The Bluest Eye Essay

Claudia, another character who goes through a similar situation compared to Pecola. She is a young girl who came out from a loving family and is intrusive, yet sensitive.

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.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison depicts racism all throughout the novel. Discrimination is very heavy in the 1940s, and the protagonist Pecola Breedlove experiences that. Pecola is a lower-class black girl who is constantly picked on for not only her looks, but her uncontrollable family situation. Maureen Peal is a new girl that arrives at Pecola’s school, and she is an upper-class, wealthy black girl. When Maureen goes out for ice cream with Pecola, Frieda, and Claudia, the girls talk about menstruation, and Maureen accuses Pecola if she has ever seen her father naked. Pecola denies the accusation, and conflict arises between the girls. Maureen shouts, “‘I am cute! And you are ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!’” (Morrison 73).

In the aftermath, there is a dialogue presented between Pecola and an imaginary friend. The dialogue includes conflicted feelings of Pecola’s rape, and her deluded thoughts of her wish for blue eyes has been granted. She believes that the changes in behavior of the people around her are because of her new eyes, and not the news of her rape. Claudia speaks for a final time, and describes the recent phenomenon of pecola’s insanity. She also suggests that Cholly, (who had since died), may have shown Pecola the only affection he could by raping her. Claudia believed that the whole community, herself included, have used Pecola as a way to make themselves feel beautiful and happier.

No matter how ugly, mean, pitiful one can be, the family is always meant to support, raise, guide, nurture and be a means of inspiration in anyone’s life. In the novel, this isn’t the case for Pecola, which is why she gets mentally unstable as she couldn’t bear the torture of ugliness of not having blue eyes. Blue eyes are the one and only reason she could blame as per to her ability and thought process. In fact, she doesn’t get the real ugliness of how her father rapes her, the ugliness of how the mother choose the white girl over her, the ugliness of the fights between her parents is coming from their unpleasant past. After all, she doesn’t have that mentor in her life to explain what was happening. Everybody in her family is occupied with their own mindset. She is very young to understand and analyze on her own. The narrator Claudia even gets to compare between her and Pecola and starts accepting life and feel blessed for having a supportive family, which she doesn’t feel until Pecola enters in her life. So, this shows how young kids psychology is totally built upon the type of family environment she/he gets. There is a saying that young kids are like a raw clay ready to be shaped into the different form of objects by the potter. Undoubtedly, it stands so true. Indeed, kids shape themselves according to the type of environment they grow up with. By all means, Pecola’s family is the

If she had beautiful blue eyes, Pecola imagines, people would not want to do ugly things in front of her or to her. The accuracy of this insight is affirmed by her experience of being teased by the boys—when Maureen comes to her rescue, it seems that they no longer want to behave badly under Maureen’s attractive gaze. In a more basic sense, Pecola and her family are mistreated in part because they happen to have black skin. By wishing for blue eyes rather than lighter skin, Pecola indicates that she wishes to see things differently as much as she wishes to be seen differently. She can only receive this wish, in effect, by blinding herself. Pecola is then able to see herself as beautiful, but only at the cost of her ability to see accurately both herself and the world around her. The connection between how one is seen and what one sees has a uniquely tragic outcome for

She realizes that her problems are not as important because in her hand, she holds nine pieces of Mary Jane candy. The Mary Jane candy seems to be making every disappointment in life become something more attractive, something better. “ A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort…She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good. To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane”(Morrison 50). Pecola is more than obsessed with these full- blown artificial images, making it obvious that she is unstable about her appearances, therefore, wanting to replace it with something that she believes is better (Weever 3/5). All over town, there are many little girls just like Pecola, buying into the products of Shirley Temples and Mary Jane.

Pecola Breedlove is one of the characters who constantly tries to consume whiteness. She first exhibits this behavior when she drinks three quarts of milk (Morrison 19). By drinking a large quantity of milk, Pecola attempts to absorb the whiteness of the milk, expressing her inner desire to be white. Moreover, she drinks the milk out of a Shirley Temple cup. During the 20th century, Shirley Temple epitomizes the cute, little white girl of the era. Hence, when Pecola drinks milk out of the Shirley Temple cup, Pecola attempts to be like Shirley Temple, a white girl adored by society. Another situation Pecola tries to consume whiteness is when she buys the Mary Jane candies (49). The wrapper of the Mary Jane candy depicts a girl with a “Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle

This can be seen toward the end of the novel, on page 199, where, in a conversation between Pecola and a figure of her thoughts, Morrison reveals that Pecola may have been raped twice. “You said he tried to do it to you when you were sleeping on the couch. ‘See there! You don’t even know what you’re talking about. It was when I was washing dishes,’” reads the exchange. These lines also tell the reader that even with this information, Pecola is still internally unsure of what happened herself. Through internal dialogue, her personal insecurities are projected. Dialogue is key in presenting major ideas in the novel.

While most think of dandelions as nothing but a pesky weed, Pecola admires and sympathizes with them. She does not understand why people dislike them, as demonstrated on page 47: “Why, she wonders, do people call them weeds? She thought they were pretty,”. This is a powerful statement that reflects the discrepancies between society’s labels. Just like the dandelions, Pecola is a devalued “weed” because society said so.

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, depicts characters desperately seeking to attain love through a predetermined standard of beauty established and substantiated by society. Morrison intertwines the histories of several characters portraying the delusions of the ‘perfect’ family and what motivates their quest for love and beauty. Ultimately, this pursuit for love and beauty has overwhelming effects on their relationships and their identity.

Throughout the story there is a strong sense of abandonment on Pecola’s part. She is a lonely character that is heavily influenced by society and what it thinks. Pecola is very concerned on meeting the standard in society despite her past life. She is determined but in some respects this is one of the downfalls to her character. "Why, she wonders, do people cal them weeds? She though they were pretty". Mr. Yacobowski humiliates her, and she passes the dandelions and thinks, "They are ugly and they are most definitely weeds". This shows how Pecola can easily be manipulated by others and society. In a sense, Pecola has transferred society’s dislike for her to the dandelions. She cannot accept the fact that she is not wanted. At one point in the story the narrator says, "We tried to see [Pecola] without looking at her, and never went near. Not because she was absurd or repulsive, or because we were frightened, but because we had failed her. Our flowers never grew so we

The novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and the film Their Eyes Were Watching God, both portray the reality of the lives of some women in this time period and in the past as well. The Bluest Eye tells the story about a nine-year old and a ten-year old, whose names are Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The live in Ohio with their parents whom don’t pay much attention to them considering the fact that they’re trying to make ends meet while the Great Depression is coming to an end. The family takes in a boarder into their home whose name is Henry Washington. They also take in an eleven-year old dark skinned girl named Pecola Breedlove. She shares that her father has tried to burn down their home in the past. This causes the sisters to be sympathetic towards her. She also shares about her admiration for Shirley Temple, and how she believes that being white makes you beautiful. Since she isn’t of white skin, she sees herself as being ugly.

The reader first sees Pecola encountered with racism from a white man with Mr. Yacobowski. She goes to the store to buy Mary Janes and "He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see." The narrator emphasizes the fact that "their ugliness was unique." She does not state this because it is her opinion, or anyone else's for that matter, but because "No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly.

She drinks several quarts of milk at the home of her friends Claudia and Frieda McTeer just to use their Shirley Temple mug and glaze at young Temple’s blue eyes. One day Pecola is raped by her father, when the child the she conceives dies, Pecola goes mad. She comes to believe that she has the bluest eyes of anyone.