The Bluest Eye, By Toni Morrison

Food and appetite is a relatable experience for everyone. Many believe food is strictly just for enjoying while you eat, however within Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eyes” she makes many distinct references to food. Through these means, she creates each individual personality of the characters. She goes on to use this association for most food references within her novel. The result enables the reader to have a more relatable experience with each of her characters regardless of color. Overall, these food and appetites references allow the reader to have a more hands-on approach and bring about a greater understanding of her character 's mentality while helping to disregard racial associations.

Unlike so many works in the American literature that deal directly with the legacy of slavery and the years of deeply-embedded racism that followed, the general storyline of Toni Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye”, does not engage directly with such events but rather explores the lingering effects by exploring and commenting on black self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in ”The Bluest Eye”, by Toni Morrison who are African American are consumed with the constant culturally-imposed notions of white beauty, cleanliness, and sanitation to the point where they have disengaged with themselves and have a disastrous tendency to subconsciously act out their feelings of self-loathing on other members of the black community. This is accomplished by offering readers multiple examples of this through the viewpoint-shifting narration of events and revelations that led to tremendous character complexity, as suggested in this literary analysis of “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison is ultimately engaging her readers in a dialogue about how these characters (not to mention readers themselves) can overcome these hindrances to having a healthy relationship with self-images and interpersonal relationships. In presenting the various modes of escape and retreat into hollow notions of whiteness, Morrison demonstrates how this is a damaging way to work through so many years of being abject and objectified. However, as suggested in this

In a time where being black is equated with being ugly, Pecola Breedlove struggles to find beauty in herself and the world around her due to her race. With the beauty standards reinforced to her since birth through the media and the society she lives in, she sees no option but to conform to them. In “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison uses the characterization of the black women in her novel to show how society has caused the black community to internalize white beauty standards.

In the novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison, the author details the tragic story of a young African American girl named Pecola Breedlove, who is exposed to bias social constructs that results in her internalizing high levels of racist ideologies. The novel illustrates the controversy of the perpetration of Eurocentric beauty standards and how it affects the black community, specifically the children within it. Pecola is surrounded around the notion that white standards are favored within American society. She vividly sees these implementations in aspects such as pop culture, the racial hierarchy in education, and societal systematic order. These bias limitations subconsciously result in detrimental effects on the psyches of the young

Growing up, the one thing Pauline Breedlove really desired was a nickname, but instead, as an adult, she ends with a “pet-name”. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye follows young Pecola Breedlove through her dismal life as she is repeatedly worn down by the pressures from both the dominant white society and the African-American community she is a part of. Pecola is neglected or ignored by almost everyone she encounters, including her own mother. Mrs. Breedlove, however, also suffered from an abnormal childhood, causing her to focus on working for a white family rather than her own, perpetuating the cycle in which a problematic childhood problematic parenting. To cope with her dissatisfaction of

In Toni Morrison’s “From the Bluest Eye,” she writes about a girl who is in conflict with the societal norms of the time period. The girl was given dolls to play with, but she does not understand why she has to play with them and what makes the dolls beautiful. It is made clear that the girl never wanted dolls and nobody ever asked her what she wanted as a toy, yet the society she lives in tells her that girls play with dolls and nothing else. This story raises several interesting ideas, such as why were dolls made and why does society want girls to play with dolls? A larger question that the story raises is whether or not there is negative or positive effects on girls who play with dolls.

As Ama H.Vanniarachchy once said: “She is the creature of life, the giver of life, and the giver of abundant love, care and protection. Such are the great qualities of a mother. The bond between a mother and her child is the only real and pure bond in the world, the only true love we can ever find in our lifetime.” In other words, a mother’s love is irreplaceable. Love received from a mother makes one feel complete and accepted. In the novel Beloved and The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison, the respective characters Sethe and Pauline both have different heartbreaking experiences with a mother’s love and the way they express their love to their own children. At first, both characters reminisce about times that they lacked parental love, and how they felt because of the poor choices their parents made. Later, they both make life changing decisions in which they decide if they value their loved ones more, or the life they have always dreamed of that is full of success and money. In the end, it is shown that the choices that both characters make, negatively affect their children. Mothers are known for the love and support they provide their children. At crucial times, they make decisions they believe are right. However, they never truly think of the the impact that decision will have on their children 's well-being and self esteem in the long run.

