“The Bluest Eye” is taking place around 1940 in Lorain, Ohio. During the year of 1940, discrimination, especially toward African Americans, was still a serious problem. People believe that whiteness is the standard of beauty. The main character, Pecola, who was a nine-years-old African-American, was influenced by how people view beauty. Pecola suffered and felt that she is inferior to others. Pecola believed that having a pair of blue eyes would made people think she is pretty, and would be the key resolving all the problems. What is beautiful? How do people define beauty? People view differently. Usually, we judge people, first, from his or her appearance then to their inherence. It is a common fact that appearance has an indirect relationship with confidence. No matter male or female, people want to pretty (, or handsome). “Because each culture has its own standards of beauty, the way people choose to enhance their appearance will vary among cultures. (Raskoff)” The standards of beauty are varies due to the different period of time, the different locations, and different culture. ...
Toni Morisson's novel The Bluest Eye is about the life of the Breedlove family who reside in Lorain, Ohio, in the late 1930s (where Morrison herself was born). This family consists of the mother Pauline, the father Cholly, the son Sammy, and the daughter Pecola. The novel's focal point is the daughter, an eleven-year-old Black girl who is trying to conquer a bout with self-hatred. Everyday she encounters racism, not just from the White people, but mostly from her own race. In their eyes she is much too dark, and the darkness of her skin somehow manifests that she is inferior, and according to everyone else, her skin makes her even "uglier." She feel she can overcome this battle of self-hatred by obtaining blue eyes, but not just any blue. She wants the bluest of the blue, the bluest eye.
In the novel, The Bluest Eye, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove. Pecola longs for acceptance from the world. She is an innocent little girl, however, she is rejected practically by the whole world, and her own parents. Pecola endures physical and verbal abuse at home, and also at school. She is always the main character in the jokes that usually refer to her very dark skin. Her mother cherishes the white daughter of the family she works for and calls her own daughter a "rotten piece of apple. Her father Cholly is constantly drunk, and sexually molests her daughter more than once, eventually rapes and impregnates her.
“The novel addresses the psychological and political implications of black people’s commitment to a standard of beauty (the blonde-haired, blue-eyed ideal)…” (Smith 364). Her desire to have blue eyes was so strong that once she was told her prayers had been granted, she never saw herself the same way again. From that moment on Pecola Breedlove believed that her eyes were blue. The last chapter of The Bluest Eye shows the dialogue between Pecola, and an imaginary figure whom Pecola had created, discussing the blueness of her
In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the character Claudia struggles with a beauty standard that harms her sense of self-esteem. Claudia tries to make sense of why the beauty standard does not include black girls. The beauty standard determines that blonde-haired blue-eyed white girls are the image of beauty and therefore they are worthy of not only attention, but are considered valuable to American culture of the 1940s. Thus, learning she has no value or beauty as a black girl, Claudia destroys her white doll in an attempt to understand why white girls are beautiful and subsequently worthy, socially superior members of society. In destroying the doll, Claudia attempts to destroy the beauty standard that works to make her feel socially inferior and ugly because of her skin color. Consequently, Claudia's destruction of the doll works to show how the beauty standard was created to keep black females from feeling valuable by producing a sense of self-hate in black females. The racial loathing created within black women keeps them as passive objects and, ultimately, leads black women, specifically Pecola, to destroy themselves because they cannot attain the blue eyes of the white beauty standard.
Beauty is something that a lot of people in life strive for , because everyone has fitted in their mind what exactly beauty is. People know that it can help you out in life. But what most people don’t know is that, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Meaning that beauty should not be characterized by what people are told it is, beauty is different for everyone, what is beautiful for you may be ugly to someone else. The characters in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are confronted with the ideal of beauty and strive for it whether they know it or not. The two characters that I think were followed the ideal of beauty in Toni Morrison’s story are Pauline and Pecola.
Blond hair, blue eyes. In America these are the ideals of a woman’s beauty. This image is drilled into our minds across the lifespan in the media and it conditions people's standards of beauty. We see Black women wish that their skin was lighter. In an episode of "The Tyra Banks Show", a Black girl as young as 6 talks about how she doesn't like her hair and wishes that it was long and straight like a white woman's. Some minorities get surgery to change their facial features, or only date white men. Having been taught to think that white people are more attractive than people of their own ethnicity. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the character of Pecola exemplifies the inferiority felt throughout the black community due to the ideology that white qualities propel you in social status. Pecola’s mother, Pauline Breedlove, said it best when she was introduced to beauty it being the most destructive ideas in the history of human though. From which the envy, insecurity and disillusion have been derived by the ideas of beauty and physical appearance. Pecola’s story is about the consequences of a little black girl growing up in a society dominated by white supremacy. We must not look at beauty as a value rather an oppressive discourse that has taken over our society. Pecola truly believes that if her eyes were blue she would be pretty, virtuous, and loved by everyone around her. Friends would play with her, teachers would treat her better and even her parents might stop their constant fights because, in her heart of hearts, no one would want to “do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.”
