The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

That quote is from the book, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. The story takes place at the end of the great depression. Claudia and Frieda MacTeer are two young girls that live with their very poor parents in Lorain, Ohio. The family takes in a border named Henry Washington and a young girl named Pecola. Pecola comes from a harsh family and is in love with Shirley Temple. She believes that being white is beautiful and that because she’s dark that she is ugly. When Pecola moves back with her family, her life becomes more difficult. Her father goes deeper into his alcoholism, her brother keeps running away, and her father beats her mother. All the while, she is constantly reminded of her own ugliness by people who make fun of her and call her names like “nasty little black
bitch”. It is revealed later in the story that Pecola’s parents have lived pretty difficult lives themselves. Pauline, her mother, believes she herself is ugly and that love is only for those who are beautiful. She only feels alive when she’s cleaning a white woman’s home and despises her own house.
Cholly, Pecola’s Father, was abandoned by his parents and raised by his auntie. She died when Cholly was a teen. He was humiliated by two white men who found him in the process of losing his virginity and made him continue while they watched and made fun of him. When he met Pauline, he was a crazed and hurt man and soon felt trapped in his marriage and lost interest in his life. One day, Cholly comes home and finds Pecola washing dishes. This triggers mixed motivations of lust and hatred which leads to him raping Pecola. Pauline finds her daughter unconscious on the floor and doesn’t believe Pecola’s story and beats her. Pecola then goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for blue eyes. The quote tells the reader the feelings Soaphead was going through after Pecola asked him for the blue eyes. Soaphead feels bad for the little black girl because no one has recognized her substance beauty. Soaphead then feels a surge of anger because the white beauty standard has deformed the life of this poor innocent black girl. She was raised to believe that surface beauty (blue eyes) is what will get her
love. At the end of the story, Pecola gets her wish for blue eyes because she eventually goes insane and believes that she has blue eyes. This shows how substance beauty can be damaged by constant obsession with surface beauty. However this story isn’t the only story that covers that theme.