Analysis of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

1769 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racism in english literature

In the novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison readers are taken throughout the daily lives of African Americans who are faced with numerous trial & tribulations. Already facing the harsh reality that they were inferior to the white race. There were many families throughout this story that was faced with this stigma, however it seemed that the Breedloves had it just twice as hard. A series of social problems of which African Americans were victims to during the 1940s-1060s such as Rape, interracial prejudice, and mental illness. First and foremost, it's important that I state that Toni Morrison’s real life indeed does correlate with the actual story, The Bluest Eye. Just as the the little girl narrating the story was nine years old in 1941, so was Morrison. Another similarity is that one particular family, The MacTeer’s that endured a great deal of struggling during The Great Depression, as did Morrison's. While also stating that one of the character’s, Claudia grew up listening to her mother play the violin, just as Morrison did. How can you love when you have never received love? Neglected as a child by your own mother, dismissed by your own father. It seemed that Cholly, Pecola Breedlove’s father had quite a hard life. Not forgetting the racist whites who made him have sex with that girl right in front of their eyes. The humility & ridicule he constantly felt. When he met & impregnated Pauline with Pecola he even questioned how would it be possible for him to love her when he still had so much anger in his heart. Situations or moreover things that occurred throughout this story seemed to affect or better yet impact the African Americans depicted in this reading differently. Rape being one of them. Particularly this left a lo... ... middle of paper ... ...n the problems African Americans had within their own culture. The concept of beauty was quite tough when lightskin such a Maureen Peal was seen as beautiful . She has even stated “ I am cute And you ugly.” Meanwhile someone of darker skin such as Pecola’s was perceived as ugly. If she was cute--and if anything could be believed, she was--then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser. ... And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us. (Morrison,75) Either you accepted the ridicule and in turn believed it yourself or you knew your self worth and striked back. African American women seemed to have went through it all, but the challenge to keep on going was the most difficult of them all.

Show More
Related

  • Kara Walker Art Analysis

    1545 Words  | 4 Pages

    Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    This piece of autobiographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction

    Read More

  • Prejudice in Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes

    1743 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout Hughes’ Not Without Laughter, we see the long-term effect of generations of prejudice and abuse against blacks. Over time, this prejudice manifested itself through the development of several social classes within the black community. Hughes’, through the eyes of young Sandy, shows us how the color of one’s skin, the church they attend, the level of education an individual attained, and the type of employment someone could find impacted their standing within the community and dictated the social class they belonged to. Tragically, decades of slavery and abuse resulted in a class system within the black community that was not built around seeking happiness or fulfillment but, equality through gaining the approval of whites.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    1765 Words  | 4 Pages

    As Harper Lee phrased the famous quote, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Lee’s quote appears in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which explores racial and cultural stereotypes, exemplifies the differences between good and evil, and challenges the reader to find empathy for societal outcasts. Growing up in Lorain, Ohio during the Great Depression era, Morrison, raised by parents who moved to the North to escape southern racism, learned to value African American heritage and recognize situations, regarding alienated people, as unfair. Morrison’s unique upbringing has developed a conscientious perspective within her that gives her the advantage to speak not only with truth, but experience as well. While possessing a thoroughly defined perspective herself, Morrison is capable of weaving topics and messages meaningful to her into the divergent viewpoints of her many characters. Toni Morrison uses different points of view throughout the novel, The Bluest Eye, to give the reader a more detailed and realistic understanding of the characters’ situations and backgrounds and the novel as a whole. Morrison

    Read More

  • Living Past: Racial and Social Themes in The Bluest Eye

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is a sense of repetition the persistent repugnance within the black community’s view of their own race. Although black families such as the Breedlove’s are incessantly discriminated against in all aspects of life, it could be argued that their ugliness is only added to by their issues of self-loathing, ‘No-one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly’ (p.36). The Breedlove family have built up a vigorous detestation for themselves, therefore they cannot escape from their own past loathing that repeats itself through generations. However, it could also be argued that there are some who are trying contradict past history living in the present. Morrison herself reiterates in the foreword of the novel ‘Most others, however, grow beyond it’ (p.5). As a result, it could be argued that The Bluest Eye is an on-going battle of those who want to move on from past idealistic appearances and those who are left behind to wallow in their own

