Should The Bluest Eyes Be Used To Elucidate African American Culture?

We see that, much like Stanley, the narrator Claudia and her sister Frieda are in a constant search for the truth. This is observed in their younger selves ; when they can't understand their mother's conversation, they “look for truth in timbre”, showing that before all what matters to them isn't the beauty of the whate is said or the poetry in it but if it is truthful, relevant to their quest of the complete and pure reality. In the older Claudia, the one that narrates the story, this quest is shown in the prologue, in which it is explicitely said that she “must take refuse in how”, meaning that the only way for her to find peace after all these years is to know the truth, which is once again the factual complete reality of what happened. To these characters, truth, knowing the facts rather than understanding the “why”, is what can set them free. Finding it and revealing it becomes their main motivation. For The Bluest Eye, it is even the reason for which the narrator writes the story.

Morrison contrasts Pecola’s home life is "crippled and crippling" (Morrison 210): her mother is cold and distant, her father is an alcoholic who rapes her and impregnates her when she is barely twelve years old. Although Claudia’s family is neither rich nor terribly close, her provide for and protect her and her elder sister Frieda. Claudia finds

Unlike so many works in the American literature that deal directly with the legacy of slavery and the years of deeply-embedded racism that followed, the general storyline of Toni Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye”, does not engage directly with such events but rather explores the lingering effects by exploring and commenting on black self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in ”The Bluest Eye”, by Toni Morrison who are African American are consumed with the constant culturally-imposed notions of white beauty, cleanliness, and sanitation to the point where they have disengaged with themselves and have a disastrous tendency to subconsciously act out their feelings of self-loathing on other members of the black community. This is accomplished by offering readers multiple examples of this through the viewpoint-shifting narration of events and revelations that led to tremendous character complexity, as suggested in this literary analysis of “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison is ultimately engaging her readers in a dialogue about how these characters (not to mention readers themselves) can overcome these hindrances to having a healthy relationship with self-images and interpersonal relationships. In presenting the various modes of escape and retreat into hollow notions of whiteness, Morrison demonstrates how this is a damaging way to work through so many years of being abject and objectified. However, as suggested in this

Toni Morrison shows the varying natures of Claudia’s and Pecola’s families, and how those varying natures impact the girls differently. Claudia’s tough, yet still-caring mother is paired with a self-reliant and self-assured Claudia, who has a keen interest in the unfairness of the world when it comes to her race. The Breedlove family, with its inner strife and Mrs. Breedlove’s zeal for experiencing that strife, is paired with a passive and frightened Pecola, who holds her stomach muscles taut and conserves her breath rather than wondering how, or why, her family has gotten to this point. In this manner, Toni Morrison shows how two disadvantaged families can differ so enormously, and how the additive effects of misery can give two characters such significant differences in their personality, lifestyle, and thoughts. The shift from Claudia’s point of view to Pecola’s throughout the novel emphasizes the multiple tragedies Pecola goes through, while still showing that those better off than her go through equally painful experiences as well. Pecola’s “unique case” is thereby emphasized by the comparison between her, Claudia, and the other characters, and has the reader tying together all the elements into the “how” to form their interpretation of the “why” Pecola’s situation became what is

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is not as clear-cut as the physical traits may suggest. Culture has a major role in deciding when that change is. Some cultures use a specific age, while others acknowledge physical changes. Regardless, cultures around the world understand that there is a distinct difference between adolescence and adulthood. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye tells a story from the perspective of Claudia, a black girl growing up in the 1940s. Morrison uses Claudia as a narrator during her youth, and again when she is a grown woman. Morrison uses the shifting perspective to show that the abilities to understand and reflect are what separate women from girls. The Bluest Eye focuses on the idea of the ideal child and

The Bluest Eye, a novel by American Author Toni Morrison, tackles the constant issues during a time where Blacks were almost looked at as non-human, and provides the reader with the internal feelings and ideas that a certain black girl possesses and adores. The Bluest Eye is a novel about racism, yet finds ways to avoid specific examples of oppressions towards blacks from whites, like many other novels discussing the same issues do such as To Kill a Mockingbird. The Bluest Eye gives a more complex depiction of racism. While at times, the characters receive direct oppression, the majority of times that the characters experience any sort of racism are

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and the American culture whose ideal is the quintessential blue-eyed, blonde haired woman. For Pecola Breedlove, blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin is the definition of beauty; however, for Claudia MacTeer, blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin are oppressive cultural standards. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses specific descriptions of Claudia and Pecola’s upbringings to juxtapose how the love and affection

One of the significant themes that Morrison 's, The Bluest Eye scrutinizes is the relationship between race and beauty. The novel examines how white society 's view of beauty serves to degrade, ignore, and criticize African Americans. The Bluest Eye depicts the story of an eleven-year-old black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who desires have blue eyes on the grounds that she sees herself and is viewed by most of the characters in the novel as “ugly.” The standard of “beauty” that her peers aspire to is personified by the young white child actress, Shirley Temple, who has desirable blue eyes. White standards of beauty, an affection of the “blue-eyed, blonde haired" look, are forced upon the black individuals who personalize such social standards, tolerating rejection as real and undeniable, and being not able to meet such standards. They are degraded in their own eyes, producing self-hatred and internalized racial disgust. This perception of their own inadequacy and the mediocrity of their race, when all is said, is strengthened every day through their connections with white individuals and the admired white culture in their general surroundings. Morrison reveals insight into the shielded and implicit truth that everybody to some degree is racist. In The Bluest Eye, by utilizing direct portrayals, symbolic imagery, and racial tension in a black society, Morrison exhibits the darkness of undeniable racism in American society.

