The theme of the story, “The Bluest Eye” written by Toni Morrison, demonstrates the connection between the self-esteem of African-American people (beauty and ugliness), racism and hate. The reason why this theme is discussed was because, we can go back to the origins of African-Americans, it relates to the African diaspora, Jim Crow era, and how people negatively look at blacks today in society, and white supremacy destroyed black imaginary. But before this goes on furthermore, the audience needs to understand the importance of the dominant society which strongly removed the identity of African-American. Claudia and Maureen play perfect roles during the story. They show…
One reason critics praise Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye is because of the way the novel accurately portrays the way society views itself and others (Hoffman). She precisely shows in her work, that mankind is flawed in this aspect. Similar to that, Toni Morrison asks the novel’s readers “to think about perspectives of all types” (Hoffman). With the book’s inclusion of racism and self loathing the author wants the readers to connect with the protagonist, on an emotional basis, and try to first-hand understand Pecola’s perspective. Perhaps the most significant reason critics cite in favor of the novel not being banned is the story’s potential to incite analyzations about self-esteem and body image (Lalami). Readers and educators alike could read the book in detail, and have discussions about the author’s…
The Bluest Eye is a complex novel written by Toni Morrison, an African American literary theorist. Morrison evokes a society still plagued by the premise of slavery and the exposes this mode of white inferiority through The Bluest Eye. “Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe”, Morrison endows these last couple of sentences with a lyrical quality that makes the readers truly understand the depth of Cholly’s character and the “freeness” he experiences. Morrison initially introduces Cholly Breedlove as the antagonist, a drunk and very abusive father; any man who would beat his wife, set his house on fire and rape his daughter couldn’t…
Oppression is a prevalent and reoccurring theme in black literature. African-American novelists in the early 20th century offered a predominantly white audience an insight into black culture and vocalized the injustice had by their hands. Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye both incorporate controversial female protagonists facing the challenge of mental oppression by both personal and societal belief, and physical abuse at the hands of their aggressors. Whilst each arguably feminist bildungsroman faces criticism for misrepresenting relationships and stereotyping behaviour in black society, it is widely accepted that both authors explore and bring attention to the oppression and abuse of women in a modern context.…
"The Bluest Eye" written by Toni Morrison is a book taken place around fall of 1941 after the Great Depression, in Lorain, Ohio where a young girl named Pecola Breedlove lived and loved Shirley Temple. Since she loved Shirley Temple and was the opposite of her she believed that her own blackness was inherently ugly. She then had a tough time trying to love herself against what she believed was beautiful and classy. Which was to have blonde hair and blue eyes, meaning that she was idolized towards that look everyday and she would even then compared herself towards that image and pray every day that she would end up with the bluest eyes ever ... lowering herself esteem and faith on becoming what she believed to be a beautiful women, since she…
In the novel, The Bluest Eye, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the tragic and devastating story of Pecola Breedlove. Innocent Pecola, however, is rejected in a very rational way by her community and most of all by her own parents. Well, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, as allured these characters into Naomi Wolf’s, theory that the true danger to a woman is another woman. The Breedlove family as attract themselves into a world where they have all lack self-esteem. With the lack of self-esteem the Breedlove’s, have all wear a mask to create a new identity for themselves. Through this the Breedlove’s are unable to build a familial relationship that would bond them together because they had face many life dilemmas in which there not able to aided…
Native Americans were the original Americans inhabiting North America whereas African Americans were uprooted and kidnapped and brought in chains from their home land as slaves. Native Americans were stereotyped as savages and their lands were seized by the English colonizers through warfare. With that being said, it is easy to connect the experiences of this group to those of the characters in The Bluest Eye as racism comes in different form. Most of the characters in The Bluest Eye allowed or were forced by society to believe and accept things and how they looked in the mirror as just a pigment of their imagination due to color of their skin and their roots origin. The same can be said but only in a different format that the Native Americans were being treated unequal and forced to migrate off their own land because of being considered inferior. The Bluest Eye explores the lingering effects of racism by exploring and commenting on black self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in The Bluest Eye whom were African American were consumed with the constant culturally-imposed notions of white beauty, cleanliness, and sanitation to the point where they have disengaged with themselves and have a terrible tendency to subconsciously act out their feelings of self-loathing on other members of the black community. In presenting the various modes of escape and retreat into empty notions of whiteness, the author demonstrates how this is a damaging way to work through so many years of being hopeless and objectified. In the narrator’s description of how the Breedlove family was ugly, it is stated in one of the important quotes from “The Bluest Eye”, “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that is came from conviction, their conviction. It was as…
