Bluest Eye :: essays research papers fc

Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye reveals the trauma of an eleven-year-old African-American girl named Pecola Breedlove. This story takes place in the town of Lorain, Ohio during the 1940s. It is told from the perspective of a young girl named Claudia MacTeer. She and her sister, Frieda, become witness to the terrible path that Pecola is forced to endure because she is not considered beautiful by society. Pecola chooses to hide from life behind her hazy dream of having the bluest of eyes so that those around her will view her as beautiful as the light skinned, blond haired, blue eyed girls that got so frequently favoritism. The Breedloves constant bickering and ever growing poverty contributes to the emotional downfall of this little girl. Pecolas misery and insecurity is caused by her fathers hand and the communitys struggle with racial separation, individual retirement account, and ignorance. Characters in the black community accept their status as the Other, which has been imposed upon them by the white community. In turn, blacks assign the status of Other to individuals like Pecola within the black community (Toni Morrison). Her innocence is harshly ripped from her grasp as her father rapes her. The communitys anger with its own insecurities is taken out on this poor, ugly, black, non-ideal young girl. She shields herself from this sorrow behind her obsessive plea for blue eyes. Her eyes do not switch the pain of carrying her fleeing fathers baby, nor do they protect her from the sideways glances of her neighbors. Though this book discuses negative and disturbing situations, it teaches a very positive lesson about the vastness of self respect and positive thinking. The Bluest Eye explores how outside influences affect ones own sense of beauty and how it is harmful to consider yourself ugly. This theme seems to survey the conclusion of Brown v. Board of Education, that when a society presents the idea of beauty in certain way, those who do not fit into th at image are hypersensitized to low self esteem, hatred of their own racial lineage, and preferences towards whites (Tushnet). Toni Morrison shows this through each of her characters in this novel. For example, when Claudia, Frieda, Pecola, and Maureen Peal, a white snob, are walking home from school the girls demoralise to bicker. Their conversation ends with Maureen stomping away and establishing the fact that she is indeed cute, implying that they most definitely are not.