The Bluest Eye Analysis

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.

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

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 Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the oppression of blacks and the praising of whites to demonstrate the unjustified power and influence of the dominant individuals. Within American society, the dominant races rise to power and exert their influence by building an environment that worships whiteness and devalues blackness, creating powerless and powerful communities.

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.

Her three daytime black boys she acquires after more years of testing and rejecting thousands. They come at her in a long black row of sulky, big-nosed masks, hating her and her chalk doll whiteness from the first look they get. She appraises them and their hate for a month or so, then lets them go because they don’t hate enough. (Kesey

In the Autumn chapter, starting on page seventeen, Claudia describes her hatred for Shirley Temple. She continues to describes her hatred for a white babydoll, and explains how she dismembered the doll. This turns gruesome when Claudia describes not only taking apart of her white babydoll, but also taking apart little white girls. However Claudia is not an evil character, in the book she represents innocence, and the reader gets to see the book through that innocent lens through her perspective. How can Morrison have a character that describes such gruesome acts, like squeezing the eyeballs of little white girls, and still be lovable and innocent? What is Morrison saying about jealousy and rage, directed not at a specific person, but more at the concept of whiteness? Claudia then goes on to reflect that she was shameful of her violence, motivated by this shame she hid her hatred in love, thus bringing her one step closer to loving Shirley Temple. Can a shame for such an intense hatred for something really move someone to love that hated thing? Is that true in other areas of supremacy, including gender and class? What does this say about the socialization of young girls and beauty? More specifically is the hatred Claudia possess towards whiteness stemmed from

To begin the novel, Morrison quotes a “Dick and Jane” book, a children’s book describing an ideal, happy family. Immediately, Morrison provides an example of how American children are bombarded, as soon as they learn how to read, with ideas about what it means to be beautiful. As well, in the first chapter, she exemplifies how American children, both black and white, view beauty, from Claudia and Freida giggling when they are called the names of beautiful white actresses to Freida and Pecola’s admiration of Shirley Temple. In contrast to the broad examples of Polly’s and Cholly’s childhoods, the examples of these 1940s children are discrete and relevant to the period which Morrison wrote the novel. Evidently, Morrison criticizes the effect of the whiteness of American ideals on children, in particular American movies which define societal standards; however, Morrison also makes an important point: these effects are not the same for every individual.

The novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison is subjected on a young girl, Pecola Breedlove and her experiences growing up in a poor black family. The life depicted is one of poverty, ridicule, and dissatisfaction of self. Pecola feels ugly because of her social status as a poor young black girl and longs to have blue eyes, the pinnacle of beauty and worth. Throughout the book, Morrison touches on controversial subjects, such as the depicting of Pecola's father raping her, Mrs. Breedlove's sexual feelings toward her husband, and Pecola's menstruation. The book's content is controversial on many levels and it has bred conflict among its readers.

People usually feel like they are not good enough for society, so they strive to change themselves to please society’s expectations. In the novel The Bluest Eye, the author, Toni Morrison, uses point of view to reveal how the characters of Pecola and Claudia regard the standards of beauty in their society, having blue eyes and blonde hair, and how it affects them.

Many young girls feel insecure of their body; these adolescent girls would often wish they had the body of a model. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is about a young girl named Pecola, who is obsessed with blue eyes because she is insecure about hers. The novel points out how beauty can shatter the mind of an innocent young girl, Pecola, for instance, who has been abused by mostly everyone about her looks. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison explains how beauty can ruin lower one’s self-esteem, cause one to become self-obsessed, and how it made Pecola a representative to others to be thankful for the body they have. Morrison explains the psychological effect of beauty on young girls such as Pecola.

In the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, beauty is measured by how light your skin is and how blue your eyes are. The novel is about a little girl named Pecola Breedlove, and her desire to have blonde hair and blue eye to become beautiful. Pecola comes from a dysfunctional family, and she believes the only way to feel loved and safe is for her to look beautiful like the little white girls she sees on TV. Pecola’s parents have had their struggles through life about beauty and love; they never grasped how to appreciate Pecola and sense her needs because they never had anyone in their lives understand them.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye follows the stories of numerous interconnecting characters, particularly two young girls Claudia and Pecola, as they try to understand the world around them. Their struggles specifically deal with the ideals of beauty and the pressures those ideals place on them through either the rejection of them or the attempt to take them on. While this passage seems to discuss the rejection of the societal praise of whiteness as beauty, through Claudia’s reaction to and understanding of the doll, Morrison actually communicates a desire to obtain and be worthy of that beauty in some manner.

For decades there has been an ongoing discussion on society’s standards of beauty and what makes someone beautiful. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye she challenges white standards of beauty. Just like today, the society in Loraine, Ohio establishes a standard of beauty, and this beauty is defined as being as close to white as possible, having blonde hair, blue eyes, and a “Jack and Jill” family. Most of the characters in The Bluest Eye attempt to conform to society’s standards (complicating this idea) and believe if they can achieve at least one of the aspects of beauty their life will be better and they will be treated in higher regards. Through the female characters of Pecola, Claudia, Maureen, Geraldine, and Rosemary it is prevalent that there is a spectrum of beauty and the person who is closest to this standard, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, is considered pretty and is respected by society, while a person who is not close to this standard is considered ugly and is treated poorly by society. By ascribing to society’s expectations of beauty, Geraldine extends the role of white supremacy and undermines her own self-worth.

Toni Morrison writes how at the beginning the mother hates her daughter’s skin complexion. The title, ‘Sweetness’, is actually the name of which the narrator want her daughter to address her. She does not want her daughter to call her “mother”. In fact she believes it would cause more issues within the community. The mother, Sweetness, is a lighter tone woman who feels that there is no way possible she could have had a child which such dark skin. It is all because of a term called colorism. Colorism is a form and tool of oppression that forces differential treatment of individuals and groups based on skin color (Okazawa). The short story give the audience a glimpse into the complex and hardships of African American life. Toni Morrison show how the characters struggle to function in a society they face with discrimination and feelings of inferiority