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In The Bluest Eye, a girl named Claudia Macteer narrates most of the novel. The novel takes place in 1940 in Lorain, Ohio. The Bluest Eye is about the life of an eleven-year-old girl named Pecola and her family: her brother Sammy, her mother Pauline, and then her father Cholly. The main focal point of the novel is the daughter Pecola. All Pecola wants is to be accepted and stop getting all this hatred thrown at her. Everyday Pecola faces racism, not just from white people but most of the time we see it from her own race. Pecola does not come from a great home non-like the Claudia and her sister Frieda who befriended Pecola. Pecola’s entire life has been put down literally since birth with everyone around her saying she is ugly. Pecola is a …show more content…
true victim when it comes to everything that happens in her life, not like Claudia who has the love of her family. Pecola believes if she can get blue eyes like Shirley Temple than everyone around her will love her. She goes to a man named Soaphead Church and says “My eyes.” “I want them Blue.” (Morrison 174) Pecola is affected by all of her surrounding since birth, which damages Pecola physically and mentally. Since Pecola’s birth Pauline has not been a great mother. From day one Pauline said “But I know she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly.” (Morrison 126) Pauline is very rude to her family; the reason why she is so rude is because her family is a constant reminder that she will never have a lifestyle like the white family has that she works for. All Pecola wants is to be loved and accepted by her mother when all she hears is her mother putting her down. What made it even worse Pecola couldn’t even call her mom, mom she had to call her Mrs. Breedlove. Well, the white family that Mrs. Breedlove worked for had a daughter, well their daughter called her Polly when her own daughter can’t even call her that. Well when Pecola was there to pick up the laundry Claudia and Frieda met up with Pecola because they wanted to talk to her well the little white girl came into the kitchen where Pecola, Claudia, and Frieda were, and when Mrs. Breedlove went to get the laundry Pecola saw the warm pie her mom just made, Pecola went to touch the pie to see if it was warm and the pie fell and made a mess. Mrs. Breedlove screamed at Pecola but comforted the little white girl: The little girl in pink started to cry. Mrs. Breedlove turned to her. “Hush, baby, hush. Come here. Oh, lord, look at your dress. Don’t cry no more. Polly will change it.” She went to the sink and turned tap water on a fresh towel. Over her shoulder she spit out words to us like rotten pieces of apple. “Pick up that wash and get out of here, so I can get this mess cleaned up.”(Morrison 109) These events had to have physically and emotionally destroyed Pecola, no child ever wants to see their mother being rude to them and loving to someone else’s child. Pecola believes if she had blue eyes that her mother would love her and be kind to her. Pecola’s father has never been a great father or husband; he was only a good husband at the beginning of his and Pauline’s marriage. The reason why Cholly and Pauline’s relationship started to have problem was Pauline wanted more clothes and new things for their apartment, Cholly was not happy with everything she was buying. After this money became the focus of all there conversations about his drinks and all of her clothing. Then came the children Sammy the son and then Pecola. When Pecola was eleven and a half years old Cholly had something come over him and ended up raping Pecola. “The confused mixture of his memories of Pauline and the doing of a wild and forbidden thing excited him, and a bolt of desire ran down his genitals, giving it length, and softening the lips of his anus. Surrounding all of this lust was a border of politeness. He wanted to fuck her-tenderly.” (Morrison 161) This really traumatized Pecola, Pecola ended up becoming pregnant. Pecola had to be pulled out of school for these events and once everyone found out what happened once again everyone was talking bad about her, one person even said she has some of the blame, and then someone said Pecola would be lucky if her baby didn’t even make it because it would be the ugliest thing. The only people who seem to care was Claudia and Frieda they decided that they wanted to try to make a miracle happen so Pecola’s baby would live. Frieda and Claudia decided to plant seeds and if the flowers grow they will know that the baby made it. Well the baby did not make is and it took a pretty big toll on Pecola, this caused Pecola to feel powerless and she finally is driven to insanity. During the whole novel The Bluest Eye Pecola keeps wishing to have blue eyes.
