In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola, the protagonist of the book, is being portrayed as a young African American girl who believes in her own ugliness under the society’s standards of beauty. Even though her experience is not a typical example of an African American’s life, she serves as a symbol of black community self-hatred. Throughout the book, Morrison shows the Pecola’s internal self-loathing by describing her desire to be considered beautiful in the white world. “Frieda brought her four graham crackers on a saucer and some milk in a blue-and-while Shirley Temple cup …...gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple’s dimpled face….I couldn’t join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley” (Morrison 19) The diction of “gazed fondly” shows that Pecola is being attracted by Shirley …show more content…
When Pecola and Frieda are talking about Shirley Temple, Claudia doesn’t seem to be fond of Shirley Temple. In fact, Claudia is the only character that doesn’t agree with the white standards of beauty. The role of Claudia contrasts with Pecola’s to emphasize the self-loathing in Pecola and other African Americans. The blue eyes is a motif in this book; the recurrence of the fact that Pecola wanting blue eyes amplifies her desperation to fit in the the white society and become pretty. “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty…… A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes.” (174) Soaphead, as an African American, thinks that Pecola is ugly because of her race. It evokes Soaphead’s self-hatred by seeing Pecola’s desperation of blue eyes. Pecola grows up under the white society’s standards of beauty, her African American’s physical features ensures that she has to go through the racism. The white’s standards of beauty internalized self-hatred in
Trends that can be noticed in these entries are the main focal point, which the authors all seem to cover, that is racism and the social-cultural problems created for young African American women. Many of the authors seemed to blame white culture, or the colourist culture for the problem of lost identity in black girls. They seemed to take the same direction in their articles, but many took different routes in explaining and proving their point. These ideas seemed to be arranged by the stating that Pecola Breedlove is a lost little black girl, who because of her idea that being white would solve all her family and life problems, loses her true self. The authors would then blame the white culture for this deficiency in the young mind of an African American girl.
Blond hair, blue eyes. In America these are the ideals of a woman’s beauty. This image is drilled into our minds across the lifespan in the media and it conditions people's standards of beauty. We see Black women wish that their skin was lighter. In an episode of "The Tyra Banks Show", a Black girl as young as 6 talks about how she doesn't like her hair and wishes that it was long and straight like a white woman's. Some minorities get surgery to change their facial features, or only date white men. Having been taught to think that white people are more attractive than people of their own ethnicity. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the character of Pecola exemplifies the inferiority felt throughout the black community due to the ideology that white qualities propel you in social status. Pecola’s mother, Pauline Breedlove, said it best when she was introduced to beauty it being the most destructive ideas in the history of human though. From which the envy, insecurity and disillusion have been derived by the ideas of beauty and physical appearance. Pecola’s story is about the consequences of a little black girl growing up in a society dominated by white supremacy. We must not look at beauty as a value rather an oppressive discourse that has taken over our society. Pecola truly believes that if her eyes were blue she would be pretty, virtuous, and loved by everyone around her. Friends would play with her, teachers would treat her better and even her parents might stop their constant fights because, in her heart of hearts, no one would want to “do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.”
Brought up as a poor unwanted girl, Pecola Breedlove desires the acceptance and love of society. The image of "Shirley Temple beauty" surrounds her. In her mind, if she was to be beautiful, people would finally love and accept her. The idea that blue eyes are a necessity for beauty has been imprinted on Pecola her whole life. "If [I] looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they would say, `Why look at pretty eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty [blue] eyes'" (Morrison 46). Many people have helped imprint this ideal of beauty on her. Mr. Yacowbski as a symbol for the rest of society's norm, treats her as if she were invisible. "He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year-old white immigrant storekeeper... see a little black girl?" (Morrison 48). Her classmates also have an effect on her. They seem to think that because she is not beautiful, she is not worth anything except as the focal point of their mockery. "Black e mo. Black e mo. Yadaddsleepsnekked. Black e mo black e mo ya dadd sleeps nekked.
As the story goes, In the Bluest Eye, the book provided different pictures in which there was white beauty qualities deformed the lives of black girls and women. In some parts of the book Mrs. Breedlove shares the guiltiness that Pecola is ugly, and lighter skinned Geraldine curses Pecola’s blackness. In the bluest Eye a major factor was whiteness as everyone take that as beauty that's why when Claudia reaches her adolescent she starts to hate herself because her self esteem is not where it should be cause of the racial critiques in the book, Race is a powerful determinant in the novel. The author uses different types of styles such as symbolism One example of symbolism is when Pecola prays to disappear because of her parents fights, I understand her in some point because I can connect that in my life and I wouldn't like my parents to be fighting all the time, sometimes eye's are always the ones that do not fade away. This is symbolizing She cannot forget about her eyes.
