How Does Toni Morrison Present Racism In The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison uses character development to address racism and self-image during the 1940s in her novel The Bluest Eye. The characters in The Bluest Eye all went through a struggle living in a society where beauty and acceptance were viewed differently towards blacks. Out of all the characters, the Breedlove family experienced this struggle the most. The brokenness of their family had much to do with the society they lived in. Racism in the world during the time of the novel affected the characters’ emotional and physical views of themselves and their beauty. White pop icons such as; Mary Jane and Shirley Temple were used as figures that characters wished to look like, and the famous Dick and Jane story was used as well to show a typical white

She listened to society because that was the only type of authority she had to listen to, and sadly it was telling her she was useless. Pecola was destroyed because of her family’s unsupportive life-style due to the fact they could not deal with the standards of beauty white Americans believed in. (Dougherty 442). Her most valuable possession, passed down by her mother, was the desire to be white. (Kulkarni). She idolized those that were not only white, but those who had blue eyes. She felt that if she received blue eyes her parents would have thought she was beautiful and payed attention to her. (Morrison 46). Pecola just wanted to be accepted, not only by society, but by her family. She felt like the only way to do that was to be exactly what society told her to be. Having that thought on her mind daily made her feel completely worthless. Her own father raping her, and getting her pregnant made her go to a place where she did not even recognize herself. She tried to believe that she had the bluest eyes, just like she wanted all along. In reality, the society she lived in got the best of her and her family, and they did not know how to get out of what they had depicted their whole life