The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison 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.

have white beauty is so strong that she eats Mary Jane candies, fantasizing that the candies will

She thought that if she had blue eyes, the blue eyes of the accepted white ideal, she would be beautiful and therefore loved. The acquisition of the blue eyes she so fiercely covets signifies Pecola's step into madness. It was a safe place, where she could have her blue eyes, and where she could be accepted.

Society continues to rape Pecola through its refusal to acknowledge her as a human being. Since society thinks she is “ugly”, no one needs to care for or love her. For example, one of the biggest insults that her peers use for teasing boys is using Pecola as the insult.

“Again, the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover her.” [This quote represents the emotions that flood through Pecola’s father’s head after he rapes her. Prior to and during raping Pecola, Pecola’s father is enraged with many emotions. These emotions include anger, tenderness and l0ve towards Pecola. This is a significant quote in the novel because this is one of the few parts of where Pecola’s father, Cholly’s, character is shown. This quote reveals Cholly’s character because it shows that the events that happened in his

With some background knowledge on Pauline, the mother of Pecola, it’s easier to understand some of Pecola's core traits. There are parallelisms between Pecola and Pauline. They find their reality too harsh to deal with, so they become fixated on one thing that makes them happy, and they ignore everything else. Pecola's desire for blue eyes is more of an inheritance that she received from her mother. One of Pauline’s own obsessions was back when she was fascinated with the world of the big pictures. As long as they can believe in their fantasies, they're willing to sacrifice anything else.

Pecola then starts to disintegrate into her fantasy world in an attempt to make herself feel better. In asking "please God... please make me disappear," she wants to leave this ugly place that is her home and her family (45). Morrison then leads the reader through the process of Pecola's different body parts disappearing, from her "fingers... one by one; then her arms disappeared all the way to the elbow... the legs all at once... her stomach... then her chest, her neck" (45). This succession of "slowly, now with a rush... [and] slowly again" fading body parts illustrates how much effort Pecola is putting into disappearing and how much this effort puts a toll on her body (45). In making herself feel better she is also tiring herself out, for the exertion she puts out does not make her happy and does not fulfill what she wants in the end: to fully disappear.

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

Pecola and the caged bird range in the use of coping strategies, from singing to having virtually none, in order to manage their situations. Like the caged bird, Pecola also “stands on the grave of dreams,” symbolizing the hopelessness that has come over the two. After being kept in a cage for so long, the bird as well as Pecola, long “of things unknown” that are simply unattainable; freedom for the bird and acceptance in the form of blue eyes for Pecola. Throughout the Bluest Eye, Pecola is deeply infatuated with having blue eyes. She is convinced that beauty is directly associated with whiteness, specifically blue eyes. She believes that if she somehow gets blue eyes she will suddenly be beautiful in the eyes of those around her, and therefore lovable. After her father rapes her and her innocence dies, Pecola’s last shred of hope, her baby, also

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,

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.

I couldn't join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley” (Morrison, 35). This quote from Claudia’s perspective shows her distaste for Shirley temple and Pecola and Frieda’s love for her. Pecola becomes so obsessed with the Shirley Temple cup that she drinks milk in excess just to use the cup with her on it. Pecola is particularly fascinated by Shirley Temple’s big blue eyes. Pecola after a life time of obvious abuse, belittlement, and racist has very low self-esteem and wants to be everything she is not. She strongly connects beauty with desire and love, she starts to believe that if she had blue eyes, all the cruelty and hatred she gets in her life, would disappear. This unrealistic and hopeless desire for blue eyes, eventually leads to immeasurable madness. “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison, 46). Pecola is finally granted her overwhelming want for blue eyes. When she is finally granted her wish for blue eyes, she receives it in a perverse and darkly ironic form.  She is only able to be granted blue eyes in exchange for her sanity. Pecola loses her mind and ultimately her insight into the outside

"She owned the crack that made her stumble; she owned the clumps of dandelions...owning them made her a part of the world, and the world part of her", (Morrison 47-49). Pecola is exaggerating in the ownership of cracks and dandelions. She's trying to express that she relates to them because they are considered unwanted and that is how she