Oppression In The Bluest Eye

In the course of The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove has shown signs of low self esteem. She would always be the one to compare herself to something she admires to be beautiful. Perhaps, sometimes problems surround her get a little too much, she has not yet realized the fog will clear up. For example in the autumn chapter, a quote has said “Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people.” There is no such thing as a “Pecola’s point of view”. She lives off of people's judgements and believe physical appearance is all there is to a person. Her desire to be beautiful is not having attractive long black hair and golden skin color, but blonde hair with a white pigmentation. Which causes her to dream and want even more.

Besides the inherent self-confident issue, the outside voice from community is also affecting Pecola’s view. For example, in the “accident” when Pecola went into Junior’s house, Junior killed the cat and impute to Pecola. His mother, Geraldine, saw Pecola was holding the dead cat. Without any thought and didn’t even ask for the truth, Geraldine simply called Pecola a “nastylittle black bitch.” This event, again, reinforces Pecola’s view of what beauty means.

As a child, he was not loved by his mother. She prefered her cat to her own son. Junior saw this at an early age and “spent some happy moments watching it suffer” (86). Junior locked Pecola in a room, becoming the perpetrator with the same turn of attitude as Cholly. When he saw that the cat liked Pecola, he threw the cat, killing it, because the thing his mother loved more than himself loved her. Pecola’s wish could be paralleled to the cat. It had blue eyes, and was loved dearly by someone, which could explain the attention she gave to the cat. Junior even said, “Gimme my cat! (90). Up to this point, he wanted nothing to do with the cat and even tortured it, but with it being the only connection to his mother, he called it his own. Pecola’s dream, or having the same attention as the cat, was killed when the cat was killed. Junior was not loved by his mother, only taken care of to live. She did not “allow her baby, Junior, to cry…[she] did not talk to him, coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts” (86). This unlove for her family caused Junior to be victimized, and then alter his ways, and become the perpetrator. Pecola is the victim in the rage of Junior, only because his mother did not love him. She wanted someone to be kind to her, and love her, but that was only met with

Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's mother, experiences racism within the black community when she moves to Lorain, Ohio. Being a dark-skinned black woman from the south, she does not understand why "northern colored folk was different... [and why they were] no better than whites for meanness" (117). She recognizes the hierarchy, or the "difference between colored people and niggers" within the black community, especially from the light-skinned women she encounters (87). One of these light-skinned black women is Geraldine, Junior's mother, who believes "colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud" (87). She even tells her son

These ladies, China, Poland, and Miss Marie, are very friendly to Pecola. They are not ashamed of their job, and talk about their clients with Pecola. The ladies actually hate men, but do this job for the money. A rich, light-skinned black girl named Maureen moved to the school that Claudia and Frieda attend. Claudia and Frieda don’t really like her, but one day asked Maureen to walk home with them from school.

Institutionalized inequalities, a societal prejudice against others through a community or organization, is a prevalent issue within the novel, “The Bluest Eye”, written by Toni Morrison. The use of racial discrimination, gender roles, and class structures construct these inequalities, and illustrates the immoral high road that institutions in the 20th century would follow along. Pecola Breedlove, the main character and the person who falls to victim most frequently, endures numerous setbacks and obstacles that contribute to the analysis on how “The Bluest Eye” creates such disparities. As Wall would put it, “in a society ordered by hierarchies of power based on race, class, and gender, no one is more powerless-hence more vulnerable- than a

Another powerful incident, Cholly’s first sexual experience, gives insight into the rage, confusion and tenderness he feels towards women in his adult life. The narrator describes the incident with Darlene and the white men through Cholly's eyes. The reader understands the initial excitement of young sexual energy, and the later humiliation of being caught by the cruel white men. Cholly directs his anger towards Darlene rather than towards the white men

Some school boys attack Pecola by shouting derogatory words to her. They tease her because her father sleeps naked and because of discrimination her black skin . Frieda comes to the rescue Pecola by hitting one boy and loudly threatening other boys. Then, Claudia joins the conflict. After that, Maureen appears. The boys leave because they don’t want to fight in front of Maureen. Claudia helps to pick Pecola's notebook and Frieda's coat. Frieda and Claudia are very brave because of rescuing Pecola even though the boys may beat them up. Claudia and Frieda treat Pecola very well. Instead of neglect or avoid the conflict, they chose to rescue Pecola as well as express their love, affection between black

Pecola is always the victim. There are many scenes in the story that show how Pecola gets hurt and never fights back. One example in particular is when Jr. invites Pecola inside his house and offers her a kitten. Pecola knows Jr. is never up to any good but goes against her better judgment and decides to go inside anyways. She decides to go inside because it’s someone who is giving her attention, and makes

Cholly has trouble showing Pecola that he loves her. For example, “Again the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover her. ”After raping his daughter, Cholly covers her tenderly with a quilt. This shows that Cholly wants to express his love for Pecola but does not know the proper way to express it because he is psychologically

The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison that reveals many lessons and conflicts between young and adult characters of color. The setting takes place during the 1940s in Lorain, Ohio. The dominant speaker of this book is a nine year old girl named Claudia MacTeer who gets to know many of her neighbors. As a result of this, Claudia learns numerous lessons from her experience with the citizens of Lorain. Besides Claudia, The Bluest Eye is also told through many characters for readers to understand the connection between each of the adults and children. Many parents in the novel like Geraldine and Pauline Breedlove clearly show readers how adults change their own children. Furthermore, other adult characters like Cholly Breedlove

He despised their helplessness because it mirrored his own influence in comparison to white men. Since he could not escape from the system of oppression, he was swallowed by it. He sought for an outlet to his scorn, oppressing those weaker than himself. Eventually, the cycle of oppression completed itself as the oppressed became the oppressor. Pecola became the victimized object of Cholly’s trauma. He reflected his childhood experience onto the destructive treatment of his daughter. Cholly and Pecola’s horrific sexual experiences manifested a type of demon within them, hatred and madness, that inevitably effected how they treated their peers.

Who would wish to be subjected to a neighborhood where you are mistreated for having black skin? Geraldine only allows her son to play in the playground with upper-class colored people. Junior’s mother categorizes Pecola as the breed of lower-class niggers in their society. One day, Junior tricks Pecola into coming to his house to glimpse his kittens; on the contrary, things yield a ruthless turn. The cat was thrown on Pecola’s face by Junior and she got scratched up.

" The narrator states that they (except for Cholly) "wore their ugliness---although it did not belong to them." This ugliness had everything to do with the fact that they were black, especially for Mrs. Breedlove and Pecola. Mrs. Breedlove wanted to look like a movie star and Pecola wanted blue eyes, both cases were unrealistic and

     The Bluest Eye opens with a Dick and Jane paragraph, a white American Myth far removed from the realities illustrated in the novel. Thereafter, the black narrator Claudia MacTeer relates much of the story, and the reminder, which concerns events that Claudia could not have witnessed, is narrated mostly by an unidentified voice. Claudia’s narrative reveals the guilt that for a long time plagued her and her sister in connection with another girl’s miscarriage. The girl, Pecola Breedlove, was pregnant with her own father’s child