Theme Of Racism In The Bluest Eye

Women. When hearing that word alone, you think of weakness, their insignificance, and how lowly they are viewed in society. Females can be seen as unworthy or nothing without a man if they are not advocating them and are constantly being treated differently from men. However, in the book, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, they live up to their reputations for how they view themselves. Specifically, being focused on women like Pecola, and Claudia. They are often questioning their worth from society’s judgement of beauty. Though one character, Frieda embraces it despite being black. With having everything temporary, the desire of grasping and having something permanent increases. The women desires to be of

In, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison, the author, uses many examples of cruelty throughout the novel to reveal that when someone is victimized, they turn to be the perpetrator for another someone else.

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

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

Growing up as sharecropper her whole life, Fannie Lou had faced the struggles of a black sharecropper since the age of six, where she was tricked into picking cotton (Myers Asch, 54). Her family has a home of their own and animals when she was twelve, but soon lost it due to white farmers sabotaging them by poisoning their animals (Myers Asch, 55). Moving on, Lou had an education of her own, where she “[s]he had been a solid student at the local school, winning spelling bees and doing well in reading” (Myers Asch, 55). In addition, she raised two children while living in the Hamer home, where she tried her best to make condition for their sharecroppers “decent” by doing outside jobs (Myers Asch, 58). Due to these conditions and events in Lou’s

“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.

Due to internalized racism, the African American community throws taunts about their body, hair, and skin color at each other, having internalized the hate and definition that White people have given them about what features are good and valuable. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Morrison captures this internalized racism within 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove, who prays for blue eyes like the ones White Americans have. Although

Institutionalized inequalities, a societal prejudice against others through a community or organization, is a prevalent issue within the novel, “The Bluest Eye”, written by Toni Morrison. The use of racial discrimination, gender roles, and class structures construct these inequalities, and illustrates the immoral high road that institutions in the 20th century would follow along. Pecola Breedlove, the main character and the person who falls to victim most frequently, endures numerous setbacks and obstacles that contribute to the analysis on how “The Bluest Eye” creates such disparities. As Wall would put it, “in a society ordered by hierarchies of power based on race, class, and gender, no one is more powerless-hence more vulnerable- than a

Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old black girl who desperately wants blue eyes because she thinks they’ll make her beautiful. Because of her father, she becomes the epicenter of town gossip and a scapegoat that the people use to make themselves feel superior. Pecola feels hated and ugly in her community because she’s black and seems convinced that if she had blue eyes, all her problems would go away. Morrison’s novel is a timeless work of art that explores and develops many themes such as the idea that being white is equivalent to being beautiful. Like many incredible pieces of literature, the novel continues to inspire people.

The grandmother’s bigotry is also on display as the family rides past a black youth standing near his modest home. Her reaction to seeing him is like walking past an adorable dog; “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” (12). When her granddaughter June Starr comments on the boy’s lack of clothing, the grandmother explains that “little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do” (12). As the grandmother emits racism through her comments, she is also inserting such notion into her grandchildren’s minds. Nor Bailey or his wife says anything, so it can be suggested that they are used to such comments and may hold the same views as well. The grandmother does not see a reason to be empathetic; the boy waves and she does return the gesture. Instead she romanticizes the boy’s plight as a missed opportunity, suggesting that “If [she] could paint, [she’d] paint that picture” (12).

Junior is affected by the failure of his mother to parent well. Instead she worries about appearance, cleanliness, and her cat which brings separation between her and Junior. Because he is angry and hurt by this, he abuses his mother’s cat who receives all the affection he would like to have from Geraldine.

The Bluest Eye concentrates on the key contemporary American issues: racial and sexual politics. More distinctly, the novel centres on the impact that socially constructed views of race have on gender relations within the black community. As Butler-Evans highlights, “race rather than gender had become the overriding sign for the oppression of black people” and Morrison’s novel responds to this political issue by focusing on this in correlation with the Eurocentric society setting of the novel. The racial oppression suffered by the black community shape ideas of black masculinity based on male feelings of inferiority and consequent sexual oppression of black females. Morrison systematically explores the relationship between the racial oppression of black males and sexual oppression of black females. The main focus of this essay will be an exploration of how racial oppression experienced by black males, specifically Cholly and Junior, relate to the sexual oppression they enforce on black females.

For decades there has been an ongoing discussion on society’s standards of beauty and what makes someone beautiful. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye she challenges white standards of beauty. Just like today, the society in Loraine, Ohio establishes a standard of beauty, and this beauty is defined as being as close to white as possible, having blonde hair, blue eyes, and a “Jack and Jill” family. Most of the characters in The Bluest Eye attempt to conform to society’s standards (complicating this idea) and believe if they can achieve at least one of the aspects of beauty their life will be better and they will be treated in higher regards. Through the female characters of Pecola, Claudia, Maureen, Geraldine, and Rosemary it is prevalent that there is a spectrum of beauty and the person who is closest to this standard, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, is considered pretty and is respected by society, while a person who is not close to this standard is considered ugly and is treated poorly by society. By ascribing to society’s expectations of beauty, Geraldine extends the role of white supremacy and undermines her own self-worth.

Racism in The Bluest Eye "There is really nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how." When bad things happen to us, the first thing we ask ourselves is "why"? Most of the time however, the answer to "why" is not readily available to us, and sometimes there is not an answer at all.

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.