The Bluest Eye Analysis

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.

Pecola evaluated herself ugly, and wanted to have a pair of blue eyes so that every problem could be solved. Pecola was an African-American and lived in a family with problems. Her father ran away because of crime, her brother left because of their fighting parents, and was discriminated simply because she has dark-skin. Pecola is a passive person. She is almost destroyed because of her violent father, Cholly Breedlove, who raped her own daughter after drinking. Because of this, Pecola kept thinking about her goal- to reach the standard of beauty. However, she was never satisfied with it. Pecola believed once she become beautiful, fighting between her parents would no longer happen, her brother would come back, and her father would no long be a rapist. No problem would exist anymore.

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

Morrison also uses metaphors to describe the conditions under which African-Americans in general and Pecola in particular are forced to live. There are two major metaphors in The Bluest Eye, one of marigolds and one of dandelions. Claudia, looking back as an adult, says in the beginning of the novel, “there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941”. She and her sister plant marigold seeds with the belief that if the marigolds would grow and survive, so would Pecola’s baby. Morrison unpacks the metaphor throughout the book, and, through Claudia, finally explains it and broadens its scope to all African-Americans on the last page. “I even think now that the bear . . .” The implication is that Pecola, like so many other African-Americans, never had a chance to grow and succeed because she lived in a society (“soil”) that was

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison is a very complex story. While not being a novel of great length is very long on complexity. It tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl immersed in poverty and made “ugly” by the Society of the early 1940’s that defines beauty in terms of blonde haired white skinned , and in this case specifically Shirley Temple.

The opinions of others, wether one notices or not, greatly affect his or her life. In Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl with dark brown eyes, is deemed ugly. Although she does not possess ugliness; she “put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to [her]” (Morrison 38). Pecola believes she is ugly because she does not meet the societal beauty standard. Pecola convinces herself that all her struggles are rooted in the fact that she not beautiful. If Pecola was white, blond, and blue-eyed her life would be different—it would be better. Pecola believes that having blue eyes would change her entire life. Though she would not be given different friends or a different family, those same friends

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, Pecola Breedlove is a young african-american who wishes at a very young age to be blessed with blonde hair and blue eyes. Her natural skin tone is dark, which leads to her being constantly mocked by other children. Pecola believes that by having blonde hair and blue eyes, she will be accepted, and will no longer be isolated and disregarded. Later in the novel, Pecola was raped. While some people believe that Pecola was to blame for her rape, and while others think that Cholly was the one to blame, Morrison shows how society is to blame for Pecola’s rape, due to placing racial beauty and western aesthetics standards on her.

In order to fulfill her greatest desire of having blue eyes, Pecola decided to seek out Soaphead Church for help. Growing up “ugly” resulted in Pecola having internalized self-hatred. She often sat wondering and “trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored and despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike.” To Pecola, eyes were everything; “everything was there, in them” (Morrison 45). Because her eyes were so important, she thought that if her eyes were different– she would be different, too. Pecola thought that this was the key to obtaining the respect that her peers had. Although she did not understand that she was pressured into believing her non-white features, her low self-esteem resulted from these predominantly white beauty standards. Being surrounded by the idealization of white girls with blond hair and blue eyes as the definition of beauty, Pecola began to pray for those blue eyes that were often idolized by whites and blacks alike. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, through a marxist point of view, Pecola’s wish for blue eyes depicts beauty as unattainable as long as European beauty standards continue to be idealized.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison introduces readers to the life of Pecola Breedlove living in Lorain, Ohio during the end of Great Depression. Pecola and her friend, Frieda Macteer, experience early on neglective parents who are overly concerned with pleasing themselves rather than directing attention upon their daughters. This creates a sense of underlying hate and instability within and outside their homes. Looking for love and attention, Pecola turns to superficial things such as dolls. Pecola wants to feel beautiful in a world where a blue-eyed, pale skin Shirley Temple doll is idolized by all colors alike. Her goal in life is to attain white beauty, a standard of her culture she believes she does not have. The effects of colorism and racism tear the African-American culture apart in this novel because they try so hard to fit into the graces of white society. The characters in The Bluest Eye hate their skin color so much that that are forced to feel shame for their own culture. The desires to be beautiful create a sense of self-loathing and self-hate within most, if not all, of the characters, which pass from generation to generation producing an on-going cycle of negativity.

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.

Pecola believes that her skin is too dark and also that her skin color is not acceptable by others. In order for Pecola to be love she feels she must get blue eyes, like Shirley Temple. Shirley Temple was a young actress who everyone adored, she also had blue eyes. Pecola believes the only way to have a better scope out on life is to change the lens that she is looking out of which is to have blue eyes. In order for a child to grow up and function properly he or she must have loving and stable parents. Pecola was not feeling loved at home from her dad and most of all her mother. Mrs. Breedlove didn’t give her innocent, fragile- hearted daughter the most important essential that a child needs, which is love. More and more she neglected her house, her children, her man-they were like the afterthoughts one has just before sleep (Morrison 127). Pecola was mentally and physically abuse because she had to watch her parents fight, become intimate with each other and even become raped by her own

By the end of The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses Pecola’s relationship with the race and beauty hierarchies to convey her desperate desire to imitate the looks of Caucasians for fear of loneliness inevitably transform into a never-ending cycle of searching for recognition and acceptance. Finally reaching her breaking point after the various rejections from strangers and her own family, Pecola desperately resorts to visiting a misanthrope and pedophile named Elihue Micah Whitcomb, otherwise known as Soaphead Church. When he sees Pecola, he says, “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty […] A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes” (174), Morrison conveys that Pecola can no longer internalize whiteness by drinking milk or eating Mary Jane’s to momentarily gain status in the hierarchies, she must externalize whiteness by changing the color of her eyes. Soaphead’s use of the word “ugly” to describe Pecola shows that the idealization of white race and beauty standards has solidified in her life.

When Pecola was born, her mother even recollects, “Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (128). The person who was to love Pecola unconditionally was biased against her just because she was not as pleasant to look at as other people. One of the other issues Pecola faced was that she was an African-American living in America at a time when people were still extremely biased against anyone who was not white. The store owner, Mr. Yacobowski, seemed to look through Pecola because she was not the same color. Pecola notices the distaste as “She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people.

In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, fantasies are the result of a desire to escape poverty and limiting circumstances of the characters social conditions. Elaborate fantasies consume characters and take them away from their struggles, but the standards they attempt to meet set by society are unattainable. Although this common feeling among the characters in the novel is alleviating at first, it is ultimately, in the long run unhealthy. Characters in The Bluest Eye fall victim to the master narratives, forcing them to try and fit these impossible social norms. In the long term, this strive for an artificial life is the downfall of these characters because the standards of beauty, family, and love pushed, are far from real life reflections. More