The Bluest Eye Research Paper

The Bluest Eye is a novel about a black girl named Pecola Breedlove who wishes for beauty in order to attain a better life. She faces emotional and physical conflicts throughout her childhood. At eleven years old, Pecola is raped by her alcoholic father and becomes pregnant. Unlike anyone else, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, tries to help her through the pregnancy. However, Pecola’s baby ends up dying because it is premature. In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, she validates her theme of how society can corrupt people through the portrayal of a conflicted society of racism to show segregation between the white and nonwhite, symbolic blue eyes to portray what the characters desperately desire in order to have a better life, and an abused

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. However, they would leave Pecola alone when they see her with Maureen Peal, described with “springtime eyes so wide with interest” (Morrison 66-67). 2) African Americans perceive that white Americans have a better lifestyle. According to the African American’s schema, “a white American ideal of the family unit [is] cohesive, happy, with love enough to spare to pets…it is desirable, but for man, particularly the black man, it is unattainable” (Ogunyemi 354). Pecola feels that if she had blue eyes, she could see the world the way white Americans do. Society has made her feel insecure and unacceptable because she has dark skin and brown eyes. She later becomes so desperate to get blue eyes that she “makes one final attempt to get blue eyes from a local interpreter of dreams, Soaphead Church” (“Overview: The Bluest Eye”). Pecola sees one of Soaphead’s advertisements, “If you are unhappy, discouraged, or in distress, I can help you…Satisfaction guaranteed” (Morrison 173), thinking he could help her with her misery of ugliness. He tells her he is unable to help her and only god could grant her the wish. The people around Pecola has made her feel self-conscious about herself and causing her to have a desire for blue eyes. Nonetheless, Pecola feel uncertain about herself as people bully her for being who she