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The Bluest Eye Analysis

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In The Bluest Eye , Toni Morrison begins the novel with Pecola’s coming to age , her menarche and transition from prepubescence to womanhood . Pecola’s friends , Claudia and Frieda will loose their innocence as they choose to help Pecola . Pecola’s life and the event of the death of her baby ; causing the marigolds unable to bloom and drove her towards insanity. Pecola’s pregnancy exposes the inhumanity and hatred in the hands of the African American community. This community does not show empathy nor sympathy or offer her a helping hand. Pecola’s pregnancy isolates her from attending school and the rest of the children in her community . She became the victim of slander and unwelcoming judgment by all . Claudia and Freida observed and …show more content…

She provides imagery and shares how beautiful black baby would be , juxtaposing the white baby doll idolized beauty , It was in a dark, wet place, its head covered with great O's of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes, the flared nose, kissing-thick lips, and the living, breathing silk of black skin. No synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble- blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth. More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live--just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals (Morrison 190). The white baby dolls signifies the Eurocentric beauty standard , and how the white values and culture have been corrupting and destroying black culture and beauty . In the United Colors of Benetton advertisement , depicts how society views a white child as angelic and pure , along side a black child who isn’t as friendly and hair is styled in horns , both children are hugging . This advertisement displays how children are innocent and are not aware of societal prejudice nor race. In the Rockwell Painting , illustrates how children are innocent and are filled with curiosity , they do not express hate or bigotry . These photos of African American children and white children show how they are both the same , child-like and curious despite the

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1483 Words | 6 Pages

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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1430 Words | 6 Pages

The color of Claudia and Pecola skin effected everything they did. It effected their treatment of dolls to their social interactions. The girls had no choice but to confirm to their world that lighter is better, and put themselves down for it. They had no representation and grew up with the notion that lighter is better. Those girls are not the only ones.

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787 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the 1900’s, racism between blacks and whites was vicious. Blacks had separate bathrooms, water fountains, schools and even different sections on the bus from whites. The Clarks believed these racist acts made African children think little of themselves. They tested their thesis with the doll

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1008 Words | 5 Pages

When Pecola was just being born she was being called ugly by the person who she needed the most, her mother. This is because the same thing happened to her Mother, and her Grandmother. Racist Societal constructs broke their family

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On page 535 Early inserts an anecdote of his sister favoring her white doll over her colored dolls. This shows that from an early age black girls were easily attracted to a white doll because that was the “prettier” one. The white dolls were based on the beauty in the

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539 Words | 3 Pages

´´ That the child is not white ; it means you are not white .´´(Desiree´s Baby slide 25) This shows how skin color was such a big deal to their culture. Also how it will make people look at you differently if you're not their skin color .

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576 Words | 3 Pages

Tori Morrison succeeds at getting the awareness out about the impact of internalized racism, and how far people go when it comes to wanting to change their appearance. During the times in the Bluest Eye, according to society, to look beautiful, you had to be white or light skin with blue eyes. The darker shade of brown you were the uglier and poorer you seemed to people. For example, when Pecola was asked by a boy, Junior, to go into his house to see his cat. After the boy tortures the cat and eventually killing it, his mother comes into the door.

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1149 Words | 5 Pages

Delicate and sensitive, she passively suffers the abuse of her mother, father, and classmates. She is a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, including her mother and father, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred towards her. Pecola’s desire for blue eyes comes from her stereotypical perception that as a black female, she needs to look beautiful to be treated beautifully. She believes that being granted the blue eyes that she wishes for would change both how others see her and what she is forced to see.

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807 Words | 4 Pages

The first piece in my portfolio is a piece of Pecola with blue eyes. One of the overarching ideas presented throughout The Bluest Eye is that white features, specifically blue eyes, is the epitome of physical beauty. Throughout the book, there is vivid visual imagery of blue eyes such as those of “lovely Mary Jane” (Morrison 50). The use of the word lovely further correlates her physical appearance and blue eyes with beauty. This causes Pecola to crave blue eyes so desperately that “every night, without fail, she prayed” in order to gain what she and everyone else unanimously view as beauty (46).

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1647 Words | 7 Pages

Many of the black characters, including Pecola, Cholly, and Pauline believe that they are indeed “ugly” and “dirty” because it’s what society has wanted people to think since the beginning of time. This idea that they are worth nothing and that there is no beauty or cleanliness in them has become embedded in their memories considering it is all they’ve ever known while growing up. Pecola and her family “did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly” (38). While some of the black characters in The Bluest Eye are very much confident in themselves, there are characters like the Breedloves, who have succumbed to society’s opinion and have started to believe that they are the equivalent of dirtiness.

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449 Words | 2 Pages

Another time, while spending the day at Hopewell, a young third or fourth grader girl, complimented me. Before a thank you could vacate my tongue, she blurted out that I also had nice skin because I’m ‘light-skinned’. When I told her she was beautiful, she shook it off because she was ‘black’. Witnessing all of this made me contemplate the matter in which we view ourselves, and

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1002 Words | 5 Pages

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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1542 Words | 7 Pages

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.

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835 Words | 4 Pages

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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1260 Words | 6 Pages

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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