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Analysis Of Pecola's Eye, By Toni Morrison

1282 Words6 Pages
Later in the book, Toni Morrison uses Pecola’s own conviction of being “ugly” to show that she truly believes that if she changed her physical appearance to match those at the top of the race and beauty hierarchies, her perception of her reality would be ameliorated. Back at home after her parents’ fight, Pecola ponders the unfair way she is treated by teachers compared to her Caucasian classmates at school. When the narrator says, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. Maybe they’d say, ‘Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes’” (46), Morrison suggests that Pecola believes that her identity is based on her eyes and that attaining beauty would be the solution for gaining acceptance from others. The “pictures” and the “sights” the narrator refers to are her memories or experiences. “Those eyes” are what allow people to see the world and are often referred to as symbols of truth and “the windows to the soul.” Pecola’s desire to change her eyes means that she wants to alter the truth: her race, her self-imposed “ugliness,” her experiences, her identity—everything that makes her who she is. In this quote, Pecola believes that the word “different” means to be “beautiful.” When Pecola believes that “if those eyes of her” were “different,” she believes that altering
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Similar to the flower, she is treated by the way she has been labeled: as a poor, ugly, black girl. It is noticeable that the author points out Pecola’s ability to recognize the negative label of the flower and still find beauty within. After arriving at the store, the clerk treats her harshly due to her appearance and because of this Pecola has a hard time finding her confidence to do such a simple task such as buying a piece of candy. When leaving the store, Pecola is overwhelmed with shame and embarrassment of herself due to the ugly way the clerk interacted with her. While passing the flowers again, the narrator writes, “She thinks, ‘They are ugly.

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Pecola envies the white race because they are treated well while she is treated badly. For example, she gets bully by a group of boys and calls her “Black e mo”(Morrison 65)She gets bully just because the other people thinks that the Blacks are inferior and can be bullied. In reality, she gets bully just because no one stands up for her. Most importantly, her teachers don't stand for her because she is black and her family is torn so no one can care for her. The idea of double-consciousness that W.E.B. Dubois introduced in "The Souls of Black Folk" and that is continued in the writings of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates is the feeling that it’s difficult or impossible to have one unified identity when you have more than one identity.

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Little parts of her body faded away,” (45). Due to the fact that Pecola sees herself as a creature of disgust, the thought of talking to these prostitutes thrills her, as they treat her closer to an equal than any other adult has. The prostitutes see themselves as inherently beautiful, worthy of makeup and curls and love. “They know I’m rich and good lookin’,” (53) says Miss Marie, one of the prostitutes. To Pecola, she represents a an uncommon viewpoint of self-worth and love.

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Likewise, Morrison also uses symbolism for the duration of the novel to establish how people can judge a person based on their economic standing. For instance, symbolism is represented through the blue eyes that is repeatedly mentioned in the novel. The blue eyes represent the idealistic white middle class life that Pecola dreams of having since white people commonly have blue eyes. The reader can infer this suggestion because whenever Pecola is experiencing bad things she wishes to have blue eyes. Morrison writes, "If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too…Each night, without fail, she prayed for the blue eyes…

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The first piece in my portfolio is a piece of Pecola with blue eyes. One of the overarching ideas presented throughout The Bluest Eye is that white features, specifically blue eyes, is the epitome of physical beauty. Throughout the book, there is vivid visual imagery of blue eyes such as those of “lovely Mary Jane” (Morrison 50). The use of the word lovely further correlates her physical appearance and blue eyes with beauty. This causes Pecola to crave blue eyes so desperately that “every night, without fail, she prayed” in order to gain what she and everyone else unanimously view as beauty (46).

