Corruption In The Bluest Eye

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and she gave to us” (page 205). Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye takes place in Lorain, Ohio shortly after the Great Depression, shining light onto the corruption and cycle of abuse that affects not only individuals, families, or communities, but ultimately a nation.

Morrison first introduces us to sisters Frieda and Claudia MacTeer, who are no older than ten years old. It is fall and school has just started for the year. The girls are expected to help out by gathering coal after school. While gathering coal, Claudia becomes sick, making Mrs. MacTeer extremely upset. Claudia does not understand that her mother is mad at her condition and

and Mrs. Breedlove. Pauline grew up in Alabama and when she was two years old she injured her foot, which caused her to walk with a limp ever since. She became isolated from her family because of this but they put her in charge of caring for the house, which she enjoyed but always dreamed of being swept away by a man. Her dream became a reality when she met Cholly Breedlove. He was abandoned by both his parents and then raised by his great aunt until she died. He has been hurt multiple times in his life and has become indifferent about everything and everyone. He has killed, beaten women, and left jobs as he pleased. He is dangerously free until he meets Pauline and it is her innocence and sweetness that makes him marry her. The couple moves north to Ohio and they have both Sammy and then Pecola. The two never learned how to love so they did not show affection to their children. After a while the marriage was suffocating and they learned to coexist, Pauline being the nagging bread winner and Cholly the alcoholic and abusive

They can only be appreciated and considered beautiful if they have light skin and light eyes. Naturally, they have come to despise their dark skin and dark eye color.

The novel opens up with a narrative of a perfect family. It is a representation of the expectations we have of how life works or how a family should be. In reality, no one has a perfect life and the novel is a perfect example of this but the characters go crazy because of their obsession with the Dick and Jane lifestyle.

Unfortunately, Pecola didn’t receive any sort of justice for the things she went through. She was always the victim but was looked at as a serial killer. She was both physically and mentally abused for no reason at all. The cycle of abuse should have been stopped with her generation but it was not. Her parents blamed their lack of love and affection shown to them on their ugliness and therefore took it out on their children. How important is appearance if it ruined the life of a ten year old