Bruce D. Perry's The Bluest Eye

Love is the cornerstone for every human. In other words, people do not just need shelter and food to survive, but they also need to feel loved to build a strong foundation for themselves. In a way, it is even more significant to have a safety net of people who are reliable and are able to provide care than getting plentiful nutrition. Most importantly, people need to feel loved at any early age. As soon as they are born. For at an early age, humans establish their cornerstone through feeling love from their close ones. Around this cornerstone, they build the rest of their house as they grow older, so it is crucial that the cornerstone is placed carefully and thoughtfully. If it is not placed correctly or is completely ignored, children do not

People who are placed into dangerous situations like the characters in The Bluest Eye, end up with a serious trauma that stays with them throughout their whole life, impacting the way they act and perceive the world. In order to observe how the community impacts people, a close look can be taken at Bruce D. Perry’s work. As a child psychiatrist, Perry encounters many “emotionally stunted and traumatized children” (35). Through working with such cases, Perry gains new knowledge that he wants to pass on to others. In order to do so, Perry writes books to educate readers about how violence and stress at an early age can affect the developing brain. In particular, Perry’s book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, contains his personal experiences in working with patients who were placed under violence, sexual abuse, or neglect. Important lessons can be learned when reading about “children who have encountered the dark side of human experience” (1). One of the stories is about Sandy, whose experience of her mother’s murder teaches many about the impact that trauma can have on a child’s brain. Another story focuses on Leon, a boy who was placed under such unspeakable deprivation that he did not develop properly. These stories are very similar to the one’s of Pecola and Cholly. Even though Toni Morrison does not provide the reader with an explanation to why Pecola and Cholly end up in such miserable states, the explanation can be found by using Perry’s work. Through picking out the similarities between Perry’s experiences and Pecola’s and Cholly’s stories, the answer to the why can be