It’s a Slow Fade Having started long before, the Civil Rights Movement was at its peak in the 60’s, having had the success of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While they were making legal progression, it is no secret that there was still hatred felt towards colored people of the time, which was expressed through lynching and racial slurs. Rarely, if ever, would a colored person be seen as a movie star or someone considered beautiful. The expectation of beautiful was found in actresses like Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple, both blonde, blue eyed, and, most importantly, white. Writing her first novel as a colored female in this time period, Toni Morrison is engulfed in this reality. In her novel, The Bluest Eye,
As Cholly and Pauline’s second child, Pecola has a name that is a combination of the two. This combination in her name is symbolic of her mix of their racial self loathing, derived from both desire for beauty as well as the hatred of others. On a simple trip to the candy store, Pecola stops to look at the flowers. She looks at dandelions growing up from a telephone pole and “why, she wonders, do people call them weeds? She thought they were pretty” (Morrison 47). Pecola can not understand why people say that dandelions are ugly, just as she can not comprehend why people find her ugly. Morrison uses the beauty of the dandelions to represent Pecola’s beauty. After entering the candy store, the white merchant looked less than pleased, in fact “he does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see” (Morrison 48). He sees her as a nuisance and Pecola is aware that his distaste is for her. He despises her merely for her skin color, so she pays for her candy and leaves, but this time with a new outlook. She passes the same dandelions, a representation of herself, and mutters “‘ They are ugly. They are weeds” (Morrison 50). The acrimony of the store clerk changed her view of the world. She can not even attend school without racism being poured out onto her. Teasings such as the chant “black e mo black e mo ya daddy sleeps naked” is shouted at her, drawing correlations between the taboo of being black and the alleged taboo of her father sleeping naked (Morrison 65). Despite the fact that even Claudia had seen her own father naked and felt no shame, Pecola is drenched in shame. She completely denies the thought, arguing “I never saw my daddy naked. Never” (Morrison 72). She is completely shredded by what other say about and to her. She is even called a “nasty little black bitch” by a complete stranger (Morrison 92). Looking around her, she
Janie’s first discovery about herself comes when she is a child. She is around the age of six when she realizes that she is colored. Janie’s confusion about her race is based on the reasoning that all her peers and the kids she grows up with are white. Janie and her Nanny live in the backyard of the white people that her Nanny works for. When Janie does not recognize herself on the picture that is taken by a photographer, the others find it funny and laughs, leaving Janie feeling humiliated. This racial discovery is not “social prejudice or personal meanness but affection” (Cooke 140). Janie is often teased at school because she lives with the white people and dresses better than the other colored kids. Even though the kids that tease her were all colored, this begins Janie’s experience to racial discrimination.
Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye", is a very important novel in literature, because of the many boundaries that were crosses and the painful, serious topics that were brought into light, including racism, gender issues, Black female Subjectivity, and child abuse of many forms. This set of annotated bibliographies are scholarly works of literature that centre around the hot topic of racism in the novel, "The Bluest Eye", and the low self-esteem faced by young African American women, due to white culture. My research was guided by these ideas of racism and loss of self, suffered in the novel, by the main character Pecola Breedlove. This text generates many racial and social-cultural problems, dealing with the lost identity of a young African American women, due to her obsession with the white way of life, and her wish to have blue eyes, leading to her complete transgression into insanity.
Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye provides social commentary on a lesser known portion of black society in America. The protagonist Pecola is a young black girl who desperately wants to feel beautiful and gain the “bluest eyes” as the title references. The book seeks to define beauty and love in this twisted perverse society, dragging the reader through Morrison’s emotional manipulations. Her father Cholly Breedlove steals the reader’s emotional attention from Pecola as he enters the story. In fact, Toni Morrison’s depiction of Cholly wrongfully evokes sympathy from the reader.
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.”
rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes” (Morrison, 174). By
Lizabeth associates much of her childhood with the vision of “acid, sterile dust . . . the dry September . . . and grassless yards” (Collier, p. 748). The use of this specific imagery relates the effect that poverty had on Lizabeth’s mentality and the role it played in shaping her perspective. A part of that effect is her inability to understand beauty amongst ugliness. This is exemplified in Miss Lottie’s marigolds. Lizabeth describes the marigolds as “the strangest part of [Miss Lottie’s yard]” because “they did not fit in with the crumbling decay of the rest of her yard” (Collier, p. 751). Lizabeth’s preoccupation and apparent disgust with Miss Lottie’s marigolds is a reflection of her unfamiliarity with beauty. It is not until she is familiarized with the beauty present in the marigolds that she understands the fault in her perspective. As a women looking back on the events of her childhood, an older Lizabeth recognizes her fault, yet also states “one does not have to be ignorant and poor to find that life is as barren as the dusty yards of [her] town” (Collier, p.
