Bluest Eye :: essays research papers fc

Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye reveals the trauma of an eleven-year-old Afro-American girl named Pecola Breedlove. This story takes place in the t own 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 strained to endure because she is not considered beautiful by society. Pecola chooses to hide from life back her clouded dream of having the bluest of eyes so that those around her will watch over her as beautiful as the light skinned, blond haired, blue look girls that got so much favoritism. The Breedloves constant bickering and ever maturement poverty contributes to the emotional downfall of this little girl. Pecolas misery and risk is caused by her fathers hand and the communitys endeavor with racial separation, anger, and ignorance. Characters in the black community accept their status as the opposite, 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 persevere as her father rapes her. The communitys anger with its own insecurities is taken out on this poor, ugly, black, non- fancyl young girl. She shields herself from this sorrow behind her obsessional plea for blue eyes. Her eyes do not replace the unhinge of carrying her fleeing fathers baby, nor do they protect her from the sideways glances of her neighbors. Though this intensity discuses negative and disturbing situations, it teaches a very positive lesson about the immensity of self respect and positive thinking. The Bluest Eye explores how outside influences affect one(a)s own sense of beauty and how it is harmful to consider yourself ugly. This write up seems to follow the conclusion of Brown v. Board of Education, that when a society presents the idea of beauty in certain way, those who do not f it into that propose are susceptible 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 move home from school the girls begin to bicker. Their conversation ends with Maureen stomping away and establishing the fact that she is then cute, implying that they most definitely are not.