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Food In The Bluest Eye

668 Words3 Pages
In This book The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Food is a big symbol. Pecola’s family consists of a drunken father that beats and raped his daughter Pecola, a mother that won’t leave this man, and also mistreat the small girl, then finally Pecola who is lost in a twisted world of darkness with her light being blue eyes. The family dirt poor, and can not afford food that would be equivalent to our Mcdonald's. Not only that, but that are even looked down on by the blacks in their neighborhood being the lowest of the low class. This lead to the feelings of jealousy toward food. Throughout the book, Pecola sees people eating delicious foods that make her jealous because most of her friend never got to eat that candy or that very good piece of bread
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INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH KEY CONCEPTS TO BE DEVELOPED Students develop a deeper understanding of how authors use juxtaposition to develop a theme or idea within a text. Students complete this work by examining The Bluest Eye, writing an essay, and finally by selecting an image to illustrate the type of juxtaposition they have identified within the text. Students practice providing feedback to peers by participating in a gallery walk at the end of the Cornerstone.

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Toni Morrison, in numerous interviews, has said that her reason for writing The Bluest Eye was that she realized there was a book she wanted very much to read that had not been written yet. She set out to construct that book – one that she says was about her, or somebody like her. For until then, nobody had taken a little black girl—the most vulnerable kind of person in the world—seriously in literature; black female children have never held centre stage in anything. Thus with the arrival of the character Pecola Breedlove, a little hurt black girl is put to the centre of the story. Pecola’s quest is to acquire “Shirley Temple beauty” and blue eyes – ideals of beauty sponsored by the white world.

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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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