White Influence On White People

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

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.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the oppression of blacks and the praising of whites to demonstrate the unjustified power and influence of the dominant individuals. Within American society, the dominant races rise to power and exert their influence by building an environment that worships whiteness and devalues blackness, creating powerless and powerful communities.

“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.

Racist ideology is institutionalized when how people’s interactions reflects on an understanding that they share the same beliefs. However, in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the topic of racism is approached in a very unique way. The characters within the novel are subjected to internalizing a set of beliefs that are extremely fragmented. In accepting white standards of beauty, the community compromises their children’s upbringing, their economic means, and social standings. Proving furthermore that the novel has more to do with these factors than actual ethnicity at all.

Toni Morrison highlights this best in her novel “The Bluest Eye”. “Except for an occasional and unaccountable insurgent who chose a black, they married “up” lightening the family complexion and and thinning out the family features”(Morrison 168). Throughout the book Morrison depicts the differences in treatment of the lighter end and the darker end of the African American race. In Morrison’s book there was a character by the name of Maureen Peal and because Peal was a biracial child both black people and white people adored her, they didn’t abuse her with their words or actions. Peal was safe from the violence against her race and believe she was not black because of it, as though being black was a curse that should feared. Similar to Maureen Peal we are introduced to another character in her same position, her name was Geraldine. With Geraldine readers are able to see the economic differences between black people. Morrison describes the light skinned woman's house as being beautiful and large in contrast the the main character Pecola’s clothes described as “dirty and torn”(Morrison 89-91). This division has carried through the 21st century; today people are still characterising others by the complexion of their skin. Things have improved

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

Anderson is correct because she shows the reader that white people have more respect in

In the novel, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison creates a story that reveals hope and encouragement, while also raising questions of painfully accurate social injustices. The story centers around two black families, the McTeers and the Breedloves, however, the emphasize is on the children of the novel. The novel explores the growing lives and painful experiences of Claudia, Frieda and Pecola. Readers might conclude that the prominent social injustice in this novel is simply racism, however, more important issues lie beneath the surface. Along with racism, lack of physical and mental self-worth, abuse and neglect are extremely prevalent throughout. In this essay, I will expose and elaborate on how these social injustices had extreme effects on the lives and mental state of young black women.

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

This novel also demonstrates how centuries of cultural mutilation of Black people in America leads to a psychological oppression and subjugation. Self-proclaimed inferiority operated in the Blacks of America and they could not break their minds free from the shackles of racial inferiority. It became a culturally imposed racism for them. Their blackness implied their inferiority to the Whites in America. Similarly, the Breedlove family also accepts the hollow notion of whiteness and consequently experiences its damaging outcomes. In Pecola, there operates a growing self-loathing. Through her character, Morrison attempts to paint a more complicated and deeper portrayal of the effects of racism via how self-loathing eclipses the minds of Black people. Breedlove family was said to be ugly –

In The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the reader struggles through a multitude of themes that are difficult to comprehend and accept as reality. Brutal racism, physical and sexual abuse, mental insanity, impossible standards of beauty, and intense bullying and harassment are present to leave the reader grappling with and making sense of the stories told. Cholly Breedlove, the main character’s father, both experiences and perpetuates abuse in many forms. His character embodies the cyclic effects of hatred of the black body and spirit.

Before segregation was made illegal racism was more prevalent than it is today. White people were seen as the ideal that everyone should try to be while black people were shunned and classified as second class citizens not even having suffrage or basic rights that white people were entitled to. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison demonstrates internalized racism as a destructive force by making narrative choices such as switching from third to first person point of view, using varying levels of diction, and telling the stories of each character.

Given the societal view of whiteness as a standard of beauty, both Maureen Peal and Pecola Breedlove struggle with distorted self-perceptions and self-hatred. Ultimately able to project both her hatred and her insecurities elsewhere, Maureen is able to bloom despite adversity. Pecola, however, internalizes the hatred at the hands of others and is left only to wither.