Ignored as a person. Denied as a species. ‘The total absence of human recognition” (Morrison, 36). For decades, African-Americans have not only been looked down upon by white people, they have been dehumanized. Toni Morrison is controversial for pillorying this topic, that has been silenced by white society for years, not from the ‘Master Narrative’ perspective, that is the white male one’s, but from the exact opposite of this: an African-American girl. By doing this, she does not only awake pity for Pecola at the reader but also show how anti-black racism is constructed by social forces, interracially as well as intra-racially. Morrison represents African-Americans as people who suffer from the vacuum that white people create between

As the novels progress, both protagonists face life changing decisions, based on their past experiences they had with the choices their own mothers had to make, they now must choose between sacrificing the ones they love, or the life which they have always dreamed. To begin, in The Bluest Eyes, Pauline’s daughter Pecola is reaching for the blackberry pie juice that is piping hot. Pecola wants to help her mother by moving the boiling juice to an area that will let it cool faster. She hopes that by doing this task, she will gain her mother’s acceptance.While doing this, the bowl slips out of Pecola’s hands and juice is spilled everywhere on the floor, including on her legs. When this happens Pauline shockingly says: “crazy fool...my floor, mess… look what you ..look what you… work...get on out...now what ...crazy...my floor, my floor... my floor” (Morrison, The Bluest Eyes, 109).

The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison is a short novel that revolves around a young girl named Pecola Breedlove who is a victim to incest and rape by her own father Cholly. In the town Lorain, Ohio Pecola becomes friends with a young nine year old girl named Claudia MacTeer and her ten year old sister Frieda. The MacTeer family takes in Pecola Breedlove when her father Cholly attempts to burn her house down and hits her mother, Pauline. Pecola is described as a quiet and soft spoken. Her life at home is difficult because of the domestic violence and her father’s abuse of alcohol. Pecola is under the impression that if she were prettier her parents would be nicer to each other. She equalizes beauty with whiteness. She begins to pray for a pair of pretty blue eyes so the world can view her differently and change the way she sees the world. Soon after Pecola returns home she gets raped. The town soon finds out after Pecola becomes pregnant and although everyone in town wants the baby dead, Claudia and Frieda hope the baby lives. Pauline and Pecola pickup and move after Pecola loses the baby and starts to lose her sanity. In the end Pecola sees a psychic to obtain the blue eyes and she really believes he gave her blue eyes. The major theme in this novel outside of incest is how race is perceived in the eyes of young girls and how it is associated with beauty and purity. Among the theme of race are love, sex, innocence, and the roles of black women. Race to Pecola revolved around

At the beginning of the novel, pecola wants to learn how to get people to love her and when forced to witness her parents fights she simply wants to disappear.pecola

Society’s perception of women is based on certain characteristics; Toni Morrison demonstrates this through her characters. Claudia, the youngest character, represents innocence that is conflicted between her own sensible judgment and what is expected of her. Pauline internalizes expectations, and lives accordingly, but lacks self-identity. Having no sense of self she finds herself seeking validation from those who should not affect her. The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison focuses on the hardships that women of color face when seeking acceptance from society. She depicts how detrimental it is to believe that a woman’s self worth is determined by society’s unrealistic standards of beauty and femininity.

Instead of making the plot of “The Bluest Eye”, center around events of overt racism or such African American issues in order to address the looming specter of slavery and race, the focus of the book and this analysis of The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison presents readers with a more complicated and ultimately deeper portrayal of the effects of racism via an emphasis on the way self-hatred plagues the black characters. In the narrator’s description of how the Breedlove family was ugly, it is stated in one of the important quotes from “The Bluest Eye”, “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that is came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious and all-knowing master had given each one of them a cloak of ugliness to wear and they had each accepted it without question” (39). What Morrison is stating here is that the feeling of low self-worth after years of being put down is still perpetuating and is resulting in an ugliness that is constantly felt, if not directly seen. More importantly, the narrator suggests that they accept this imposed feeling of ugliness and lack of self-worth without questioning its source and it is this accepting of self-hatred, a hatred that comes from outside the family is one of the biggest problem faced by the family. However, it is not just the family that suffers from this feeling of polarity caused by black self-hatred, it is the entire

Steve Maraboli- a speaker, bestselling author, and Behavioral Science Academic- wrote “there is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.” This is true, however, it exists very rarely in our society. Women are not accepting of their imperfections and glorify them, instead they hide them to unify under society’s standards of beauty. Over the course of our history, women have been victims of society’s ideals. Society forces false images of beauty and love onto women, forcing them to have fictitious notions of what happiness is and how to be happy. This can be seen in both Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Unlike so many pieces of American literature that involve and examine the history of slavery and the years of intensely-entrenched racism that ensued, the overall plot of the novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, does not necessarily involve slavery directly, but rather examines the aftermath by delving into African-American self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in The Bluest Eye who are African American are dominated with the endless culturally-imposed concepts of white beauty and cleanness to an extent where the characters have a destructive way of latently acting out their own feelings of self-hatred on others, especially other African-Americans.