The Representation Of Eyes In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

In the course of The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove has shown signs of low self esteem. She would always be the one to compare herself to something she admires to be beautiful. Perhaps, sometimes problems surround her get a little too much, she has not yet realized the fog will clear up. For example in the autumn chapter, a quote has said “Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people.” There is no such thing as a “Pecola’s point of view”. She lives off of people's judgements and believe physical appearance is all there is to a person. Her desire to be beautiful is not having attractive long black hair and golden skin color, but blonde hair with a white pigmentation. Which causes her to dream and want even more.

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.

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.

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by

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.

This merge into fantasy does not fulfill Pecola's need for happiness because the things she cannot make disappear are the most important body parts to get rid of: her eyes. For even though she did everything she could and put all her effort into disappearing, "she could never get her

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

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.

Pecola’s misery is so complete, so deep, that she convinces herself that her only hope for a better life rests in changing her eye color. Even more pathetically, "Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes … Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope" (Morrison 46). Pecola was doubly tragic in that she placed all her hope in something which could never really happen and, despite her earnest belief, change nothing if it did.

At an early age Pecola learns that she is not thought of as beautiful and that society does not believe that she is an equal with a blue eyed fair skinned girl. Because she is constantly undervalued and rejected, she begins to hope that one day she will have blue eyes so that she will be respected. Pecola’s family, The Breedloves, lived in poverty and in an unpleasant storefront because, as Pecola, they did not believe they were worthy of a better home. Pecola’s family “stayed there because they believed they were ugly” and since they felt that self worth was based on appearance they believed they did not deserve any better

Pecola Breedlove is young black girl who believes she is ugly and longs for blue eyes. She believes the blue eyes that she adores on Shirley Temple are central to attaining beauty which will bring love and joy to her life. She believes this beauty and love will end the incessant fighting between

No, honey right after your eyes¨ (pg. 146). Society has successfully done a good job of making pecola feel as if she is nothing without blue eyes, so when she asks for blue eyes and ¨gets¨ them she is psychologically murdered because she doesn't actually have blue eyes but she thinks she does, so then she feels like she is beautiful, because society sets blue eyes as the standard beauty norm, and she wants to fit into society's

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

Fulfillment of a wish may be even more tragic than the wish impulse itself, the wish to see things as differently as one wants to be seen. The connection between how one is seen and what one sees has a uniquely tragic outcome for Pecola. She is a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in their own ugliness. Because she is black she may have a chance at being loved, but because she is a scapegoat and must carry all of their problems, she destroys herself and can redeem no chance at being loved. Her ugliness makes them feel beautiful. Her suffering makes them feel lucky. Her internalization of their self-hatred being forced upon her pushes her to the brink of insanity. Forced furthur and furthur into her fantasy world, which is her only defense against the pain, Pecola uses that pain to escape reality and make herself disappear. She goes mad believing that her wish has been granted and she has blue eyes, but her fate is far worse than death as she is offered no release. Pecola’s wandering at the edge of town haunts the community, reminding them of the ugliness and hatred they’ve tried to

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.