She wished her eyes would look like Shirley Temples; Pecola wants the blues eyes to finally be loved and accepted by everyone around her especially her mother and Pecola also believes if she had blue eyes her father would not have done what he did to her. Pecola goes to a man named Soaphead Church and asks him if he would give her blue eyes, he told her she would have to give the dog out front a piece of meat and if the dog acted weird that her wish would become true the next day. Pecola did receive her blue eyes, and when Claudia went over to see her all Pecola could do was look at her eyes and talk about her eyes. The thing about Pecola he mom still treated her the same she said “Mrs. Breedlove look drop-eyed at you?” “Yes. Now she does. Ever since I got my Blue eyes, she look away from me all of the time. Do you suppose she’s jealous too?” During this whole time that Pecola has felt alone and being picked on and wanting her blue eyes she never realized that she did have friends who were there for her Claudia and Frieda. In the end the blue eyes did not bring her what deeply truly wanted which was love and I think Pecola also wanted the blue eyes to take away all of her Physically and mentally
abuse. In the end Pecola ended up going into insanity because of all of the events that have occurred in her life just in the first eleven and a half years of her life. Starting with her mother at birth say “ I ‘member I said I’d love it no matter what it looked like. She looked like a black ball of hair.” (Morrison 124) The bad thing about Pecola’s Situation is that she has always seen how her parents treat each other, as well as how Pauline and Cholly have treated Pecola. Even when Pecola would go to school her teachers wouldn’t even look at her, everyone around her said she was ugly, and never even gave her a chance. Pecola ended becoming so shut off from everyone around her that she didn’t even realize that she did have two true friends Claudia and Frieda. And once she received the blue eyes that she has always wanted she finally realized that Claudia and Frieda have always been there for her, but in the end her blue eyes did not give her what she has always wanted with is acceptance.
"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.
She is envious of people with blue eyes because she thinks that those people have better lives. “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…” this quote is from Soaphead, a man that runs a church and he pretends to be God, after Pecola has asked him to give her blue eyes. Even a terrible man that has committed many terrible sins, feels sympathy for Pecola because of the terrible life she has
In the novel, the Black narrator Claudia talks about how the ideal beauty of their society is White women, stating, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs – all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. ‘Here,’ they said, ‘this is beautiful, and if you are on this day “worthy” you may have it’ (Morrison 20). This quote is significant because it proves that the culture promotes the appearance of White women over Black women. Due to the large amounts of racism, many African Americans believed they lived in poverty because they were black. The narrator explained, “The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they were ugly” (Morrison 38). The discrimination was so extreme in the novel that the African American characters started to idealize the white race. One example of this is when Pecola, a black girl, yearned for blue eyes because she believes all of the cruelty in her life will then go away. This strong desire ultimately leads to insanity (Morrison 174). The psychological suffering that many of the young female characters went through is result of discrimination towards a racial
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.
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.
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, the character Claudia struggles with a beauty standard that harms her sense of self-esteem. Claudia tries to make sense of why the beauty standard does not include black girls. The beauty standard determines that blonde-haired blue-eyed white girls are the image of beauty and therefore they are worthy of not only attention, but are considered valuable to American culture of the 1940s. Thus, learning she has no value or beauty as a black girl, Claudia destroys her white doll in an attempt to understand why white girls are beautiful and subsequently worthy, socially superior members of society. In destroying the doll, Claudia attempts to destroy the beauty standard that works to make her feel socially inferior and ugly because of her skin color. Consequently, Claudia's destruction of the doll works to show how the beauty standard was created to keep black females from feeling valuable by producing a sense of self-hate in black females. The racial loathing created within black women keeps them as passive objects and, ultimately, leads black women, specifically Pecola, to destroy themselves because they cannot attain the blue eyes of the white beauty standard.
