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Racism In Pecola's The Bluest Eye

1348 Words6 Pages

Pecola the protagonist of the novel longs for the bluest eyes ultimately ends up her life with mental issues. Born as a black girl she admires white beauty and blue eyes which is rejected plainly for the blacks. It is very hard for the blacks to lead their life as a children as well as an adult. As a child blacks face many humiliations and hatred. It is even difficult and different in the case of black girls where the girls are raped and treated very badly. but for adults the humiliations are different and they are treated in inhuman ways. Racism plays an important role. Blacks come across physical as well as mental tortures. Similarly Pecola undergone mental problems when she was beaten up by her own mother and raped by her own father. Pecola …show more content…

Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane”. (P.No:48) Black children spent their whole time admiring white children and white beauty. Pecola goes to the next level and admires the wrapper of the candy. The wrapper is printed with Shirley Temple, the white girls which Pecola wishes. Whites are not ready to accept the blacks as a part of the society and the blacks are the mere cause for their effect. The blacks even made their social condition worsen by admiring the whites and thinking beyond their age facts to enjoy their present life. Blacks are unaware of their own condition lost their true self, self identity in the hands of white failed to enjoy their childhood. The black children unlike concentrating on their childhood happiness, get into adult stuffs. On such incident is Claudia and Frieda ready to welcome Pecola’s baby and plant Marigold, looking forward for the flowers bloom and the child too. But both died. “It was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to the Marigold that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the lands kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to vote” (P.No:

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This is his coping with it, he runs away just like his father and mother did. Due to the fact that he never had a loving family, he ends up raping Pecola. All his life he has been oppressed and learned that you can’t blame the oppressors. The only thing you can do is pass the oppression along. He is the symbol of the perpetuation of oppression and how it cannot be solved.

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The game SPENT is a simulation that goes day by day giving you options of spending money. After playing the SPENT game I realized the difficulties that came with poverty and the tough decisions that came along with it. The essay discusses articles about race, gender, and poverty and the sociological concepts that relate them to today 's society. In today 's society we have attitudes towards race and gender that we might think are natural, but really history shows us that we created these attitudes. Many reasons for discrimination today come from made up beliefs such as the value of whiteness, religious beliefs, and attitudes created by humans.

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“When teachers called on her, they smiled encouragingly. Black boys didn’t stone her, white girls didn’t suck their teeth when she was assigned to be their partners--” (Morrison 62). This quote shows how Maureen got treated better than Claudia and Pecola, just because her skin was lighter. Pecola’s teachers never smiled at her and she never failed to be the object of the boys’ stones. Morrison wanted to show that being black is beautiful no matter what skin tone one

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This change of perception is significant because she now views the once beautiful and strong dandelions, which represent who she is as a person, as ugly weeds. These now ugly weeds are juxtaposed to the white, beautiful, blue eyed Mary Jane. While eating the candy, she thinks to herself that “to eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane (50).”

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In the blue-eyed, brown-eyed experiment, examples of prejudice, stereotypes, racism, discrimination, and institutional discrimination are present. Prejudice is an unfair generalization of a group of people with little or no evidence. Therefore, when Jane Elliot tells her class that blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people the blue-eyed children develop a prejudice attitude against the brown-eyed children.

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In other words, Pecola longs to be white so that she will get a second chance at living a better life with a better family, with one that is not ugly. She thinks that if she had the bluest eyes, “maybe Cholly would be different” and “Mrs. Breedlove too” (Morrison 46). Pecola goes through great lengths to transform herself into a girl with the bluest eye—she eats the Mary Jane candies, worships the image of Shirley Temple on a cup, dreams to dissapear—but none of this works. Pecola turns to Soaphead Church, who “did what [God] did not, could not, would not do”. Soaphead “looked at that ugly little black girl” and “loved her”, even though what Pecola needed was more than love (Morrison 181).

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To Geraldine Pecola is a threat to her perfect world, because she is dirty, uncouth, and black. To her Pecola’s blackness and dirtiness is something that is utterly unbearable for her, because it is a stark illustration of everything she strives avoid and to shelter her family

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Since the beginning of time, African-Americans have been seen as inferior, incapable, and inhumane. After the Civil Rights Movement, the issue of racism was broadcasted internationally, and people globally saw how African-Americans were treated due to the color of their skin. Once the movement was over; African-Americans would have another issue to tackle; societal advancement. History books suggest that racism was finally over after the Civil Rights Movement, but racial bias is still embedded in white society. Racism may not be as harsh, or publically displayed, but African-Americans are not advancing at the same rates as whites.

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Pecola and her mother, Pauline, see themselves as ugly because they hold themselves to beauty standards in which light-skinned people are the ideal. Pecola and her mother have a brutal home life due to the drunken violence of Cholly Breedlove, and the constant pressure of beauty standards only adds to their misfortune. Morrison explains this pressure by asserting that “[i]t was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they

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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.

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The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison in 1970, consists of multiple interlocking stories, denoting a most powerful being, Cholly Breedlove, Pecola’s father. Cholly Breedlove is a man who has suffered through abhorrent bearings, degradation, condescension, abuse, and isolation. Isolated in a society defined by racism, economic inequality, and fanaticism, he was not only shunned but was considered barbarous. Left desolated by racism and violence, he spiraled into madness and violence. His daughter Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl growing up in the town of Lorain, Ohio, similarly, was born into a society characterized by racism.

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But it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be

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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

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The idea that blue eyes are a necessity for beauty has been etched on pecola's head in her whole life "if I looked different beautiful, may be cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breed love too may be they would say, why look at pretty eyed pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes "(the bluest eye

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