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Social Rejection In The Bluest Eye And The Help

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Recommended: Racism In American Literature

What is love? Social rejection has always been the most destructive device in a blended community. Stories such as: The Bluest Eye and The Help aids in contrasting functional and dysfunctional families. It mirrors how sensitivity, love, and nurture mold the ideal child. Both readings take part in a time where racism is at its peak, and children are the ones who receive the harshest affections due to its severity. It will become obvious to see how a caring individual (not always a parent) can become an influential role in a youth’s life by causing them to find love within themselves despite societal views. In The Bluest Eye, the main character Pecola Breedlove comes from a very broken home. Pecola’s role in society is differentiated by Frieda MacTeers, another little girl in the book. 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 …show more content…

Consequently, even he comes to terms with his “invisibility” and decides that it is his responsibility to come back out and become a voice for future generations. Phelan too realizes that she has a responsibility to shed light on the injustices that are taking place in her own community. Instead of disappearing, she stands out and uses her privilege as a high class white woman in the sixties and becomes a voice for the black women who work for women such as herself in rotten conditions: “All my life I’d been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.” (Stockett

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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

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Peola left her Negro college, and decided to take a cashier job in a white’s only restaurant. When her mother Bea, goes to the restaurant to find her, Peola is humiliated. She finally tells her mother that she is going away, never to return, so she can pass as a white woman without the fear that Delilah will show up. Delilah goes on heartbroken that her daughter, Peola, does not accept her as her mother and she eventually forgives Peola as she succumbs to heartbreak and dies. Peola was given less of a discriminatory role as a traditional stereotypical African American woman that is usually portrayed in films.

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The name of the book is called the Bluest Eye. One of the important parts in the book is when pecola's father burns their house down. This was an important part because Pecola's foster sisters would have never stuck up for her and show she is not alone. Lastly, Pecola would have never gone through more pain she already has gone through when she moved into a foster home. Next, I will be supporting my arguments.

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What is the most pressing issue facing society today? In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison argues that it is beauty standards, even calling physical beauty “the most destructive idea[] in the history of human thought” (122). While this may seem outrageous in a world of terrorism, global warming, homelessness, and hunger, beauty standards and the feelings of inferiority that stem from them affect everybody. In severe cases, these feelings can even manifest themselves deeply inside of a person and lead to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, self-hatred, and even suicide. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the insecurities of the female characters to demonstrate that beauty standards are a danger to society, as they perpetuate racism and self-hatred.

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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.

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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

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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

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The Bluest Eye illustrates the damage done to a black child when the way she is defined by white society obliterates all positive definitions of her self-worth. Gurleen Grewal reflects that “individuals collude in their own oppression by internalizing the dominant culture’s values in the face of great material contradictions” (21). Indeed, it is evident in the novel how the community at large has accepted light skin as beautiful, and thus has negated beauty in darker skin. Within this dominant culture, white colonialists are the “all-knowing master” that the narrator refers to – the people responsible for giving Pecola “a cloak of ugliness to wear”, which she had “accepted without question” (37). It is this cloak that hides the knowledge of her own true identity and self-worth which, though she “put it on”, “did not belong to [her]” (36).

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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

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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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