Importance of Identity in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

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The use of characters as symbols is a common literary device, and Toni Morrison employs it to great effect. In Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, the central theme is the influences of the family and community in the quest for individual identity (Baker, 2008). This theme is recurrent throughout the novel and she uses the characters of Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove as symbols for it. However, these characters are not merely symbols of the effects of the family and community on an individual’s quest for identity, they are also representative of the quest of the many black people that were migrating north in search of better opportunities.

The Breedlove family is not a family in the social sense. Essentially, they are a group of people living under the same roof, a family by name only. Cholly (the father) is an alcoholic man who literally beats his wife Pauline and sexually abuses his daughter Pecola. Pauline is a “mammy” to a kind, white family and she comes to love them more than her biological family for obvious reasons. Pecola is a delicate, small girl who holds a very poor image of herself. Because she does not live up to the world’s standard of beauty and have blue eyes, she believes herself to be ugly. As a result, she prays every night that she will wake up with blue 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.

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