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison is an African American writer, who believes in fighting discrimation and segregation with a mental preparation. Tony focuses on many black Americans to the white American culture and concludes that blacks are exploited because racism regarding white skin color within the black community. The bluest eye is a story about a young black girl named Pecola, who grew up in Ohio. Pecola adores blonde haired blue eyes girls and boys. She thinks white skin meant beauty and freedom and that thought was not a subject at this time in history. This book is really about the impact on a child’s state of mind. Tony Morrison has divided her book into four seasons: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The main characters in this book are three girls, Claudia and Frieds McTeer, and Pecola Breedlove. Why was Pecola considered a case? Pecola was a poor girl who had no place to go. The county placed her in the McTeer’shouse for a few days until they could decide what to do until the family was reunited. Pecola stayed at the McTeer’s house because she was being abuse at her house and Cholly had burned up his house. The first event that happens in the book was that her menstrual cycle had started. She didn’t know what to do; she thought she was bleeding to death. When the girls were in the bed, Pecola asked, “If it was true that she can have a baby now?” So now the only concern is if she is raped again she could possibly get pregnant. Pecola thought if she had blue eyes and was beautiful, that her parents would stop fighting and become a happy family.In nursery books, the ideal girl would have blonde hair and blue eyes. There is a lot of commercial ads have all showed the same ideal look just like the nursery book has. Pecola assumes she has this beautiful and becomes temporary happy, but not satisfied. Now, Pecola wants to be even more beautiful because she isn’t satisfied with what she has. The fact is that a standard of beautyis established, the community is pressured to play the game. Black people and the black culture is judged as being out of place and filthy. Beauty, in heart is having blond hair, blue eyes, and a perfect family. Beauty is then applied to everyone as a kind of level of class.
Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about the racism of lighter colored blacks against darker colored blacks and rich blacks against poor blacks. Along with racism within the black community, sexism is exemplified both against women and against men. As Morrison investigates the racism and sexism of the community of Lorain, Ohio, she gives the reader more perspective as to why certain characters do or say certain things.
The world has led her to believe that she is ugly and that the epitome of "beautiful" requires blue eyes. Therefore, every night she prays 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 love and accept her.
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison describes the absurd and racist standard by which the characters are judged. And through the actions taken by each character, that absurd standard becomes more defined, the conflict more poignant. In this particular work, it is the American ideal of beauty that makes Pecola resign her self-image as ugly and it is Pecola's reaction to this standard, her futile wish to become beautiful, that drives her into madness and thus completely exposes the absurd and wrongful nature of this standard. And yet who created this standard? It is present in movies, on candy wrappers. It is completely visible, yet the creator of this standard is somewhere else, never appears as a character.
In the 1940's as well as present day, the media pushed on society an image of perfection and beauty. This image is many times fake, but the naive cannot deceive, and it can become an icon of beauty. If you do not fall within the image then you are ugly. In the book "The Bluest Eye," we witness the power that the media has on specific characters: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The icon of beauty at that point in time is Shirley Temple, a white girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She is also the first reference to beauty in the book. Claudia explains her feelings towards Shirley Temple by saying, "...I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world" (19). Claudia is relating the hatred that she felt towards Shirley Temple to the envy she has towards girls who are beautiful like Shirley. Claudia herself knows that the media is trying to imply this image she says, "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signsall the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (20). This idea is repeated repetitively throughout the story, the idea that blue-eyed is beautiful. Frieda and Pecola love Shirley Temple while Claudia despises her with envy. Pecola once goes to purchase some candies called Mary Janes, she is very intrigued by the blue-eyed, blond girl in the wrapper. The narrator tells us that Pecola feels Mary Jane's eyes are pretty and that by eating the candy she feels the love that she has for the girl on the wrapper and she finds herself closer to her (50). The idea pushed by the media that blue eyes are beautiful builds up a strong destructive desire in Pecola.
Throughout Toni Morrison’s controversial debut The Bluest Eye, several characters are entangled with 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 should be 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. According to literary educator Allen Alexander, even though Cholly was cripplingly flawed and often despicable, he was a more “genuine” person to Pecola than Pauline was (301). Alexander went on to claim that while Cholly raped Pecola physically, Pauline and Soaphead Church both raped her mental wellbeing (301). Alexander is saying that the awful way Pecola was treated in a routine matter had an effect just as great if not greater than Cholly’s terrible assault. The abuse that Pecola lived through was the trigger that shattered her mind. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the characters of Cholly Breedlove and Frieda McTeer to juxtapose sexual violence and mental maltreatment in order to highlight the terrible effects of mental abuse.
There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given to her magically and in some respects her eyes begin to corrupt her as an individual. The story begins to take a turn and the reader realizes that the main character has begun to entirely rely on self-image in order to build confidence. This leads to the question of how significant are the "Blue eyes" to society and how does the theme of beauty and ugliness linger throughout the story. With this in mind, how does this make Pecola a victim of society and a victim in herself?
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