Essay on 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.

At a time when blue-eyed, pale skin Shirley Temple is idolized by white and black alike,

“‘I can’t go to school no more. And I thought maybe you could help me.’ ‘Help you how? Tell me. Don’t be frightened.’ ‘My eyes.’ ‘What about your eyes?’ ‘I want them blue.’ … Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty” (174). Conversation is exchanged between Soaphead Church and Pecola about the longing of blue eyes. Soaphead Church gets angry because he can not help Pecola. The blue eyes symbolize beauty, and Pecola associates that with being loved and accepted. She believes that if she possesses blue eyes, people will disregard she is black, and the cruelty in her life will be replaced with respect and affection. This hopeless desire ultimately leads Pecola to complete madness.To summarize, beauty is a crucial piece of the racism that is displayed in the novel, and affects many different characters.

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

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

Self-hatred is something that can thoroughly destroy an individual. As it was fictitiously evidenced in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, it can lead an individual to insanity. Toni Morrison raises the idea that racism and class can detrimentally influence people’s outlook on themselves.

The affiliation between beauty and whiteness limits the concept of beauty only to the person’s exterior. The characters are constantly subjected to images and symbols of whiteness through movies, books, candy, magazines, baby dolls and advertisements. Another example of the images and symbols in the novel is when the black protagonist, Pecola, feasts on a ‘Mary Jane’ candy.

“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 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.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explores the impact of home on childhood, the formative years of any human. Throughout the book, she describes the childhoods of both adults, namely Polly Breedlove and Cholly Breedlove, and children, specifically Pecola, Claudia, and “Junior,” and leaves the reader to figure out how their childhoods shaped who they are. In the novel. Morrison argues that the totality of one’s childhood, including one’s home and experiences, is key in forming one’s disposition and character later in life. In doing so, Morrison wants the reader to see that the best defense against a predatory, racist society is the home.

Russell M. Nelson once said, “We were born to die and we die to live.” Toni Morrison correlates to Nelson’s quote in her Nobel Lecture of 1993, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, she uses language to examine the concepts of racism, lack of self-identity, gender roles, and socioeconomic hardships as they factor into a misinterpretation of the American Dream. Morrison illustrates problems that these issues provoke through the struggles of an African American community during the1940s. Through the characters’ challenges of being accepted by society, the reader can blatantly see corruption not only in America, but also throughout the entire world. Morrison uniquely applies multiple points of view to tell the story of a young black girl who desires blue eyes in order to be socially “beautiful”. The reason the book is so effective is that Morrison bases the themes on personal experiences. By the end of the novel, we do not directly gain a sense of hope, change and progress for the future, but instead raises awareness of racism, sexism and self-identity. To convey the importance of personal experiences vis á vis social issues, Morrison parallels crucial times in history to the novel. The author demonstrates how history affects her characters and how the characters’ lives in microcosm represent what was occurring globally at the time. The Bluest Eye offers the possibility for

Throughout the story there is a strong sense of abandonment on Pecola’s part. She is a lonely character that is heavily influenced by society and what it thinks. Pecola is very concerned on meeting the standard in society despite her past life. She is determined but in some respects this is one of the downfalls to her character. "Why, she wonders, do people cal them weeds? She though they were pretty". Mr. Yacobowski humiliates her, and she passes the dandelions and thinks, "They are ugly and they are most definitely weeds". This shows how Pecola can easily be manipulated by others and society. In a sense, Pecola has transferred society’s dislike for her to the dandelions. She cannot accept the fact that she is not wanted. At one point in the story the narrator says, "We tried to see [Pecola] without looking at her, and never went near. Not because she was absurd or repulsive, or because we were frightened, but because we had failed her. Our flowers never grew so we

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison narrates the lives of two families, the MacTeer family and the Breedlove family. The novel digs into the themes of love, envy, and weakness, while maintaining a thick and interesting plotline. These themes are conveyed thoroughly through Morrison’s literary style. Toni Morrison’s powerful writing and structural techniques add depth to the novel, enhancing certain emotions while developing a riveting plot.

Since childhood, we all have been taught that “racism is bad” and should be avoided at all costs. We have been told that “everyone is a child of God and we are all created equal.” In fact, Americans are praised for the so-called equality they possess. However, renowned author Toni Morrison sheds light on the sheltered and unspoken truth that everyone—to some extent—is racist. “Home” is a reflective essay in which Morrison explains that her triumphs against racist ideologies are evident throughout her various novels (“Home” 3). In Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, instead of establishing a home where race does not matter—a home which she dreams of in her essay—she creates just the opposite (3). In this novel, by using direct

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