Race And Beauty in Toni Morrison's Novel The Bluest Eye Essay

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,

The desire to feel beautiful has never been more in demand, yet so impossible to achieve. In the book “The Bluest Eye”, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the story of two black families that live during the mid-1900’s. Even though slavery is a thing of the past, discrimination and racism are still a big issue at this time. Through the whole book, characters struggle to feel beautiful and battle the curse of being ugly because of their skin color. Throughout the book Pecola feels ugly and does not like who she is because of her back skin. She believes the only thing that can ever make her beautiful is if she got blue eyes. Frieda, Pecola, Claudia, and other black characters have been taught that the key to being beautiful is by having white skin. So by being black, this makes them automatically ugly. In the final chapter of the book, the need to feel beautiful drives Pecola so crazy that she imagines that she has blue eyes. She thinks that people don’t want to look at her because they are jealous of her beauty, but the truth is they don’t look at her because she is pregnant. From the time these black girls are little, the belief that beauty comes from the color of their skin has been hammered into their mind. Mrs. Breedlove and Geraldine are also affected by the standards of beauty and the impossible goal to look and be accepted by white people. Throughout “The Bluest Eye” Toni Morrison uses the motif of beauty to portray its negative effect on characters.

Through the dynamic characters and character experiences that occur within the book, Toni Morrison is able to illustrate a racist America where society reinforces the idea that the white race is superior. Colored characters are taught by society that their own race is subordinate and that they are not worthy of the same amount of respect as their superiors. These characters continue to teach this idea within their race and create an ideology that even within the same race appearance decides whether or not a person is worthy. This instills the idea of self-hatred and the longing to be a blue eyed middle class person. Characters associate the white and blue eyes with that of economic stability and self-worth.

Pecola is a little black ugly girl as Morrison states in the book The Bluest Eye. In Pecola’s society she’s surrounded by a ridiculous amount of racism and sadness. If the people weren’t light skinned they were automatically known to have a miserable life or be unhappy. This perspective in her society caused her to believe that the only way she will ever be beautiful if she were white and had blue eyes like them. Pecola seeked happiness and peace within herself, but with all that negativity suffocating her there was no way she could find it in that toxic environment. Pecola was affected tragically because everyone saw her ugly not only because of her complexion, but also her round belly that hold the child of her own father.

Toni Morrison is known for her use of poetic language. In many of her writings Morrison captures the pursuit of African Americans identities(Parnell). Considering Morrison never experienced the horrific tragedies she writes about, she is a witness to many identities that were destroyed by society depiction of them. The themes that Toni Morrison illustrates in her works Beloved and The Bluest Eye demonstrates how Toni Morrison works show individuals struggling with self-shattered identities that stem from society 's distorted expectations of them.

Morrison uses that as a starting point to study the complex love-hate relationship between white and black. The black characters in the novel that have embodied white, middle-class values are captivate with cleanliness. Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove are excessively concerned with housecleaning, though Mrs. Breedlove cleans only the house of her white employers, as if the Breedlove apartment is beyond her

In Toni Morrison “The Bluest Eye” she examines the terrible outcomes of impressive white, middle-class American standards of attractiveness on the evolving female characteristics of a young African American girl for the period of the early 1940s. Morrison novel touchingly shows the psychological damage of a young black girl perception. Pecola Breedlove was a young girl who searches for love and approval in a world that rejects and undervalues people of her own race and culture. The title of the story bears great significance to Pecola obsession. Quite often Pecola mentions the conservative American values of womanlike beauty such as; white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. These are presented to her by the common icons and ethnicities of the

The Representation of Eyes Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye follows a nine year old African American girl, Pecola Breedlove, as she is growing up in the 1940’s in the racially mixed town of Lorain, Ohio. The Breedloves are a poor family. On top of having to live in poverty, Pecola’s father, Cholly, is an abusive alcoholic who beats his wife and rapes his own daughter. Her mother, Pauline, cleans the houses of white people, and idealizes the perfection and cleanliness that she finds in white households but not her own.

“Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is a novel about racism, yet there are relatively few instances of direct oppression. The Bluest Eye presents a more complicated portrait of racism. The characters are subject to an internalized set of values, which creates its own cycle of victimization. Morrison’s novel highlights how cultural ideals based on skin colour and physical features function as tools of racial oppression. For all races and for all individuals, it is critical to fully understand how society influences our values and beliefs. The focal character, Pecola, is victimized by a society that conditions her to believe that she is ugly and therefore worthless, because she doesn’t epitomize white

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, sets forth the story of three young black girls living in the town of Lorain, Ohio during the 1940’s. The story primarily focuses on the life of Pecola Breedlove, which is narrated through the eyes Claudia, who also reflects upon the events through the course of a year. These girls face challenges in their everyday lives concerning fitting into society regarding their skin color and status as minorities. Morrison illustrates extreme situations and plants her characters in these situations to bring forth the seemingly submerge fragile issues of colorism, eluding to a slight context of beauty and racism that are still prevalent today.

Other books on the topic give us an important but at the same time an all too common view of this subject. Digging into the novel we see a continuing theme where black characters are being put down by white society throughout the book, and there are even instances where members of the minority put each other down. This vicious cycle is a form of learned submission that Morrison’s characters decided to accept as a given way of life. An example of this submission occurs when Morrison is giving us a coherent description of the Breedlove family for the first time in the novel and we are blatantly told that they are ugly. Despite the fact that Morrison makes it extremely clear that the Breedloves are ugly, she begins to make contradictions when she states that “you [could] look closely and not [be able to] find the source” (Morrison, 39) of their ugliness. Morrison is trying to point out the confusing rules that society’s beauty standards are based upon. She starts to become more coherent when she explicitly points out that “some mysterious all-knowing master [gave] each one a cloak of ugliness, and they accepted it without question” (Morrison, 39). This omniscient overlord that Morrison speaks of is the power structure established by the beauty standards which we continually agree to uphold because of the silent contract in our heads that is remnant from our ancestor’s transgressions against the Black community. Education is the only means of taking this contract and ripping it in two; supplementing with The Bluest Eye

In the following text of Toni Morrison “The Bluest Eye” and the movie “The Color Purple”, blacks are portrayed as being ugly and less than compared to the white society. Writers Morrison and Walker depict the everyday issues that young African girls would face during that particular time period. In regards to this, protagonists Celie and Pecola are viewed struggling with the dominance of men, beauty, and identity. Throughout this paper I will discuss these themes in an effort to illustrate how each of these issues overlap and influence one another, resulting in the findings of either self-identity or madness for both protagonists.

In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison weaves stories of violation and hardship to examine the ugliness that racism produces. In this novel, the childhood icons of white culture are negative representations instrumental in engendering internalized racism. For the black child in a racist, white culture, these icons are never innocent. Embodying the ideals of white beauty, they expose the basis for Claudia's bewilderment at why she is not attractive and Pecola's desperate desire for beauty. They nourish neither innocent desire, nor the need for acceptance, but denigrate the very idea of blackness. The worship of ideal white beauty, by adults as well as by children, coalesces into a

Racism, a word once used sparingly, has today become a part of colloquial speech. Although racism is an epidemic, so is same-race discrimination. In the novel “The Bluest Eye,” written by Toni Morrison, this idea of same-race discrimination is given the limelight throughout. The novel focuses on the African American community within Lorain, Ohio and the complexities of physical beauty and social status that lean over its residents. A character emphasized for her entitlement and being one who practices same-race discrimination, Geraldine has become even more despised than the incestuous and bibulous character of Cholly Breedlove. Through her obsession for cleanliness and social status, Geraldine symbolizes disconnection and same-race