The Bluest Eyes By Toni Morrison Essay

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is a story about the life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who is growing up during post World War I. She prays for the bluest eyes, which will “make her beautiful” and in turn make her accepted by her family and peers. The major issue in the book, the idea of ugliness, was the belief that “blackness” was not valuable or beautiful. This view, handed down to them at birth, was a cultural hindrance to the black race.

The narration of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is actually a compilation of many different voices. The novel shifts between Claudia MacTeer's first person narrative and an omniscient narrator. At the end of the novel, the omniscient voice and Claudia's narrative merge, and the reader realizes this is an older Claudia looking back on her childhood (Peach 25). Morrison uses multiple narrators in order to gain greater validity for her story. According to Philip Page, even though the voices are divided, they combine to make a whole, and "this broader perspective also encompasses past and present... as well as the future of the grown-up Claudia" (55).

Through the dynamic characters and character experiences that occur within the book, Toni Morrison is able to illustrate a racist America where society reinforces the idea that the white race is superior. Colored characters are taught by society that their own race is subordinate and that they are not worthy of the same amount of respect as their superiors. These characters continue to teach this idea within their race and create an ideology that even within the same race appearance decides whether or not a person is worthy. This instills the idea of self-hatred and the longing to be a blue eyed middle class person. Characters associate the white and blue eyes with that of economic stability and self-worth.

Finally the rape by her father is the last evidence Pecola needs to believe completely that she is an ugly unlovable girl. While in most cases a father figure is one who little girls look to for guidance and approval, Cholly is the exact opposite. He hurts Pecola in a physical way that in one attempt measures up to the years of hurtful mockery. After this event, Pecola went insane, forever stopping her from finding what she really is.

Society, especially western, conceptualizes beauty through the use of publicity and cinema. We are under constant bombardment from consumer related magazine ads, billboards, television commercials, and movies about what “beautiful” people look like and how we should imitate them. This standard is overwhelmingly portrayed as white beauty. Starting from a young age this standard of beauty is forged in our minds; we want to look like these actors and models; we want to be thin, fit, youthful looking, have a symmetrical face and possibly even posses a particular race. We accept this beauty standard; we notice our various faults among ourselves and self-critique. We try to emulate the models as best we can and we fail to realize that these

There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given

Cholly and Pauline Breedlove, Pecola’s parents, also contribute to the girl’s destruction. Rather than providing a loving home environment where Pecola might have been able to thrive despite the rejection of the white-dominant society, like Claudia and Frieda do, Cholly and Pauline instead abuse their children and fight with each other constantly. Both Cholly and Pauline have been mistreated by white people in their lives, and both of them vent the resulting hatred for those who wronged them on both their children and each other. Cholly, as a young boy, was caught, laughed at, and humiliated by two white men while having sex with a girl named Darlene. Rather than showing hatred towards the white men, Cholly instead hates Darlene, and thinking about the incident both “stir[s] him into flights of depravity” (Morrison 43) and stunts his sexual development (Wall 797). Because of this incident and

African- American folklore is arguably the basis for most African- American literature. In a country where as late as the 1860's there were laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves, it was necessary for the oral tradition to carry the values the group considered significant. Transition by the word of mouth took the place of pamphlets, poems, and novels. Themes such as the quest for freedom, the nature of evil, and the powerful verses the powerless became the themes of African- American literature. In a book called Fiction and Folklore: the novels of Toni Morrision author Trudier Harris explains that "Early folk beliefs were so powerful a force in the lives of slaves that their masters sought to co-opt that power. Slave masters used such

Toni Morrison is known for her prized works exploring themes and issues that are rampant in African American communities. Viewing Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye from a psychoanalytical lens sheds light onto how, as members of a marginalized group, character’s low self-esteem reflect into their actions, desires, and defense mechanisms.

    In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the characters' eyes are everything. The word "eye" appears over and over with rich adjectives that describe color, movement, and nuance of expression to signify a character's mood and psychological state. Morrison emphasizes the paradox of eyes: Eyes are at times a window to enlightenment, however, what eyes see is not always objective truth, but instead a distortion of reality into what a person is able to perceive.

The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. On the contrary, the less privileged division is represented by the MacTeer family and the “relentlessly and aggressively ugly” Breedlove family (The Bluest Eye 38). Tension between the divided African American society is clearly represented by such characterizations throughout Morrison’s novel.

In Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye examines the effects of imposing white, middle class American ideals of beauty on developing female identity of a young black girls. Morrisons sensitive portrayal of black female identity and its perceptive critique of the internalized racism created by white Americans perceptions of beauty can be supported by W.E.B. Dubois in his novel, The Souls of Black Folk, introduces two concepts describing a black person's experience in America: the veil and double consciousness. Both novels, The Souls of Black Folk and The Bluest Eye, emphasize the racial self-loathing ideas that black girls have as they start to understand how different they are from white people. The African American children of The Bluest Eye, Claudia MacTeer and Pecola Breedlove, discover that the color of their skin excludes them from the soft eyes of favor that fall upon little girls who belong to the white world. The penalty for this discovery is the resulting division of their minds, through the realization that they are both little girls, and black little girls. The girls prove themselves incapable of responding with a reactive action that captures the poison darts of racism and projects them back outward, instead they demonstrate a passive response that instead absorbs the poison inward, which creates instability within her psyche and undermines her sense of identity. It is through this action that Morrison reveals the dark side of the effects of double consciousness

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison shows that one’s family determines a character’s feeling of self-worth. According to Morrison, the world is teaching little black girls that they are not beautiful and unworthy of love. The world teaches this by depicting white people and objects that resemble them, as symbols of beauty. In this world, to be worthy of love you must be beautiful. Morrison shows that if a little black girl believes what the world is telling her, her self-esteem can develop low self-esteem and they may yearn to be white. Even in the absence of economic and racial privilege, Morrison suggests that a little black girl can look to her family to build up her self-esteem. For Morrison, having a family is

During the 1940’s, about thirty years before The Bluest Eye was written, the standards of society caused young men and women of color to desire light skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair. In a time where racism was prevalent, the African American culture longed for the freedom each and every white person was given. Fighting for their rights after the Great Depression, the confidence of the African American people, especially that of young girls, remained poor due to the wrongful bullying of the many racist white people. A good self image and upbringing for young African American individuals remain crucial for the well being and mental health of each young person. In The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Pecola desires blue eyes because of societal views and her mother Paulines treatment, each affecting her self image.