A main theme in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is the quest for individual identity and the influences of the family and community in that quest. This theme is present throughout the novel and evident in many of the characters. Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove and are all embodiments of this quest for identity, as well as symbols of the quest of many of the many Black people that were moving to the north in search of greater opportunities.
The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison tells the story of several African Americans living in the rural south from 1910 to 1941. One of the main characters in the book happens to be Pecola Breedlove. Throughout the book Pecola encounters many hardships. Her problems range from home, school, extracurricular activities; even if she is walking down the street she has a problem with someone. It is very obvious that during this time period, white people are not that fond of African Americans and you would think that Pecola has the most trouble with. When in all actuality, many of the problems she encountered where her own people so to speak. The people who bullied her felt that because she was a darker skin tone that she was a target.
What I found extraordinarily interesting was the fact that Pecola eventually gets "blue eyes" but with these eyes she becomes almost ignorant to the people that surround her, especially their reactions towards her. She believes that everyone is avoiding her like: not talking to her, not flattering her eyes, and not making eye contact, because the people she comes across with could be envious of her “blue eyes”. Another thing I found interesting about it was the irony of the position of her having “blue eyes”. Many blind people have blue eyes, and Pecola when she gets blue eyes she automatically becomes blind. Obviously she is not literally blind, but figuratively she is blind to what I have mentioned, as well as to the fact that she does not actually have blue eyes, and also her life has not improved at all with them.
...ther, a mother who loves her white employers better than her own family, and a brother who is constantly running away. All three who reinforce the idea of Pecola’s ugliness. At the end of this novel, after not only one but two cases of being raped by her father, becoming pregnant and then losing a baby whose father was also Pecola’s, and being made to believe that she was finally granted her blue eyes. Pecola’s state of mind, it is safe to say, has completely deteriorated. In the novel it is stated “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 fulfillment” (204). Regardless of delusions, evil forces, or the mental of break of young Pecola. It is clear by the end of the novel that her state of mind is gone and the entire community has seemingly cast her from their mind.
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove is a young girl trying to find herself. Throughout the novel, as Pecola grows as a young girl her confidence is tainted by her experiences and the world around her. Pecola lives in Lorain, Ohio, in the 1940s. During this time, role models for young girls were predominantly Caucasian, blonde, blue-eyed women. This impacted young girls like Pecola who had no role models to look up to. Pecola not only has no role models, but also an unsupportive family. Pecola’s family is known for their ugliness and argue with each other often. The people in the Breedlove’s community reject them and disapprove of Pecola, some even shunning
Throughout The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison includes a number of background stories for minor characters along with the main plotline in order to add dimension to the novel and further convey the intense racial prejudice felt by almost all African Americans. Her main story tells of the outrageous landslide of wounding events that Pecola Breedlove experiences, a young black girl constantly patronized by her peers, and the things that eventually make her go crazy. The struggle for a deep black skinned person can be significantly different from what a lighter skinned black person feels, and Toni Morrison adds secondary story lines to stress that difference, and the extremes that racism can force people into. The back-story of Geraldine expresses the desire to be white supported by social circumstances, the comparison of how much easier whiter life could be on Pecola and her family, but also the poor results that can come from shying away from one’s own nature and history.
The novel, The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison is about a year in the life of an eleven year old girl from Ohio, Pecola Breedlove, who undergoes feelings of rejection, inferiority and self-deprecation because of the racism in her society. Toni Morrison presents with this, the notion that America lives under a stereotype which suggests that to be accepted in a community, one has to be what society considers beautiful, in this case, white.
The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison deals with the struggles of Pecola and the hardships she experiences. Morrison demonstrates how Pecola struggles against a society that defines her as ugly and invisible. Through the struggles of Pecola, Morrison reveals how society is capable of having a life changing impact on an individual. The collective voice of society impact Pecola’s relationship with the black community, her friendships, her family life and her sexuality. Due to experiencing an unstable home life, discrimination, and the miscarriage of her baby, Pecola denies herself and the world around her, leading to her break with reality.
The definition of beauty is varying among different people in the world. Even though almost everyone knows the term beauty, many people are struggling in defining it and persuading others to agree with their opinions. Beauty is defined by a combination of qualities existent in a person or thing that fulfills the aesthetic feels or brings about profound gratification. Many people define beauty as a term to describe a person’s physical appearance; they often think that beauty comes from magazines, video girls, or even models. Although the term beauty can define a person’s physical appearance, true beauty lies in the way one acts and thinks rather than the way one look.