Forms of Violence in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Forms of Violence in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

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Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye is about the life of a black low

class family, who resides in America in the late 1930s. Everyday they

are confronted to the problem of violence. And we would see that this

violence is present inside their own family as well as in all the

community around them. Then we will explain that all this abuse comes

for the most part from racism and the idealized concept of white

beauty. In addition, with regard to racism, we will see that this

oppressed black society suffers on the one hand from racism from white

people and on the other hand from their own race. In addition, we will

demonstrate that violence is expressed by different forms throughout

the novel, namely physical, verbal and emotional.

Firstly, the most important representation of violence in The Bluest

Eye is the one in Breedlove's family. The daughter Pecola is an

innocent little girl nevertheless, she is the principal victim of this

abuse. It is bad enough that practically the whole world rejects her,

but even in her own family she cannot find any kind of consolation.

Indeed Pecola's family life is brutal. Her father, who is very often

drunk, hits her mother. Consequently, these ritual and terrible

fights, which is here physical violence, create a terrorific mental

violence to Pecola. It can be seen in the passage where she prays God

to make her disappear during one of her parents' fight "Please

God…Please make me disappear"1 (p.45). This desire of vanishing

demonstrate very well the state of her spirit that is to say she is

desperating and for her, life has no va...

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...cceeded in highlighting the relevant aspect of the novel. The topic

of violence, which is present from the beginning to the end of the

book has been very well explored by her. The use of Pecola's character

as the victim of all this cruelty has made the novel even more

touching and moving. All this pushes the reader to have a critical

point of view despite the focalized narrator Claudia. Nevertheless,

the top of this violence is the presence of racism. Morrison has

exploited both white/black racism and black/black racism. The latter

is found to be especially prevalent and revolting in this novel.

However, is it very reasonable to condemn the oppressors , are they

not also victims of their past or ancestors ideology ? It creates an

ambiguous question that everyone is free to interprete and makes the

novel even more rich.