The Bluest Eye Symbolism

What is beauty? How do cultures define beauty? People have different definitions of it. Beauty is interrelated with happiness. Beauty can be found within, but for many, it is how you look on the outside. Many try to fulfill the society’s standards of being beautiful. In this case, a little, black girl, who lives in a white society, attempts to reach this standard. Her desire for external beauty results in insanity. In Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye, the use of symbolism presents itself through the allusion of a “Dick and Jane” story, blue eyes, and physical beauty. One use of symbolism that is presented in the novel is the allusion of a “Dick and Jane” series. Morrison creates three different versions of the “Dick and Jane” story. The first is correctly punctuated, but as the paragraphs continue, the words and letters become distorted. The words are jumbled up and the

She uses the family’s house as a symbol. In the preface of the novel the statement, “Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house” indicates the perfect family in the paper book (Morrison 3). This segment is ironic to the fact that Pecola Breedlove’s family and house is nothing compared to that of Dick and Jane. In The Bluest Eye, a family’s house was a symbol of one’s social status. Unlike the perfect family in the “Dick and Jane” story, the Breedloves live in a rundown apartment, a symbol of their poverty. Toni Morrison uses the “Dick and Jane” series not only in the preface of the novel, but other places as well. It is used as the headings of Toni Morrison’s chapters. The paperback family series foreshadow events that later happen within the novel. These headings cue that a graphic image of the crumbling family will follow. The jumbled headings are what shape out the