She wrote that her inspiration for the story was a conversation she had had when she was little with another little black girl who had a fascination with blue eyes, much like her character Pecola Breedlove. Morrison is known for her stories that circle around how racism and misogyny affect black women. For The Bluest Eye, a little girl named Pecola Breedlove goes insane from the inhumane treatment she faces as an eleven-year-old african american girl in the Great Depression. There are many points in the book where she is dehumanized and treated less than dirt, even by her own parents. Her father in a bid to feel in control despite how much white men have controlled him, rapes his daughter and she becomes pregnant with his child.
The song represents a journey to self-acceptance of not only one’s hair, but as well as self-acceptance of yourself as an African American Woman. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola, a young African-American in the 1960’s experiences the same shame that comes with being black in a White America. The song, uncovers this for
Rather than mental instability from within, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explores disturbed characters who result from societal oppression. Pecola, a young girl who loves in a troubled household, grows up facing many unusual problems. In a racist society, she believes that having blue eyes will solve her problems.
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).
The general focus of Gene Bluestein’s “The Blues as a Literary Theme” is that he is trying to explain what Ralph Ellison wanted readers to get from Invisible Man. More specifically, he praises the way Ralph Ellison wrote Invisible Man, talks about Ellison’s views on black and white relationships, and the hero’s struggle in the novel. Bluestein writes that Ellison’s novel “defines the ideological and technical possibilities of American Negro materials more accurately and effectively than any work in our literary history… Ellison not only brings us up to date… [he fills] in outlines …that had only been sketched earlier.”
Personally, it did have a interesting goal for someone to have blue eyes and to see the person go through that life of getting them, however I was confused from a few points in the book as the reading processed on. The story follows a young colored girl name Pecola, a poor girl who desires to have blue eyes due to her skin color. Throughout the story, it would go into the everyday life of Pecola, whether it been her family fighting or being at school, being bullied. To give credit, the book goes very deep like from its controversial subject’s sexual content, where it does handle the situation very well in a very serious tone, giving the characters time to flesh out of who they are and what they go through.
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison offers multiple perspectives to help explain the intensity of racism and what it means to be oppressed and degraded in society. Through the eyes of various characters, readers are taken on a journey during the 1940s to demonstrate how each black character copes with the unfair standards and beliefs that society has. While some of the characters internalize self-hatred and have the desire to be someone else, others do not wish to change themselves to fit into the societal standards. Throughout the novel, there are clear and distinct remarks that are made to help distinguish the difference between white characters and black characters which is quite crucial. Morrison uses dirt and cleanliness to symbolize how society
It is the aim of this paper to show that racism is not just hatred involving white vs. black, but it can occur in numerous forms. This paper will analyze the effects that racism can have on someone from a young age in life without even comprehending that it is happening. Throughout the novel, it is shown Pecola and Claudia suffer from racist beauty standards. Race, racism, and beauty standard are complicated issues throughout The Bluest Eye. At, the very beginning of chapter one it is shown that Claudia and Frieda were declined because of the color of their skin.
The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the Fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads Pecola to struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything.
In the novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the author Toni Morrison uses the characters and their actions to portray social norms. Her writing challenges the very essence of what beauty is through the main characters Pecola, Cholly, Pauline Breedlove, Freida, Claudia, and Mrs.MacTeer. The main character Pecola is thought of by many as ugly and this idea influences her own actions, thoughts, and feelings. The author uses the standards of beauty motif to demonstrate the concept that everyone is criticized and a person’s support system determines how different people deal with it. Additionally, some readers may explore their own biases as they read the book.
The book “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison takes place in a poor area of Lorain, Ohio in the year 1941. I think this is a great setting for the book. It teaches people now about the hardships that people of color (specifically African-Americans) had to face every day in the early 20th century. Although I like the setting now, I think it would be very interesting to read a book about the same topic in the present time. Hardships for any person of color still exist, even though it may not be as bad or easy to see.
It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the
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.
Toni Morrison, in numerous interviews, has said that her reason for writing The Bluest Eye was that she realized there was a book she wanted very much to read that had not been written yet. She set out to construct that book – one that she says was about her, or somebody like her. For until then, nobody had taken a little black girl—the most vulnerable kind of person in the world—seriously in literature; black female children have never held centre stage in anything. Thus with the arrival of the character Pecola Breedlove, a little hurt black girl is put to the centre of the story. Pecola’s quest is to acquire “Shirley Temple beauty” and blue eyes – ideals of beauty sponsored by the white world.
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