    Read More

  • Social Issues In A Red Record, And The New Negro

    1156 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over historical progression, African Americans have faced a surfeit of injustices that are addressed throughout numerous works of literature. One of the most frequently discussed themes in African American literature related to these injustices is social issues in an interracial community. With various literary techniques, the central topic of social issues due to race portrayed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s A Red Record and Alain Locke’s The New Negro address the social issues of racial brutality, inferiority and social controversy in an interracial society.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye Sparknotes

    1428 Words  | 3 Pages

    This book touches on many different aspects of racial inequality by bringing together the works of many different African American authors, and discusses all of the major themes of “whiteness studies”. The author speaks of how whites attempt to maintain a neutral ground by focusing on extreme acts of white supremacy, which blinds the main steam to the problem of white dominance as a whole. They also discuss how there are differences in the wages between whites and blacks. One of the chapters discusses how there are whites who are committed to the equality of the races, and yet cannot empathize with the races they are trying to help. In another chapter they discuss how Pecola Breedlove undergoes racial deformation through biopower mechanisms occurring throughout the characters life. In another chapter an author discusses how racial excoriation cannot be the focus any longer if we wish to make progress in the realm of race. Instead he suggests we need to focus on the rehabilitation of racial whiteness. He argues that in order to accomplish this we must address the fears and greediness of whites.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    2708 Words  | 6 Pages

    Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye provides social commentary on a lesser known portion of black society in America. The protagonist Pecola is a young black girl who desperately wants to feel beautiful and gain the “bluest eyes” as the title references.

    Read More

  • A Woman

    1756 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...brought with it discrimination of African American women, “They were targets of brutality, the butt of jokes and ridicule, and their womanhood was denied over and over. It was a struggle just to stay free, and an even greater struggle to define womanhood” (162). As the men fought the war the women who were now dependent upon themselves more than ever had to take on the role of the father. The Mammy figure now stood up for herself and would often times leave the white family, the family they left would often have feelings of remorse for their tremendous loss. Women were standing up for themselves and where now the maker of their own destiny, but with that still came the harsh reality that they would be still the most vulnerable group in antebellum America. Many single African American women were faced with poverty and had a really hard time dealing with the war and depending on themselves. Deborah Gray White’s view of slave women shows us that their role was truly unique, they faced the harsh reality that they were not only women or African American, they were both, so therefore their experience was one of a kind and they lived through it, triumphed, and finally won their freedom.

    Read More

  • Racism: The Reaction of a Southern Population

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life,” (Lee 295.) African Americans will be doomed in certain situations due to a lack of community background, and they will always find themselves losing games, court cases, or whatever they are competing against a white man in. African Americans lacked the rights of white Americans which created unequal chances and opportunities for success. “Until my father explained it to me later, I did not understand the subtlety of Tom’s predicament: he would not have dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and expect to live long, so he took his first opportunity to run--a sure sign of guilt,” (Lee 260-261.) In her coming to age, Scout real...

    Read More

  • Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman?

    1623 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...

    Read More

  • Morrison's Bluest Eye Essay: Self-Definition

    2534 Words  | 6 Pages

    In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.

    Read More

  • Social Issues in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    A reader might easily conclude that the most prominent social issue presented in The Bluest Eye is that of racism, but more important issues lie beneath the surface. Pecola experiences damage from her abusive and negligent parents. The reader is told that even Pecola's mother thought she was ugly from the time of birth. Pecola's negativity may have initially been caused by her family's failure to provide her with identity, love, security, and socialization, ail which are essential for any child's development (Samuels 13). Pecola's parents are able only to give her a childhood of limited possibilities. She struggles to find herself in infertile soil, leading to the analysis of a life of sterility (13). Like the marigolds planted that year, Pecola never grew.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye and a Perfect Society

    644 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, she exposes the suffering produced by the problems caused by gender and race oppression through the experiences of African-American children. During the 1940’s, the United States had composed an identity through mass media with books such as “Dick and Jane”, and movies like “Sherley Temple.” These media sources provided a society based on national innocence. In the novel, Morrison relates to and exposes the very real issues that were hidden by the idea of the stereotypical white middle-class family.

    Read More

  • Family Relationships in Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    1780 Words  | 4 Pages

    “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.

    Read More

More about Analysis of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Open Document