The Bluest Eye Essay

In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, one of the biggest themes displayed throughout the book is how African-Americans are marginalized. For example, throughout the whole book, black characters are marginalized from the both the white and black communities. Throughout the whole book, the most marginalised character is Pecola. Pecola, an eleven year old girl who is ridiculed and insulted by all of her peers and even traumatized by her parents. Later in the book we find out that, she is raped by her father, Cholly. Pecola’s curiosity to find and maintain Blue eyes causes her to lose her innocence as a child. Pecola’s parents also added to the problems she had to deal with, her parents were always fighting which ultimately led to Pecola becoming crazy. In the beginning the first time Pecola started paying attention to her physical ugliness was when her parents were fighting. Right after, she mentioned “She also knew that when one of the girls wanted to be particularly insulting to a boy, or wanted to get an immediate response from him, she

This description downgrades all the girls in the school. Later on, we see that Maureen is the hero, where she saves Pecola from getting beat any further. However, we see that she 's curious to the point where she starts affecting Pecola. Maureen asks her name and Pecola says her name, and then Maureen connects her to a TV show. Maureen says, “The picture show, you know. Where the mulatto girl hates her mother cause she is black and ugly but then cries at her funeral. It was real sad. Everybody cries in it”(67). This shows further marginalisation by Morrison because she uses Maureen to discriminate her and feel sympathy for Pecola, by Maureen saying “It was real sad” it displays how she can’t relate to he because she’s above Pecola in all