Bluest Eye Essay

In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison confirms the existence of racism within the African American community. Unbelievably, many African Americans suffer from what is termed internalized racism. Internalized racism produces the same feelings as racial racism: worthlessness, inferiority, and unattractiveness. However, internalized racism can also produce opposite feelings: superiority, hatred, and self-worth. Pecola, an 11-year-old black girl, desires to have the physical characteristics of

The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame, that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads to Pecola struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything. Pecola

media, and they characterize beauty by these standards, even though it is fruitless to do so. This is also true in The Bluest Eye as most all people in Lorain, Ohio in the 1940’s glorified white skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair. People revered public figures like Shirley Temple, and conceived those without the aforementioned attributes as “ugly.” Toni Morrison organizes the The Bluest Eye into seasonal chapters, shifts to different perspectives throughout the novel, and includes the Dick and Jane epigraph

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and the American culture whose ideal is the quintessential blue-eyed, blonde haired woman. For Pecola Breedlove, blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin is the definition of beauty; however, for Claudia MacTeer, blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin are oppressive cultural standards. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses specific descriptions of Claudia and Pecola’s

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, depicts characters desperately seeking to attain love through a predetermined standard of beauty established and substantiated by society. Morrison intertwines the histories of several characters portraying the delusions of the ‘perfect’ family and what motivates their quest for love and beauty. Ultimately, this pursuit for love and beauty has overwhelming effects on their relationships and their identity. Pecola Breedlove is young black girl who believes she

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye follows Pecola Breedlove’s “journey” to obtain beauty in the form of the titular blue eyes. Not only is it told in Claudia’s perspective, but the readers witnesses several backstories, namely Geraldine, Pauline, Cholly, and Soaphead Church’s, which is in a third-person perspective. This might be seen as odd at first, but after taking a deeper look into their pasts, there is something that stands out: something “beautiful” in the eyes of these people. These “beautiful”

Definition of Beauty Can Have on Children as Found in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Anne Sexton’s Cinderella Although some may readily say that childhood is an enjoyable experience filled with everyday learning and laughter, Toni Morrison and Anne Sexton describe childhood as something that is unpleasant to go through. With the different effects that representations of beauty in society can have on children, found in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Cinderella written by Anne Sexton, each protagonist

gospel and followed religiously? That is exactly what happens in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Consequently, this warped view on the world ruined lives and relationships for the characters in the book. What motivated the characters to react in such a way? How did Toni Morrison’s use of characterization, direct and indirect, form believable characters and situations? In this essay, I will explore all of these points. The Bluest Eye is a novel following the lives of the Breedlove and MacTeer families

primal medium of communication used today and convey different meanings depending upon one’s cultural background. Hence, the significance of a symbol is not inherent in the symbol itself but is rather cultivated in society. Both Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes explore the significance of such symbols, focusing on the basal reader of Dick and Jane and the ritualized practice of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, respectively. These two symbols, while disparate on the surface

The Uses of God and the Church in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Morrison places a responsibility for the social dilemma; tragic condition of blacks in a racist America so prominent in the 1940s, on an indefinite God and/or the church. This omniscient being, the creator of all things, both noble and corrupt, and his messengers seem to have in a sense sanctioned the ill fated in order to validate the hatred and scorn of the "righteous." In her introduction of the Breedlove family, Morrison