Several examples of racism are encompassed in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Characters who are members of the black community are forced to accept their status as the “others”, or “outsiders”, which has been imposed on them by the white community. In turn, blacks assign this status to other individuals within the lighter-skinned black community. In this novel, characters begin to internalize the racism presented by these people, and feel inferior. The stereotype torments them mentally, and in some cases, to the point of insanity.

In 1940s America, superiority was deemed on the scale of black/whiteness. Specifically, white people were positioned at the upper part of the hierarchy, whereas, African Americans were inferior. Consequently, white people were able to control and dictate to the standards of beauty. In her novel, ‘The Bluest Eye’, Toni Morrison draws upon symbolism, narrative voice, setting and ideals of the time to expose the effects these standards had on the different characters. With the juxtaposition of Claudia MacTeer and Pecola Breedlove, who naively conforms to the barrier of social classes, we are able to understand how African American’s in 1940’s America, specifically Ohio, had to adapt to the white ideals/standards of beauty, which subsequently caused self-hatred. Morrison’s novel explores an array of African American characters, who encounter these barriers in several different ways. Through these characters, Morrison’s distortion of the popular ‘Dick and Jane’ books and other texts including ‘Playing in the Dark’, also by Toni Morrison, I will verify the large degree of beauty ideals implicated throughout the novel.

The Bluest Eye(1970) is Morrison’s first novel and also a very powerful study of how African-American families and particularly women are affected by racism and consequent sexual and mental abuse and how these women dwindle into madness. She depicts the struggle of living as a black American in a white, patriarchal society. This work is powerfully engaged with questions of history, memory and trauma. Her novels function as a form of cultural memory and how, in their engagement with African American past, they testify to historical trauma. In a 1989 interview with Bonnie Angelo, Morrison talks about racism as it is taught, institutionalized and culturally reproduced. “Everybody remembers the first time they were taught that part of the human race was Other. That’s a trauma. It’s as though I told you that your left hand is not part of your body.”

Toni Morrison began her literary career with the novel The Bluest Eye published in 1970. Later she published many award-winning and best-selling novels like Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981) and Beloved (1987) which earned her repute as one of the leading African American writers. Morrison’s first published novel The Bluest Eye explores the issues related to the crisis of identity of a Black girl named Pecola in a White European society as a consequence of ‘internalized racism’. Through the protagonist Pecola, Morrison demonstrates the damage caused by ‘internalized racism’ to the minds of the children in the most devastating manner. The novel depicts Pecola’s struggle for identity and self where the epitome of beauty is defined by the standardized White European norms. For Pecola, having blue eyes, blonde hair and pinkish skin tone is the true epitome of beauty, which ultimately results in her suffering. Her life-long craving for the misconceived beauty provides her nothing but a false notion of self and identity.

Do you know what she came for? Blue eyes. New, blue eyes, She said. Like she was buying shoes. "I'd like a pair of new blue eyes." (Morrison) What would you expect from a girl trying to fit it in a society that has inconsiderable beauty standards most of which she does not poses? Toni Morrison tells a tragic tale of a black girl Pecola Breedlove living in a white-dominated society in the period after the great depression. Pecola innocently longs to be accepted in this world. However, she is subject to scrutiny on every possible instance even from her own family. The poor girl has to cope with verbal and physical abuse both at home and in school. Often, she was the center of rude jokes concerning her dark skin among her peers. Worse still, her father molested her severally and impregnated her. Despite the intense rejection, Pecola believed that a pair of blue eyes would change her destiny. This paper will draw a literary analysis to examine how the Toni Morrison uses themes, motif, and symbols to enhance the plot and build on the perception of race and beauty in the book "The Bluest Eyes."

The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison is a very remarkable and noteworthy work of English Literature. ‘The bluest eye’ brings fourth the perception of community in which a racist belief is internalized. Toni Morrison presents a complicated depiction of racism of an African American girl called Pecola Breedlove who hurts because of her physical appearance, colour and family origin. These sufferings are distinctly psychological as opposed to being physical. The novel poignantly illustrates the psychological devastation of Pecola, who is in an endless pursuit for acceptance and love in a world that wholly denies and degrades people of her own race, Pecola longs for blue eyes so that she can be portrayed as beautiful by western cultural criterions.

However, what makes the largest impact is how the child characters, in the end, succumb to the unhealthy beauty ideals. For Pecola the consequences are tragic, she becomes insane in the process of trying to conform to white beauty ideals. But the author also ends the novel with a more positive attitude. Why Morrison chooses to lead and close with the voice of Claudia being overly skeptical towards white notions of beauty is to make the familiar concepts of beauty seem strange to us and challenge our beliefs and assumptions of what it takes to label something as beautiful and perhaps more importantly demonstrate that beauty is not definite and immutable, it is constructed by humans, and is therefore something that can be