The Bluest Eye

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Recommended: mass media and stereotyping

Everywhere we go there are going to be stereotypes that can affect us in our daily lives. Even stereotypes from years ago are still sometimes present today. For years Caucasian blue-eyed dolls was considered the best and most perfect gift for every little girl. For this time period it was considered perfect but many girls did not have the features that the doll had. This in some cases would affect minority’s, who would come to think that their features such as dark skin, and nappy hair were ugly. In “The Bluest Eye”, Claudia a little girl receives a little white doll for Christmas. In receiving this doll Claudia shows that receiving one of these dolls does not make every little girl happy.

In this story Claudia receives a Caucasian doll for Christmas and describes it as a scary blue-eye...

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    Throughout Toni Morrison’s controversial debut The Bluest Eye, several characters are entangled with 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 should be 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. According to literary educator Allen Alexander, even though Cholly was cripplingly flawed and often despicable, he was a more “genuine” person to Pecola than Pauline was (301). Alexander went on to claim that while Cholly raped Pecola physically, Pauline and Soaphead Church both raped her mental wellbeing (301). Alexander is saying that the awful way Pecola was treated in a routine matter had an effect just as great if not greater than Cholly’s terrible assault. The abuse that Pecola lived through was the trigger that shattered her mind. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the characters of Cholly Breedlove and Frieda McTeer to juxtapose sexual violence and mental maltreatment in order to highlight the terrible effects of mental abuse.

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  • Racial Beauty Standards In The Bluest Eye

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