One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Eye By Toni Morrison

We as humans hear the word “beautiful”, and have multiple interpretations of the word. We have a definition for “beautiful” and call one another “beautiful”, but cannot define the meaning. In the world today, girls want to be “beautiful” to fit into society. Many girls do different experiments to themselves to be “ beautiful” such as: dye their hair, stare themselves to lose weight, wear makeup and fancy clothes just to meet the societal definition. Society is bigot however, and see many girls and women differently. Society sees girls as: thin, a average height, blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect smile, well dressed, brushing off girls and women who are not to standards. “Pretty eyes. Pretty blue eyes. Big blue pretty eyes” (46). Blue eyes to

The excerpts are foreshadows of what occurs in each chapter. The original “ Dick and Jane” stories are stereotyped of a white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. Morrison’s characters are black, which are deeply affected by white supremeness throughout her novel. Morrison’s narrator Claudia introduces this by expressing feelings about white baby dolls. Claudia hates white baby dolls because society can accept these dolls by their looks and how they have more beauty than Claudia and other black girls. This creates racist views in Claudia as a child. “ Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window-signs- all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. “ Here” they said, “ this is beautiful, and if you are on this day “ worthy” you may have it’” (20-21). The baby dolls that are present in this novel show the racist standard views of beauty. Adults and peers of Claudia find this white doll to be beautiful because this is the standard of what society accepts. Claudia is a child who has a hatred for white dolls believing the dolls are not beautiful even though the rest of society thinks so. Claudia’s character sticks out in the novel for seeing the unjust and corrupt society of white supremacy that surrounds

Pecola’s parents stories are told from their points of view which emphasize beauty and ugliness on Pecola. Morrison begins with Pecola’s mother Pauline, who grew up with characteristics of ugliness that eventually help her later in life. “ The wound left her crooked, archless foot that flopped when she walked not a limp that would have twisted her spine, but a way of lifting the bad foot as though she were extracting it from little whirlpools.” (110) Pauline as a child was ugly, as the novel continues the audience learns this ugliness will eventually go away and she will have a better life. Pecola, who is only a child cannot see this ugliness will eventually surpass her even without blue eyes. Pecola’s mother however, looks at her daughter and thinks she will never grow out of her ugliness hurting Pecola deeply, “ she looked different from what I thought. Reckon I talked too much before I conjured up a mind’s eye view of it” (125) From birth, Pecola was ugly to her own mother and could never see past the concept of Pecola’s ugliness causing hate and neglection in Pecola’s life. Cholly, Pecola’s father, has an abusive relationship with Pecola in the novel but doesn’t see her as ugly such as everyone else. Cholly was one of the only characters to show love to Pecola by raping her, no other character could even touch Pecola. The relaionhip with his wife Pauline started to impact Pecola before she