“You cannot hate your origin and not end up hating yourself” is a quote by Malcolm X in his speech, You Can’t Hate The Roots of the Tree Without Hating The Tree. This quote relates with many of the focal themes of The Bluest Eye, such as internalized racism, colorism and white supremacy. Malcolm X’s speech and Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye both highlight self hatred and white supremacy, as well as the effects it has had on the black community.
Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist of The Bluest Eye, feels insecure about her features: “Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long,
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They are sweet and plain as butter cake. Slim ankles; long, narrow feet. They wash themselves with orange-colored Lifebuoy soap, dust themselves with Cashmere Bouquet talc, clean their teeth with salt on a piece of rag, soften their skin with Jergens Lotion. They smell like wood, newspapers, and vanilla” (Morrison 82). Pecola compares these girls to soft, sweet, and almost enchanting things. While it not directly stated, Pecola feels as if she is not as pretty compared to the lighter skinned woman, because she is dark. The book states, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eye, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights―if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). In a different viewpoint, Malcolm X describes the hatred of dark skin as an example of how black people are treated: “It [dark skin] made us feel inferior; it made us feel inadequate, made us feel helpless. And when we fell victims to this feeling of inadequacy or inferiority or helplessness, we turned to somebody else to show the way. We didn't have the confidence of another Black man to show the way” (X 1965). Both of these quotes are examples of the effects of colorism. Colorism is the discrimination of darker-skinned people within an ethnic group. Morrison …show more content…
In The Bluest Eye, the subject of white supremacy is addressed through the character of Cholly Breedlove, Pecola Breedlove’s father. As a young man, Cholly was going to have sex with a white woman named Darlene. Before that could happen, he was disrupted by two white men and was forced by the white men to have sex with Darlene, telling him to “Get on wid it, nigger” and “make it good” (Morrison 148). This scene is a metaphor for white supremacy, the idea of white people controlling black people in everything that do. Malcolm X explains this concept through the idea of uniting black people: “You know why [white people] say Negroes are lazy? Because they want Negroes to be lazy. They always say Negroes can’t unite, because they don’t want Negroes to unite. And once they put this thing in the Negro’s mind, they feel [black people] try to fulfill that image. If they say you can’t unite Black people and then you come to them to unite them, they won’t unite, because it’s been said that they’re not supposed to unite” (X 1965). Both of these passages highlight how white people can control the way black people think as well as the way they act. X makes it seem like it is a game of mind control, while Morrison puts it in a dark, graphic and horrifying
Besides the inherent self-confident issue, the outside voice from community is also affecting Pecola’s view. For example, in the “accident” when Pecola went into Junior’s house, Junior killed the cat and impute to Pecola. His mother, Geraldine, saw Pecola was holding the dead cat. Without any thought and didn’t even ask for the truth, Geraldine simply called Pecola a “nastylittle black bitch.” This event, again, reinforces Pecola’s view of what beauty means.
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
Morrison wrote “His mother did not like him to play with the niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. The colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud”. When writing this quote Morrison pointed out that the problem with racism in society is also the hypocritical and racist views that some African Americans see each other. A young black boy messes with the a girl named Pecola and thinks of her as someone who is lower than in him in status because she is looked as a “dirty nigger” to other people in the black community, despite being the same race as them. This boy is taught seeing her that way because his mother and also because of the way society looked at black people. Morrison also wrote, “The line between colored and niggers was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant” . In the story, there are different ways to extinguish the difference between the “good” and the “bad” black people. If you were someone from the black community and were “bad” you would have been labeled as a nigger. The only reason some people were labeled as bad was because they were poorer and didn’t have the same education as the others. They were living in an world where everything was a cycle. Whites would be racist towards the African American community, treat them like they are second class citizens and keep them
The statement relates to how the adults in The Bluest Eye communicate with the children, especially among the black adults and children, because they are taught to loathe their blackness and envy and adore the whiteness of their white neighbors. The adults, instead of “expressing love” for their skins and appearance, shame their color which they pass on to their children who, inheriting this self-hatred, continue to use language to destroy themselves. For example, in the scene when Claudia, Frieda, and Maureen are walking home, they come across Pecola who is bullied by a group of boys. She is called “black e mo” repeatedly and other offensive language not because she specifically committed a crime against them but because of their “contempt for their own blackness (Morrison 65).” Their detestation against their own skins was bred and cultivated; it was “learned self-hatred (Morrison 65).”
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 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.
In The Bluest Eye, characters experience a variety of oppressive , that give rise to the never ending cycle of victimization in both the families and neighborhood. Throughout the novel, the black community accepts white beauty ideals, for example, judging Maureen’s light skin to be highly attractive in comparison to Pecola’s darker features. Racism is also apparent in other indirect ways. There is a general sense of worthlessness that certain colored characters subconsciously integrate into their daily lives, even without the constant reminder of their apparent “ugliness”. For example, “the Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly.
It had occurred to Pecola … that if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different…. If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they’d say, " Why, look at pretty-eyed Peola". We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes (Morrison 46).
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
One of the most prominent themes found in Toni Morrison’s acutely tragic novel The Bluest Eye is the transferal or redirection of emotions in an effort on the part of the characters to make pain bearable. The most obvious manifestation of that is the existence of race hatred for one’s own race that pervades the story; nearly every character that the narrator spends time with feels at some point a self-loathing as a result of the racism present in 1941 American society. The characters, particularly the adults, have become bitter and hate themselves because of the powerlessness they feel in the situation. They transfer the anger and hatred onto themselves, or at times the others around them, because they
In addition to the societal favoritism of white beauty, there was a subsequent prejudice against features that were associated with the African American physical appearance. The internalized racism present in the novel has an incredibly damaging effect on its characters. The Bluest Eye presents two significant effects of internalized racism—low self-esteem and jealousy.
The novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison is subjected on a young girl, Pecola Breedlove and her experiences growing up in a poor black family. The life depicted is one of poverty, ridicule, and dissatisfaction of self. Pecola feels ugly because of her social status as a poor young black girl and longs to have blue eyes, the pinnacle of beauty and worth. Throughout the book, Morrison touches on controversial subjects, such as the depicting of Pecola's father raping her, Mrs. Breedlove's sexual feelings toward her husband, and Pecola's menstruation. The book's content is controversial on many levels and it has bred conflict among its readers.
Racism has been a concept which has existed from the beginning of human civilization. For some reason, the "whites" believed they were superior to everyone who was not white for a very long time. There has always been a misconception that racism exists strictly against blacks from whites. However, Morrison shows the reader every aspect of racism: whites against blacks,
In the novel, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison incorporates various techniques, such as her use of metaphors, the ironic use of names, and the visual images that she uses. The theme of The Bluest Eye, revolves around African Americans’ conformity to white standards. A woman may whiten her skin, straighten her hair and change its color, but she can not change the color of her eyes. The desire to transform one’s identity, itself becomes an inverted desire, becomes the desire for blues eye, which is the symptom of Pecola’s instability.