The Bluest Eye Analytical Essay

Although it may seem unrealistic, many of us strive to be the best of the best. But at what cost would it take for one to attain such a distant goal? In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison offers commentary on the detrimental effects of black people in a society imposing them to adhere to white standards. Shown through Geraldine, Soaphead Church, and Pecola, each character believes that they need to rid themselves of their black lives in order to be obtain power in a pro-white society, but results in a destructive mentality.
As Geraldine is raised, she goes to great lengths to acquire a white lifestyle, but in the process, prevents her from developing healthy views about life and superiority. She grows up with other black women, all with a common goal: how to behave “properly”. “In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of emotions” (83). Being black is seen as being dirty and improper, so she obsessively keeps her home and body clean of anything she believes is unfitting, like expressing love and sexual desire. Her own oppression of being black controls her to the point where she’s more worried about the curlers in her hair and the sounds she makes during sex than the passionate
act itself and her inability to express common love to another person. As a parent, she passes on her morals and beliefs onto her son, Junior. He knows “his mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers….Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud” (87). Geraldine wants Junior to acknowledge that he is better than the other black children because he is being raised in a white-like environment . His mother distinguishes between colored people and “niggers” based on whether they dress and behave similar to those who are white. Her son soon adopts this sense of entitlement, but it ultimately leads to his loneliness and frustration, responding with feelings of hatefulness and superiority.
With his obsession of his minor white heritage, Soaphead Church takes his pride to an extreme and, as an outcome of it, has a need for all that he see is pure and builds a sense of his own self-righteousness but, however, isolates him from the community. He hates people and find’s the human body ugly and filthy. Growing up, “he had been greatly disturbed by this revolution which others did not seem to share, but having got a fine education he learned, among other things, the word ‘misanthrope’” (164). Soaphead Church uses this term as a way to secure white power and expresses his ideas in order to help others achieve it as well. He believes that he needs to maintain purity and whiteness and this thought results in his pervertivenss and pedophliiac behavior. “His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness” (167). He lives his life with such order and balance, but his sexual desire throws off his security. Because he despises the human body, he directs his sexual desires toward children, specifically young girls, as he perceives them as less offensive and as pure as a human can be.
At the end of the novel, Pecola’s psyche shown as the ultimate destructive outcome of the obsession with the white standards imposed in society with the demolition of her childhood, innocence, and sanity. When Pecola talks with her imaginary friend and it begins to leave, she believe that her eye are blue enough. “But suppose my eyes aren’t blue enough… blue enough… for you!” (203). Her insecurity about her “blue” eyes displays that this obsession with adopting the white culture is ultimately a lost cause—it can never be achieved. Once Pecola moves to the outskirts of town, Claudia faces that reality that “So it was. A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment” (204). In the metaphor about the earth and the flowers, Claudia believes that the fault for Pecola’s trauma is the overall consequence for the racist and exclusive atmosphere of the society.
With having all been said, Geraldine, Soaphead Church, and Pecola are each individually unhappy with the aspect of their black lives.
Their dissatisfaction, addiction, self-destruction is a consequence of an injustice society which favors those who are white and oppresses people of color. Their dependence on self-worth in their community influences their decisions, making detrimental choices that negatively affect their lives and the lives of those around them. We live in an American society where white standards are placed among people of ethnic background, in which they feel the need to reform to have worth. Ultimately, it leads to a lifetime of a destructive self-perception and rash, harmful
decisions.