"And Pecola. She hid behind hers. (Ugliness) Concealed, veiled, eclipsed--peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask" (Morrison 39). In the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the main character, Pecola, comes to see herself as ugly. This idea she creates results from her isolation from friends, the community, and ever her family. There are three stages that lead up to Pecola portraying herself as an ugly human being. The three stages that lead to Pecola's realization are her family's outlook toward her, the community members telling her she is ugly, and her actually accepting what the other say or think about her. Each stage progresses into the other to finally reach the last stage and the end of the novel when Pecola eventually has to rely on herself as an imaginary friend so she will have someone to talk to.
In the novel “The Bluest Eyes”, by Toni Morrison, Racial self-loathing and hatred is a major theme through the text, and is even evident in the title. Instead of making the plot center around events over racism, the book shows a deeper portrayal of racism, emphasizing on the way racial self-hatred and loathing plagues the black characters. The novel shows an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards distort the lives of the black characters. The author shows this by having African Americans who have lighter features, Maureen Peal, Geraldine and Soaphead Church, and characters with darker features, Pecola and her Parents Cholly, and Pauline Breedlove. Through them we are able to see racial self-loathing, there
Toward the end of the novel, Pecola is afflicted by insanity. Pereira (1997) states that Pecola’s desire for blue eyes reflects a community absorbed by white ideas of what beauty is. She is also stating that Pecola’s insanity mirrors the cultural insanity of her community. This threatens their identity and strength. I do agree with the first claim.
Throughout Toni Morrison’s controversial debut The Bluest Eye, several characters are entangled in the extremes of human cruelty and desire. A once innocent Pecola arguably receives the most appalling treatment, as not only is she exposed to unrelenting racism and severe domestic abuse, she is also raped and impregnated by her own father, Cholly. By all accounts, Cholly is detestable and unworthy of any kind of sympathy. However, over the course of the novel, as Cholly’s character and life are slowly brought into the light and out of the self-hatred veil, the reader comes to partially understand why Cholly did what he did and what really drives him. By painting this severely flawed yet completely human picture of Cholly, Morrison draws comparison with how Pecola was treated by both of her undesirable parents.
Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world, not special, less than nothing. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you lesser was cultivated by both whites and blacks. White skin meant beauty and privilege and that idea was not questioned at this time in history. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people's lives in many different ways. The taunts of schoolboys directed at Pecola clearly illustrate this fact; "It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (65). This self hatred also possessed an undercurrent of anger and injustice that eventually led to the civil rights movement.
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.
so shown through Claudia. Lastly her hatred was for herself shown through Pecola; “... If her eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different too.” (The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison). This quote also explains how Pecola blames her blackness for all her issues. Pecola believed that her life would be better if she had blue eyes which cause her to pray for them every night; “ Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes.”
She now compares herself to Shirley Temples and Maureen Peals. Pecola fails to understand that people ignore her because she was raped by her father and now delivered his child. Moreover, Morrison also demonstrates that Pecola keeps obsessing over her blue eyes but also wonders if “what if there’s someone with bluer eyes”. (Morrison, 202) This quotation delineates how “blue eyes” is a metaphor for new experiences and even thought Pecola is deluded to believe she has blue eyes, Pecola is unable to capture different images and is unable to resolve problems and fights amongst her family members.
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.
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 mass media contribute to the status at which young African American girls find themselves early on and throughout their lives.
She believes that if she could have blue eyes, their beauty would inspire kind behavior from others. Blues eyes in Pecola’s definition, is the pure definition of beauty. But beauty in the sense that if she had them she would see things differently. But within the world that Pecola lives in the color of one’s eye, and skin heavily influences their treatment. So her desperation for wanting to change her appearance on the account of her environment and culture seems child-like but it is logical. If Pecola could alter her appearance she would alter her influence and treatment toward and from others. In this Morrison uses Marxism as a way to justify Pecola’s change in reality depending on her appearance. The white ideologies reflected upon Pecola’s internal and external conflicts which allowed her to imagine herself a different life. The impacts of one’s social class also impacts one’s perspective of their race. The vulnerability created by the low social class allows racism to protrude in society and have a detrimental effect for the young black girls in “The Bluest Eye” (Tinsley).The quotes explained above express the social and economic aspect of the Marxist theory. The theory that centers around the separation of social classes and the relationship surrounding them not one’s internalization of oneself