Bluest Eye Thesis

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. 224 pp. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. $8.95.
The Bluest Eye, set during the 1940s after the end of the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio, tells the heartbreaking story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who perpetually prays for blues so she can be as beautiful and loved as blue-eyed, white American children. Pecola believes that she’s destined to live a tragic life due to her perceived ugliness, which is constantly reinforced by the way the people in her community treat her. Pecola lives with her holier-than-thou complex of a mother, an abusive alcoholic of a father and an absentee runaway brother until one day she has to live with the MacTeers, whose two children Claudia and Frieda befriend her,
after her father accidentally burns down their home. It is at the MacTeers that Pecola’s desperation for blue eyes creep in when she becomes obsessed with drinking milk from a Shirley Temple mug, whom she deeply admires due to her white features. Pecola life becomes unbearably tragic when her father rapes and impregnates her. The community turns against her, as it is a reflection of their mistreatment of her and using her as way to deflect their ugliness, and willing her baby to die. Claudia and Frieda are the only ones who want to help Pecola and her baby by planting marigold seeds, which do not grow and reveals the death of the baby. The psychological damage of it all takes a toll on Pecola who becomes mad, believing she has the bluest eyes of them all.
Morrison’s work reflects certain aspects of her life.
The novel was set in her hometown Lorain, Ohio. The novel was released in 1970. This is significant because it was released after a decade of great strides in the African-American community in the 1960s. America was going through its most significant movement that would impact the black community: the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was in full effect as well as the beginnings of the Black Is Beautiful campaign, when many black Americans became conscious of their beauty. Black Americans have been struggling post-slavery to be recognized in America as citizens. Although constitutionally they were giving that, Jim Crow Laws prevented them from exercising the rights of being citizens. They were treated as second class citizens and dehumanized through propaganda; the media being a huge outlet in pushing racial tropes. Morrison’s The Bluest Eye resonates with the Black Is Beautiful campaign that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As black Americans became conscious of their beauty, which has been denied to them by the systematic oppression placed upon them in America, many works of art began to depict black beauty in the form of their hair and content of the black skin. This time in history is relevant when discussing The Bluest Eye because it signifies how far black Americans have come to reclaim themselves and what it means to be beautiful in the black community. Morrison’s Pecola is a reminder of a
time when black beauty was not appreciated and that the racism that black Americans internalized started from their youth. “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. They are very happy” (Morrison 1). Morrison starts off with The Bluest Eye by depicting the perfect family: Dick and Jane and their parents in a perfect green-and-white house. This is vital as it illustrates the exemplary family and the standard of beauty. Morrison’s strengths lie in how she is able to start off the story of Dick and Jane because they are the antithesis of her characters. Dick and Jane represent the ideal family but it interprets the ideal white family which is opposite of what Morrison’s characters in the novel experience. He put his head down and nibbled at the back of her leg. His mouth trembled at the firm sweetness of the flesh. “He closed his eyes, letting his fingers dig into her waist…Removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She appeared to have fainted. Cholly stood up” (Morrison 163). Morrison does a great job of making her readers aware of what is going on throughout the novel with her imagery. As appalling as this scene was, it was important in how she told it by making the reader understand what is happening as to not make light of rape. The only problematic part of the novel, personally, was the perspective of how Pecola's rape was told. Although it is apparent that Morrison is showcasing how women are oppressed by silencing Pecola’s rape from her perspective and giving it to Cholly, Pecola’s father, it gives too much power to him. It's pretty clear who the intended audiences are in Morrison’s novel. This is based off the type of environment the move is set in and how the characters interact with one another. The author is writing to the American people, specifically African-Americans. She uses black vernacular and sets the 1940s after the Great Depression, when African-Americans were disproportionally unemployed. The overall tone of the novel is depressing, heartbreaking and remorseful. Morrison does not want readers to condemn the community as they turn their backs on Pecola after she is impregnated by her father. It is reflected in the tone of Morrison’s writing. “The damage done was