The Bluest Eye Trauma

“The Bluest Eye” is taking place around 1940 in Lorain, Ohio. During the year of 1940, discrimination, especially toward African Americans, was still a serious problem. People believe that whiteness is the standard of beauty. The main character, Pecola, who was a nine-years-old African-American, was influenced by how people view beauty. Pecola suffered and felt that she is inferior to others. Pecola believed that having a pair of blue eyes would made people think she is pretty, and would be the key resolving all the problems.

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).

Trauma is an event in an individual's life which is "defined by its intensity, by the subject's incapacity to respond adequately to it, and by the upheaval and long-lasting effects that it brings about in the psychical organization" (Dodge, Kenneth A., John E. Bates, and Gregory S. Petit). In Toni Morrison's, The Bluest Eye, it is demonstrated very clearly how just one unresolved act of trauma can lead to an almost never-ending cycle of tragedy in a community. The cycle of tragedy is easily transferred from parent to child, and its effects can be easily worsened by a lack of support from other people in the community.

In the third chapter of The Bluest Eye, entitled "Autumn", Toni Morrison focuses on Pecola's family, the Breedloves. Morrison goes in depth about the family dynamic of the Breedloves and how it affects Pecola and her self-image. The passage starts after one of many arguments between Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola's parents, turns violent. Mrs. Breedlove wants Cholly to fetch some coal from the outside shed. Cholly spent the last night drinking and does not want to get out of bed. The passage begins with the children becoming aware of the argument. Mrs. Breedlove starts to hit him with cooking pans while Cholly mostly used his feet and teeth. After the fight is over Mrs. Breedlove just lets Cholly lie on the ground and she goes about her

The Bluest Eye tells a tragic story of a young girl named Pecola who desperately wishes for beautiful blue eyes. Pecola believes that the only way she will ever be beautiful is if she has blue eyes. This story takes place in the 1970’s, a time where African Americans were second class citizens in society. They were often exploited and dehumanized because of the way they looked, and this will leave a long lasting effect. Americans would often think that the only way to be beautiful is to have white characteristics like pale skin, blue eyes, and to be very feminine. Racism in the 1970 and in the setting of the Bluest Eye caused self hatred in the black community. The effects of self hatred and racism in the

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

Pecola Breedlove, a major character in The Bluest Eye falls victim to this. Pecola is a young black girl, who prays for blue eyes in hope that they will bring love, admiration, and

In The Bluest Eye, characters experience a variety of oppressive , that give rise to the never ending cycle of victimization in both the families and neighborhood. Throughout the novel, the black community accepts white beauty ideals, for example, judging Maureen’s light skin to be highly attractive in comparison to Pecola’s darker features. Racism is also apparent in other indirect ways. There is a general sense of worthlessness that certain colored characters subconsciously integrate into their daily lives, even without the constant reminder of their apparent “ugliness”. For example, “the Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly.

A Search For A Self Finding a self-identity is often a sign of maturing and growing up. This becomes the main issue in novel The Bluest Eyes. Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove are the characters that search for their identity through others that has influenced them and by the lifestyles that they have. First, Pecola Breedlove struggles to get accepted into society dued to the beauty factor that the normal people have. Cholly Breedlove, her father, is a drunk who has problems that he takes out of Pecola sexually and Pauline physically. Pauline is Cholly’s wife that is never there for her daughters.

The plot in The Bluest Eye is the tragedy of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl whose fondest wish is to miraculously awaken one day with blue eyes, thinking that perhaps it will make her mother attentive and her father loving:

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.

The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison that reveals many lessons and conflicts between young and adult characters of color. The setting takes place during the 1940s in Lorain, Ohio. The dominant speaker of this book is a nine year old girl named Claudia MacTeer who gets to know many of her neighbors. As a result of this, Claudia learns numerous lessons from her experience with the citizens of Lorain. Besides Claudia, The Bluest Eye is also told through many characters for readers to understand the connection between each of the adults and children. Many parents in the novel like Geraldine and Pauline Breedlove clearly show readers how adults change their own children. Furthermore, other adult characters like Cholly Breedlove

Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old black girl in Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, combats with self love and self image throughout the entire novel. Her only wish is to be loved and adored, and she believes the only route to that destination is to simply be more “white”. Throughout her journey in Morrison’s masterpiece, she attempts to transform herself into an idealistic version of herself, but she ultimately discovers that she is physically unable to attain what she had hoped for and is driven to a point of madness and deep misery.

The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame, that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads to Pecola struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything. Pecola is challenged by the idea that her mother perferis her work life, that they have an outdated house, and that she does not look like the shirley temple doll with blue eyes.

     The Bluest Eye opens with a Dick and Jane paragraph, a white American Myth far removed from the realities illustrated in the novel. Thereafter, the black narrator Claudia MacTeer relates much of the story, and the reminder, which concerns events that Claudia could not have witnessed, is narrated mostly by an unidentified voice. Claudia’s narrative reveals the guilt that for a long time plagued her and her sister in connection with another girl’s miscarriage. The girl, Pecola Breedlove, was pregnant with her own father’s child