’s novel responds to this political issue by focusing on this in correlation with the Eurocentric society setting of the novel. The racial oppression suffered by the black community shape ideas of black masculinity based on male feelings of inferiority and consequent sexual oppression of black females. Morrison systematically explores the relationship between the racial oppression of black males and sexual oppression of black females. The main focus of this essay will be an exploration of how racial oppression experienced by black males, specifically Cholly and Junior, relate to the sexual oppression they enforce on black females.

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, received good reviews (Benson, Brannen, and Valentine). The book focuses on a young black girl who wishes she had blonde hair and blue eyes, which she perceives as beautiful (“Toni Morrison.” Encyclopedia). She associates her dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair with ugliness. She believes her dark skin to be the reason she is bullied at school and abused at home (“Toni Morrison.” DIScovering). In this story, Toni Morrison brought to life the thoughts that many young African American girls truly have.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison shows that one’s family determines a character’s feeling of self-worth. According to Morrison, the world is teaching little black girls that they are not beautiful and unworthy of love. The world teaches this by depicting white people and objects that resemble them, as symbols of beauty. In this world, to be worthy of love you must be beautiful. Morrison shows that if a little black girl believes what the world is telling her, her self-esteem can develop low self-esteem and they may yearn to be white. Even in the absence of economic and racial privilege, Morrison suggests that a little black girl can look to her family to build up her self-esteem. For Morrison, having a family is