She miscarries and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Pecola retreats into a fantasy world where she is a bird and can fly away from all the pain she has endured, and she is unable to escape the delusion. Another little girl named Claudia blames herself and her sister’s fear of interacting with Pecola as the reason for Pecola’s mental break, but it wasn’t them; it was the adults that surrounded
Segregation in America used to be the standard. Even in times where segregation was outlawed, racial tensions still existed between individual races, especially white and black populations. In the play Fences, the main character, Troy, is a previous baseball player for the Negor League. He believes that if he was white, his life would be completely different; also, he would be different if he had a better childhood. Similarly in The Bluest Eye, Cholly is a man who is a drunk and rapes his daughter; however, he had a severley traumatic childhood that shaped him to be susceptible to these actions.
To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time"(46) This line from the text shows that to Pecola this white feature represents beauty and the end of her problems. Furthermore, symbolism can also be found in the homes of the characters. In the novel, homes are a symbol of economic status. The reader can infer that the nicer the home is, the richer the character.
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison offers multiple perspectives to help explain the intensity of racism and what it means to be oppressed and degraded in society. Through the eyes of various characters, readers are taken on a journey during the 1940s to demonstrate how each black character copes with the unfair standards and beliefs that society has. While some of the characters internalize self-hatred and have the desire to be someone else, others do not wish to change themselves to fit into the societal standards. Throughout the novel, there are clear and distinct remarks that are made to help distinguish the difference between white characters and black characters which is quite crucial. Morrison uses dirt and cleanliness to symbolize how society
There are multiple symbols that Morrison uses to symbolize this white beauty standard and different desires to obtain it such as milk, and Pecola’s obsession with specifically drinking milk from the Shirley Temple cup. During Pecola’s stay with Frieda and Claudia, this white beauty standard is seen furthermore when Claudia’s view on beauty is juxtaposed with Pecola’s. Unlike Pecola she wasn’t obsessed with drinking milk or playing with white dolls but white beauty standards still affected her. When it came to the baby dolls, Claudia “wanted to dismember them in order to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, and the desirability” for them. Claudia stated that “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (Morrison 20).
The beginning of Toni Morrison career was not everything she had hope for. Her writing was not the best in the industry which is proven in her first book “The Bluest Eye”. The Bluest Eye was published in 1970, when the color of your skin still had a great effect on your life. “The Bluest Eye” is the story of an eleven year old colored girl, Pecola Breedlove, who had trouble seeing herself as beautiful because of her physical features and society’s thoughts of beauty. This novel did not sell well when first published but later made Morrison a Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1993.
Frieda is outspoken, courageous and wise. She is parallel to her mother who has raised two children whom she taught to love themselves unconditionally. Self-appreciation is a valuable instrument that the girls inherited, but Pecola does not realize her own worth throughout the story which contributes to her gradual demise. Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan becomes another example of a girl who
Pecola is challenged by the idea that her mother prefers her work life, that they have an outdated house, and that she does not look like the Shirley Temple doll with blue eyes. Morrison went into great detail when describing the elegance and beauty that was present in the Fisher home, to demonstrate that those who do not fit into the ideal American life often feel shame. The Breedlove family lived a very simple life, and in no way did they fit into what society believed to be correct. Mrs. Breedlove was the only member of the family that truly understood what the American Dream looked like. The work that she did for the Fishers lead her to envy the American Dream.
The portrayal of racism on the African-American culture is prominent throughout Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes. Morrison presents the belief behind the internalized prejudice that black communities and people suffered in the 1940’s. The Bluest Eye speaks the story of how racism was embedded in communities and targeted Africans. After the Lincoln era, whites verbally abused and mistreated African-American citizens by inflicting cruel acts.
But it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be
Pecola is also a symbol of the black community’s self-loathing and belief in its own ugliness. She is absented even more from existence by her mother when she tells her of the ordeal and she doesn’t believe her but beat her instead. This cause Pecola to self-loathe and absent herself from existence because she is made to believe that the bad experience she had was her fault. Pecola is pushed furthermore into her imaginary world, which is her only shield against the pain of her existence. This becomes evident of the power that men have over women in this society.
It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the
Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, has no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.
Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, examines the tragic effects of imposing white, middle-class American ideals of beauty on the developing female identity of a young African American girl during the early 1940s. Inspired by a conversation Morrison once had with an elementary school classmate who wished for blue eyes, the novel poignantly shows the psychological devastation of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who searches for love and acceptance in a world that denies and devalues people of her own race. As her mental state slowly unravels, Pecola hopelessly longs to possess the conventional American standards of feminine beauty—namely, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes—as presented to her by the popular icons and traditions of white culture. Written as a fragmented narrative from multiple perspectives and with significant typographical deviations, The Bluest Eye juxtaposes passages from the Dick-and-Jane grammar school primer with memories and stories of Pecola 's life alternately told in retrospect by one of Pecola 's now-grown childhood friends and by an omniscient narrator. Published in the midst of the Black Arts movement that flourished during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Bluest Eye has attracted
