Character Analysis Of Pecola And Frieda Admire Shirley Temple 's Beauty

Pecola evaluated herself ugly, and wanted to have a pair of blue eyes so that every problem could be solved. Pecola was an African-American and lived in a family with problems. Her father ran away because of crime, her brother left because of their fighting parents, and was discriminated simply because she has dark-skin. Pecola is a passive person. She is almost destroyed because of her violent father, Cholly Breedlove, who raped her own daughter after drinking. Because of this, Pecola kept thinking about her goal- to reach the standard of beauty. However, she was never satisfied with it. Pecola believed once she become beautiful, fighting between her parents would no longer happen, her brother would come back, and her father would no long be a rapist. No problem would exist anymore.

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison depicts racism all throughout the novel. Discrimination is very heavy in the 1940s, and the protagonist Pecola Breedlove experiences that. Pecola is a lower-class black girl who is constantly picked on for not only her looks, but her uncontrollable family situation. Maureen Peal is a new girl that arrives at Pecola’s school, and she is an upper-class, wealthy black girl. When Maureen goes out for ice cream with Pecola, Frieda, and Claudia, the girls talk about menstruation, and Maureen accuses Pecola if she has ever seen her father naked. Pecola denies the accusation, and conflict arises between the girls. Maureen shouts, “‘I am cute! And you are ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!’” (Morrison 73).

She also wrote "No one could have convinced them that were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly." (Morrison 38), and “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.” (Morrison 39). This shows the attitude that the whole family had about themselves. It says that they felt no one could prove to them that since they were black, that they were not ugly. They just didn’t think very much of themselves. Then she describes how Pecola and her whole family were reminded every day that they are not beautiful, not white.

The affiliation between beauty and whiteness limits the concept of beauty only to the person’s exterior. The characters are constantly subjected to images and symbols of whiteness through movies, books, candy, magazines, baby dolls and advertisements. Another example of the images and symbols in the novel is when the black protagonist, Pecola, feasts on a ‘Mary Jane’ candy.

     Although there are many different characters in this novel that are affected by the great advertisement of the beauty of a female in society, Pecola is the one to end up being insane due to the images- the image that she couldn’t possibly attain. Pecola grew up believing that she was born into an ugly family, making her ugly also. The ugliness wasn’t just from the window signs and newspapers, it was from her family and her neighbors. Therefore, she seeks the next best thing in her life, to have those blue eyes of a white girl, thinking

In this book, the society treats the white race better than the black race. For example, in part 2 of “The Bluest Eye”, Pecola is tricked by a boy named Louis Junior when he invites her back to his house and gets his cat to attack her. After unintentionally killing his own cat, Junior's mother returns home and treats Pecola with extreme disgust and hatred, immediately blaming her for the death of his cat. Junior’s mother act this way because of the society. In their society, the people call the Black race “niggers”(Morrison 87), ugly, and dirty. They blame everything on the Blacks and that’s why Pecola was blamed for the death of the cat. Junior’s mom doesn’t even know if Pecola kills or did not kill the cat, but since she’s black, she will be blamed. The society teaches the Blacks to hate their own race since this society teaches people to treat the Blacks badly with disgust while treating the Whites or light-color Blacks better with praise. People are races because the society is racist. Pecola envies the white race and that’s how she develops her self-image. She also thinks of herself as inferior, unwanted, and ugly when the society thinks of her and her race that way. The society also teaches the people that the Whites are more superior than the Blacks. For example, a little girl “calling Mrs. Breedlove Polly when even Pecola called her mother Mrs. Breedlove” (Morrison 108), showing that the white little girl is superior so she gets to call the black race by their name. Similar to this situation, when Pecola accidentally makes the pie fell to the floor, Mrs. Breedlove “yanked (Pecola) up by the arm, slapped her again, and… abused Pecola directly” (Morrison 109) and cares for the little girl when she cried for the fallen pie. This is also because of the society’s racist. The society teaches the people to treat the white race better than black race. Mrs.Breedlove follow the society’s racist and

