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Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young girl living in Lorain, Ohio, who has to face harsh conditions from a young age. Pecola’s family has a reputation of “ugliness”, a reputation that their town despises them for. Pecola herself believes the allegations that she is ugly to be true, not only because of the constant abuse that she witnesses in her own family, but also because she has been told that she is ugly her entire life by everyone around her, including adults. The novel explores the standards that Pecola is held to, as well as her reactions to not meeting these standards. Some of the alleged qualities of her “ugliness” are her race, her family’s income, her father’s sleeping habits, and her eye color. With these criticisms as impetus, Pecola strives for beauty, and tries to fix the material problems in her life. Pecola, however, is not alone; other characters in the book are strongly affected by physical goods and propagandistic advertisement as well. In The Bluest Eyecultural standards are imposed upon the characters by their consumer goods.
The narrator, Claudia, realizes from an early age that conformity is rewarded when she receives a doll for Christmas. She does not find the prospect of dolls amusing, because she has no interest in fake, or real, motherhood. Claudia desires to understand why everyone loves the doll, so she dismembers it. She observes that, “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 treasured”(20). She discovers nothing as she dismembers the doll, except for her mother’s reaction. Most adults see this act of curiosity as a sign that Claudia is not ...
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...isement, people will compare themselves to the unrealistic body types and hate themselves because they don’t have them. Many Parents fear that their children will develop eating disorders because of the portrayal of skinny people in advertisement. According to CNN, eighty percent of all ten year olds are afraid of being fat, and forty-two percent of first to third grade girls want to be thinner . Though beauty has changed since the time that the book is set in, its message about the dangers of insecurity still resonate to this day, as beauty is a standard which is constantly changing. Society expects people to live up to this unattainable standard, and causes them to feel bad when they don’t. By calling out the dangers of insecurity, Morrison brings attention to self-hatred invoked by an ideal image, and inspires readers to fight the unrealistic archetype of beauty.
Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye", is a very important novel in literature, because of the many boundaries that were crosses and the painful, serious topics that were brought into light, including racism, gender issues, Black female Subjectivity, and child abuse of many forms. This set of annotated bibliographies are scholarly works of literature that centre around the hot topic of racism in the novel, "The Bluest Eye", and the low self-esteem faced by young African American women, due to white culture. My research was guided by these ideas of racism and loss of self, suffered in the novel, by the main character Pecola Breedlove. This text generates many racial and social-cultural problems, dealing with the lost identity of a young African American women, due to her obsession with the white way of life, and her wish to have blue eyes, leading to her complete transgression into insanity.
In the novel, “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison exposes the roots of a broken community, unveiling the effects it has on its members. Morrison illustrates various disturbing characters that are insecure, lost and troubled. Through extended metaphors she is able to trace back these behaviors to the characters’ past. The structure of her novel follows a repetitive rationale of the character’s behavior after revealing their gruesome actions. The passage (116) further develops the text’s theme of a dysfunctional community. Although the exposure the effects of racism seems to be the main theme, Morrison goes deeper and explores the reason how and why the community continues to live in oppression.
"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.
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. The book seeks to define beauty and love in this twisted perverse society, dragging the reader through Morrison’s emotional manipulations. Her father Cholly Breedlove steals the reader’s emotional attention from Pecola as he enters the story. In fact, Toni Morrison’s depiction of Cholly wrongfully evokes sympathy from the reader.
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.
Social class is a major theme in the book The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is saying that there are dysfunctional families in every social class, though people only think of it in the lower class. Toni Morrison was also stating that people also use social class to separate themselves from others and apart from race; social class is one thing Pauline and Geraldine admire.Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda are affected by not only their own social status, but others social status too - for example Geraldine and Maureen Peal. Characters in the book use their social class as another reason for being ugly. Readers are reminded of the theme every time a new character enters into the book.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People are always complaining about how they aren’t as pretty as models on billboards, or how they aren’t as thin as that other girl. Why do we do this to ourselves? It’s benefitting absolutely nobody and it just makes us feel bad about ourselves. The answer is because society has engraved in our minds that we need to be someone we’re not in order to look beautiful. Throughout time, society has shaped our attitudes about appearances, making it perfectly normal and even encouraged, to be five feet ten inches and 95 pounds. People have felt trapped by this ideal. Society has made these beauty standards unattainable, therefore making it self defeating. This is evident in A Doll’s House, where the main character, Nora, feels trapped by Torvald and society’s standard of beauty. The ideal appearance that is prevalent in society is also apparent in the novel, The Samurai’s Garden, where Sachi is embarrassed of the condition of her skin due to leprosy and the stigmas associated with the disease. The burden of having to live up to society’s standard of beauty can affect one psychologically and emotionally, as portrayed in A Doll’s House and The Samurai’s Garden.
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
In the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison sates the difficult time some of the characters in the story ply. This novel took place in Lorain Ohio, where a group of young girl were trying to find there identify. Pecola Breedlove one of the girls