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After years and years of isolation at school and racial contempt, Pecola “pray[s] for blue eyes” each night for a year, without fail (61). For Pecola to be driven to such extreme measures and to the point where she is praying to look different, shows how far her self-hatred has gone and how detrimental the effects of conformity are. Not only that, but when her wish is not granted, she goes to a miracle worker for help, who responds with “a surge of love and understanding” because “an ugly little girl was asking for beauty” (189). Rather than preaching to the child that beauty is more than white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, Church feels sympathy and agrees with her, demonstrating how devoured that society has become by society’s notion of beauty. That devoured society has misbegotten and impressed upon Pecola the idea that beauty is restricted to white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, all of which Pecola does not have.

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Jonathan Hernandez Mrs. Franklin English 11 September 9, 2014 The Male Overcast Widely renowned Toni Morrison, is an award winning author and a Nobel recipient; within her novel A Mercy (2008), reveals the effects of hierarchy from a physiological standpoint. She supports her revealing by first introducing a female character that comes to power in a male dominant world, then the character (Rebekka) strikes tragedy as her only male support dies leaving the female with a mantle solely made for men which causes Rebekka to lose a place in her mentality of social hierchy; as such she turns to God as a replacement which can only be seen as a replacement for the vast hole in her heart for a male representative. Morrison’s purpose is to give her readers of a new perspective based on the social stratifiction so heavily influenced by the difference in gender during the late 1600’s in order to educate the minds of those that predominantly view the gender social order as a petty argument for the wealthy. She adapts the reading to revolve around a general tone of consequence and repentance.

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The Seer is something of an enigma. No one is quite sure of her motivations or her methods: some think she has some manner of true sight into the future whereas others merely think she must be some sort of mad genius. Her manner is refined and deliberate, though never obtuse: her actions can be seemingly nonsensical at first, though they have a strange habit of turning out in her favor. Her relationship with her Champion is one of deep, quiet affection even if they play all manner of 'roles ' in the public and this is characteristic of her: to the casual eye, she cares about nothing, her hand moving chess pieces as she likes seemingly to her whims but if pressed it 's very clear that her caring runs as hot as it is deep and the well-being

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To continue the bullying in Pecola’s life, at a point in the story, she saw Claudia’s baby doll which was a replica of glamorous Marilyn Monroe, a superstar at the time that was identified as beautiful and someone most kids wanted to imitate.. Most kids including Pecola studied that piece of plastic. Little did she realize that this “superstar” was going to agonize her. After seeing Monroe’s fame and success, she thought that having blue eyes would make her beautiful and would magically change all the evil in her life to good. For “it had occurred to Pecola some time ago that is her eyes...were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different”, the colors of her eye were thought to “change” her (Morrison 46).

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Pecola and her mother, Pauline, see themselves as ugly because they hold themselves to beauty standards in which light-skinned people are the ideal. Pecola and her mother have a brutal home life due to the drunken violence of Cholly Breedlove, and the constant pressure of beauty standards only adds to their misfortune. Morrison explains this pressure by asserting that “[i]t was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they

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But it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be

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It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the

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Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, has no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.

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Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, examines the tragic effects of imposing white, middle-class American ideals of beauty on the developing female identity of a young African American girl during the early 1940s. Inspired by a conversation Morrison once had with an elementary school classmate who wished for blue eyes, the novel poignantly shows the psychological devastation of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who searches for love and acceptance in a world that denies and devalues people of her own race. As her mental state slowly unravels, Pecola hopelessly longs to possess the conventional American standards of feminine beauty—namely, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes—as presented to her by the popular icons and traditions of white culture. Written as a fragmented narrative from multiple perspectives and with significant typographical deviations, The Bluest Eye juxtaposes passages from the Dick-and-Jane grammar school primer with memories and stories of Pecola 's life alternately told in retrospect by one of Pecola 's now-grown childhood friends and by an omniscient narrator. Published in the midst of the Black Arts movement that flourished during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Bluest Eye has attracted

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1) Society has change the way Pecola perceives herself and she has the idea in her mind that her life would be less miserable if she has blue eyes. She is always thinking that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). Pecola has gotten the impression of her life being complete if only she has blue eyes. She would see the eyes of others and become envious of their blue eyes. The boys at school would always pick on her and call her an ugly black girl.

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