total…We tried to see her without looking at her, and never, never, went near. Not because she was absurd, or repulsive, or because we were frightened, but because we had failed her” (162). This comes from Claudia as she’s sympathetic to Pecola’s plight but cannot do anything about it. Claudia’s reaction to Pecola is reflective of the community because they failed Pecola as well. Morrison does this thing in her novel were, although Claudia is the main narrator, she shifts the dialogue from varying characters. It brings to mind what exactly she is trying to accomplish and it works in her favor. The story is well balanced out as she treats each characters point of view to make sense of what is happening or why some of her characters are the way they are. Henry Louis Gates' theory of signifying helps to critically analyze The Bluest Eye. Gates’ theory in short is about phrases or words that set of a reaction or are evident of a situation that black characters are placed in. There are various signifiers in the novel which Morrison uses to showcase her points. “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different…Maybe they’d say, “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes…Pretty eyes. Pretty blue eyes. Big blue pretty eyes” (Morrison 48). The biggest signifier in this novel are the eyes. The ‘eyes’ are repeated so often throughout the novel. Pecola is desperate as she wants to be beautiful and believes she can achieve by having ‘eyes’. The eyes in question are blue eyes. Pecola wants to be wanted and loved and beautiful. She wants to be seen through those eyes from others and herself included. Morrison does a great job being repetitive to showcase the desperation in Pecola. I believe the ‘eyes’ are the solution to all of Pecola’s problems it seems. It is all she has ever wanted as a black little girl who has been told she is not beautiful enough and will be ugly. The Breedloves…they were poor and black, and they stayed because they believed they were ugly” (Morrison 53). This is something she has internalized throughout her young black youth. The ugliness she perceives attributes to her being black. It is obvious that blackness is not yearned for the way Pecola yearns for whiteness because of her fixation of gaining blue eyes. The context of which this takes place allows readers to comprehend the kind of self-hatred that was (and maybe still) exist in the black community. “Rosemary Villanucci, our next door friend…sits in a 1939 Buick-eating bread and butter. She rolls down her window to tell my sister Frieda and me we can’t come in…We stare at her…wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes. When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin” (Morrison 5). Claudia, the main narrator, experiences anger. Rosemary, their white neighbor, is a signifier of how poor Claudia and her family are. Rosemary possess the signifier of being white and rich. Rosemary, the name itself gives off a pureness which equates to her whiteness as opposed to Claudia and her blackness. The era of which the novel takes place makes not of how disproportionately poor African-Americans are and it is evident in how Claudia and her family are. “…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 marigolds 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 land kills of its own volition” Marigolds are important signifiers in the novel. Morrison is able to use marigolds to illustrate the trails of black Americans as well it seems. When Claudia says, “the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year”, it represents the way that black Americans were disproportionately alienated in America at that time. The marigolds are also supposed to be about new beginnings, which never come true as Pecola loses her baby, which Claudia had hope would survive. Gates’ theory of signifying is crucial to this novel because it understands the stance of which Morrison is trying to take. The way she writes using certain words to get her point across can be difficult to understand if readers do not pay attention to the setting in which the story takes place. The Bluest Eye is a significant piece of art that illustrates the tragedy of loss and self-hate.
By setting the backdrop of the novel in the 1940s, it allows for Morrison to make connections with that era and the issues that plagued African-Americans throughout the story. The novel specifically points out various instances taking place in America that affected African-Americans. It speaks to the African-American experience as it delves into the lives of black innocence and youth. This is the level at which most African-Americans begin to internalize self-hatred for themselves because they have been told that they are not as beautiful and worthy enough as their Caucasian counterparts. Morrison speaks from a place of understanding black culture because she is unapologetic in how she writes. She demands her readers to carefully take heart to the matters of the novel. Morrison understands the black experience. She is of African ancestry and it shines through in her writing. She does not want to shy away from the plight of African-Americans and she shows it in her writing. Morrison uses Pecola’s heartbreaking tragedy and innocence to make a claim about the damaging effects of what it means to be black and young in
America.