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, we are presented with ideals of what it is to be black and how it is to be white and how society’s constructions of the ‘ideal’ human affects characters within this novel. Claudia Macteer is a young African-American girl who struggles with these ideas and societies notion of perfection. Claudia battles with her own identity and demonstrates her frustrations and self- hatred in outward behaviours. Utilising these themes around identity and idealism we will explore Claudia’s explosion of emotions in the form of her destroying of the dolls she received as a gift.…
In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, focuses on society’s capacity of influencing and inferiorizing people of color, especially African Americans. Throughout the novel, the story of a young black girl named Pecola, shows the treatment and discrimination she experiences in her community. The cause of her problems is due to her ugliness, which society does not tolerate acceptable because “all the world agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, and pink-skinned” is the ideal beauty for a girl (20). Due to opposing societal standards, Pecola becomes a victim, confirming she is ugly and experiencing hardships that a child is not meant to encounter. Similar to Morrison’s message, Francisco Gabilondo Soler (a famous composer and performer known…
Influenced by her origins, Morrison's literary works explore and examine the black experience. For example, her first novel The Bluest Eye ( 1970) examines the black experience in a white racist society, which shall be discussed in detail later on in this research paper.…
Shirley Temple, the little princess. Everything a young girl hoped and dreamed to be. The perfectly blond coifed hair, porcelain skin and bright ocean blue eyes. Thinking of her was enough for every young girl hope and aspire to be just like Shirley Temple. Shirley Temple in the Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison represents the American ideal girl and a representation of the stigma related to not being white in a society. In one way or another all of the characters in the Bluest Eyes are obsessed with beauty and defining what beauty is to them. The blue eyes closely tie to Shirley temple and baby dolls and their representation of a hierarchy of race. “Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another—physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” This quote ties in all the themes of the Bluest Eyes, love, beauty, and an un-escapable fall into despair while chasing the first two.…
The bluest eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison. The novel took place majorly in the 1940s Lorain, Ohio when racism was still predominant and after the great depression. The Bluest Eye centers around Pecola Breedlove a young black girl who believes that whiteness is beauty and inherently denies the beauty of her own blackness. The novel intricately and blatantly narrates the lives of African-Americans during the 40s leading well into the 70s and even till now. Pecola’s dream of having this standard of beauty eventually deteriorates her mental state leading to her psychological devastation.…
Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio on February 18, 1931. She graduated from Lorain High School with honors. Morrison lived in an integrated neighborhood and was not aware of racial divisions until her teens. She told a reporter once that she was the only black child in her first grade class and the only one that could read. Morrison loved to read which is how she gained a love for writing.…
Though there have been many steps towards equality in today’s society, America, as a whole, will not reach it until races could be equal in everything. But America is still a race dominated culture, and mostly a white dominated culture. In this culture, society looks up to a racialised beauty, where beauty is defined in the terms of white beauty, or the physical features most white people have. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, who wants to be beautiful, and searches for blue eyes because she and most of the characters in the book, view her as ugly. Through Pecola’s journey for her own set of blue eyes, we learn about the main black characters and their quest for something more, and how they respond to the dominating white culture and society.…
Being a free black in the northern state of Ohio after the Civil War has had traumatic effects on many people’s lives. The black race was considered inferior to the white race. Many acts of racism are still prevalent in today’s society. In the novel “The Bluest Eye” Pecola, a young girl, has encountered many hardships in her childhood: “Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike” (Morrison 45). Pecola needs to experience love and acceptance but neither her family nor the community reciprocates these emotions. Pecola’s life parallels with Frado’s life, a young girl in the novel “Our Nig” by Harriet E. Wilson. Frado also needs to feel accepted as the only black child in a white household. Frado as a young girl experiences being rejected and unloved; she experiences many hardships and racist encounters. The girls from an early age have learned that the white race is superior to the black race: “I’s black outside, I know, but I’s got a white heart inside. Which you rather have, a black heart in a white skin, or a white heart in a black one?” (Wilson 12). Both young girls learned that black is equivalent to immoral as white is compared to virtuous. There is a complicated portrayal of sexual initiation and acts of racism to Pecola, an impressionable black girl at a very young age.…