Pecola 's admiration of Shirley Temple is an example of internalized racialism. "She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple 's dimpled face"(19). Freida and Pecola admired Shirley Temple. They had a loving conversation about how cute Shirley Temple was. Pecola is obsessed with the white girl 's physical beauty. This is obvious by the fact that she would drink a lot of milk from the Shirley Temple cup. Her drinking the milk signifies her wanting to consume whiteness. Pecola feels that she would be pretty if she possessed what the racist society considers pretty -

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison shows that anger is healthy and that it is not something to be feared; those who are not able to get angry are the ones who suffer the most.  She criticizes Cholly, Polly, Claudia, Soaphead Church, the Mobile Girls, and Pecola because these blacks in her story wrongly place their anger on themselves, their own race, their family, or even God, instead of being angry at those they should have been angry at: whites.

Her self worth is defined by the color of her eyes and the color of her skin, this delusion is a product of the effect that this idea has had on Pecola’s life. There is a constant pattern in the book where characters admire others as though they were hoping to one day attain their characteristics. Characters in the story develop an unrealistic and unhealthy admiration for white personas that further make them believe that they are worth less. For example, Pecola and her friend Frieda are mesmerized and almost hypnotized by Shirley Temples perceived beauty (put page number here). Similarly to Pecola, Mrs. Breedlove, consumes her days in an unrealistic world where she admires actresses and prefers to stay at work cleaning for what she believes to be the superior class than to go home and spend time with her family (put page number here).

Pecola is constantly labeled as inferior due to her ugliness and copes with her sorrow by conforming to society’s label. Throughout the novel, Pecola’s fascination with white girls is heavily expressed. It is first shown very early on when Pecola admires the Shirley Temple cup. Claudia narrates, “She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple’s dimpled face” (19).

Morrison uses the examples of Shirley Temple, a popular, white child actress during the time period, and popular dolls in the 1940s to show the effect that mass culture had on young black women. It is ironic when Claudia states that unlike older, young black girls around her, her hatred for whiteness has not yet turned to love. As a naive child, Claudia, who doesn’t see the beauty that others see in popular children’s dolls, takes apart her doll to find its beauty, thinking that its beauty must be physically inside of it. She has yet to learn that, in the society she lives in, beauty is dictated by cultural norms, meaning that the doll itself is only beautiful because popular culture views whiteness as superior to everything else. Claudia’s

Initially, as I read this quote, I began to sympathize with Pecola and the plight she faces as an African American female. This is the first time in the novel we are exposed to the desire Pecola vehemently prays for daily, this desire being blue eyes. The reason I sympathized for the girl beyond the fact that attaining blue eyes for her would be impossible, is because she blames her blue-lacking eye color, or her ugliness as she classifies it as, as a way to justify everything that has gone wrong in her life. Take, for instance, Cholly, her dad, and her mother, Mrs. Breedlove’s fights. Even though their fights arise from the problems they have between themselves, Pecola continues to believe that her ugliness has struck her with not only undesirable

Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old black girl who desperately wants blue eyes because she thinks they’ll make her beautiful. Because of her father, she becomes the epicenter of town gossip and a scapegoat that the people use to make themselves feel superior. Pecola feels hated and ugly in her community because she’s black and seems convinced that if she had blue eyes, all her problems would go away. Morrison’s novel is a timeless work of art that explores and develops many themes such as the idea that being white is equivalent to being beautiful. Like many incredible pieces of literature, the novel continues to inspire people.

Those who judge character through beauty are blind. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye determines how the individuals are alienated from their society through physical appearances. Throughout The Bluest Eye, the factors that determine, contribute, and provide an escape from, segregation are discussed. This novel emphasizes the unfortunate life of protagonist Pecola Breedlove by exhibiting her class conflict, mental state, physical attractiveness, and much more.