The Bluest Eye Research Paper

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye it can be said that Pecola has endured a similar fate. She too has been raped, but by her father. Pecola has no friends and is abused in some way or another by every other character in the novel. She constantly believes she is ugly and wishes that she had blue eyes as she believes this would make her more beautiful. Pecola goes on to lose her child and eventually becomes insane. In this text we find patriarchal violence and dominationin that Pecola endures two traumatic rapes through her drunken father. As a little black girl surrounded by white society, she is constantly tormented by what society show cases as beautiful, namely fair skin, yellow locks and blue eyes. Pecola embodies the ultimate excluded black,

These are all prevalent in The Bluest Eye too. More hierarchies she makes use of are: white/black, capital/labour, master/slave etc. African-Americans struggle with a split or double consciousness that has been the result of centuries of silencing (H.J. Strauss, 2000:33). Roland Barthes calls her texts “texts of bliss”, because they “unsettle the readers historical , cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his sic tastes, values, memories and brings a crisis to his relation with language” (1976:14). As Pecola is pushed over the brink of sanity by her father who rapes her due to his own insecurities, she is unable to live up to the societal stereotypes prescribed by patriarchy and the stereotypes of the predominantly white society. Pecola becomes the ultimate tragic figure and in this sense she becomes a Christ-like figure, one who takes on the ugliness of the world she lives in. But in Pecolas world, "it's much, much, much too late" to keep any hope alive. It is not made clear what is to happen to the characters of the narrative and little or no sight of hope is