Miss Lottie is this little, brown skin, old lady who looks Native American. All the children in the neighborhood like to annoy her, since she is old, and she can not do anything to stop them because she moves too slow. The children also like to mess up her marigolds. The marigolds Miss Lottie has planted mean everything to her and she tries to protect them as much as she can. This time, Miss Lottie’s garden benefits her because it shows how she has hope. She lives in a dusty, gray neighborhood with her mentally challenged son, during the Great Depression, and the yellow of her flowers show how she tries her best to be happy and continue having hope and faith that things will get better. In “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier (Page 410) it says, “When I think of the hometown of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of bare brown feet.” In the short story, (Page 410) it also says, “And one other thing I remember, another incongruency of memory—a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust—Miss Lottie’s marigolds. Whenever the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded.” The marigolds are memorable and stand out. Another way Miss Lottie's garden is beneficial is because even though the garden took Lizabeth’s innocence, she now knows what compassion is and what it really means to grow up. Lizabeth is a fourteen-year-old girl who is transitioning into womanhood. She lives in the same poor neighborhood as Miss Lottie with her mother, father, and brother. Lizabeth is one of the children who like to torment Miss Lottie and her flowers. In the short story “Marigolds,” (Page 419) it says, “The
In the novel “The Bluest Eyes”, by Toni Morrison, Racial self-loathing and hatred is a major theme through the text, and is even evident in the title. Instead of making the plot center around events over racism, the book shows a deeper portrayal of racism, emphasizing on the way racial self-hatred and loathing plagues the black characters. The novel shows an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards distort the lives of the black characters. The author shows this by having African Americans who have lighter features, Maureen Peal, Geraldine and Soaphead Church, and characters with darker features, Pecola and her Parents Cholly, and Pauline Breedlove. Through them we are able to see racial self-loathing, there
Throughout Toni Morrison’s controversial debut The Bluest Eye, several characters are entangled in the extremes of human cruelty and desire. A once innocent Pecola arguably receives the most appalling treatment, as not only is she exposed to unrelenting racism and severe domestic abuse, she is also raped and impregnated by her own father, Cholly. By all accounts, Cholly is detestable and unworthy of any kind of sympathy. However, over the course of the novel, as Cholly’s character and life are slowly brought into the light and out of the self-hatred veil, the reader comes to partially understand why Cholly did what he did and what really drives him. By painting this severely flawed yet completely human picture of Cholly, Morrison draws comparison with how Pecola was treated by both of her undesirable parents.
In the novel, “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison exposes the roots of a broken community, unveiling the effects it has on its members. Morrison illustrates various disturbing characters that are insecure, lost and troubled. Through extended metaphors she is able to trace back these behaviors to the characters’ past. The structure of her novel follows a repetitive rationale of the character’s behavior after revealing their gruesome actions. The passage (116) further develops the text’s theme of a dysfunctional community. Although the exposure the effects of racism seems to be the main theme, Morrison goes deeper and explores the reason how and why the community continues to live in oppression.
Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world, not special, less than nothing. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you lesser was cultivated by both whites and blacks. White skin meant beauty and privilege and that idea was not questioned at this time in history. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people's lives in many different ways. The taunts of schoolboys directed at Pecola clearly illustrate this fact; "It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (65). This self hatred also possessed an undercurrent of anger and injustice that eventually led to the civil rights movement.
In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison is an African American writer, who believes in fighting discrimation and segregation with a mental preparation. Tony focuses on many black Americans to the white American culture and concludes that blacks are exploited because racism regarding white skin color within the black community. The bluest eye is a story about a young black girl named Pecola, who grew up in Ohio. Pecola adores blonde haired blue eyes girls and boys. She thinks white skin meant beauty and freedom and that thought was not a subject at this time in history. This book is really about the impact on a child’s state of mind. Tony Morrison has divided her book into four seasons: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The main characters in this book are three girls, Claudia and Frieds McTeer, and Pecola Breedlove. Why was Pecola considered a case? Pecola was a poor girl who had no place to go. The county placed her in the McTeer’shouse for a few days until they could decide what to do until the family was reunited. Pecola stayed at the McTeer’s house because she was being abuse at her house and Cholly had burned up his house. The first event that happens in the book was that her menstrual cycle had started. She didn’t know what to do; she thought she was bleeding to death. When the girls were in the bed, Pecola asked, “If it was true that she can have a baby now?” So now the only concern is if she is raped again she could possibly get pregnant. Pecola thought if she had blue eyes and was beautiful, that her parents would stop fighting and become a happy family.In nursery books, the ideal girl would have blonde hair and blue eyes. There is a lot of commercial ads have all showed the same ideal look just like the nursery book has. Pecola assumes she has this beautiful and becomes temporary happy, but not satisfied. Now, Pecola wants to be even more beautiful because she isn’t satisfied with what she has. The fact is that a standard of beautyis established, the community is pressured to play the game. Black people and the black culture is judged as being out of place and filthy. Beauty, in heart is having blond hair, blue eyes, and a perfect family. Beauty is then applied to everyone as a kind of level of class.
A reader might easily conclude that the most prominent social issue presented in The Bluest Eye is that of racism, but more important issues lie beneath the surface. Pecola experiences damage from her abusive and negligent parents. The reader is told that even Pecola's mother thought she was ugly from the time of birth. Pecola's negativity may have initially been caused by her family's failure to provide her with identity, love, security, and socialization, ail which are essential for any child's development (Samuels 13). Pecola's parents are able only to give her a childhood of limited possibilities. She struggles to find herself in infertile soil, leading to the analysis of a life of sterility (13). Like the marigolds planted that year, Pecola never grew.
... It should be understood that Morrison's novel is filled with many characters and many examples of racism and sexism and the foundations for such beliefs in the black community. Every character is the victim or aggressor of racism or sexism in all its forms. Morrison succeeds in shedding light on the racism and sexism the black community had to endure on top of racism and sexism outside of the community. She shows that racism and sexism affect everyone's preconceived notions regarding race and gender and how powerful and prevalent the notions are.