Cultural Discrimination In Pecola By Toni Morrison

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.

“What is racism? Racism is a projection of our own fears onto another person. What is sexism? It’s our own vulnerability of our potency and masculinity projected as our need to subjugate from another person…” Gary Ross’s breakdown of the age-defying constructions of race and sexism exemplify how fabricated standards can take a toll on the well-being of individuals. American novelist Toni Morrison is renowned for her publications illustrating how racial stigma can dent a character physically, mentally and emotionally. “Sweetness”, an excerpt from God Help the Child, one of Morrison’s more recent works, follows the narrative of a guilt-stricken mother who allowed society’s predetermined notions of race interfere with her parenting, as her daughter was undeniably black while she and her husband have negro roots but are lighter skinned or ‘high-yellow’. As the story develops, it is obvious that the narrator, Lula Ann’s mother feels some sort of resentment for mistreating her child and holding her back from experiencing a blissful childhood like other youngsters, but is too shameful to admit it. With time, tables turn and Lula Ann, Lula Mae’s daughter is able to regain her self-esteem, moves away, builds a career, and is preparing to settle down with a family of her own and change her miserable fate given to her by her parents. Morrison successfully translates the destructive effects of prioritizing racial constructs through varied elements including: characterization, point of

No matter how ugly, mean, pitiful one can be, the family is always meant to support, raise, guide, nurture and be a means of inspiration in anyone’s life. In the novel, this isn’t the case for Pecola, which is why she gets mentally unstable as she couldn’t bear the torture of ugliness of not having blue eyes. Blue eyes are the one and only reason she could blame as per to her ability and thought process. In fact, she doesn’t get the real ugliness of how her father rapes her, the ugliness of how the mother choose the white girl over her, the ugliness of the fights between her parents is coming from their unpleasant past. After all, she doesn’t have that mentor in her life to explain what was happening. Everybody in her family is occupied with their own mindset. She is very young to understand and analyze on her own. The narrator Claudia even gets to compare between her and Pecola and starts accepting life and feel blessed for having a supportive family, which she doesn’t feel until Pecola enters in her life. So, this shows how young kids psychology is totally built upon the type of family environment she/he gets. There is a saying that young kids are like a raw clay ready to be shaped into the different form of objects by the potter. Undoubtedly, it stands so true. Indeed, kids shape themselves according to the type of environment they grow up with. By all means, Pecola’s family is the

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.

Many unfortunate events took place during Cholly’s upbringing that had a direct negative affect on the relationship he holds with both Pauline and Pecola. The challenges and experiences Cholly faces throughout his life continually shape him into the adult he has become and help clarify the reasons for his actions.

In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison confirms the existence of racism within the African American community. Unbelievably, many African Americans suffer from what is termed internalized racism. Internalized racism produces the same effect as racial racism: feelings of worthlessness, inferiority, and unattractiveness. In addition, the effect can produce the opposite feelings: superiority, hatred, and feelings of self-worth. Pecola, an 11-year-old black girl, desires to have the physical characteristics of a white person, namely blue eyes. Polly, Pecola’s mother, prefers the white culture living rather than her own. The feelings that the black race experience stem from the programming of a racist society to think that the white race is better. As a result, African Americans long to be white or look white. This consumption of whiteness represents internalized racism.

In the novel, Claudia Macleer, the narrator and childhood friend of Pecola is given white baby dolls, which she dismembers. As Claudia reflects on the fact that she occasionally feels the impulse to do the same to little white girls, she asks: “what made people look at them and say, ‘awwwww,’ but not for me” (22)? While the circumstances in which she has this revelation are a bit extreme, it shows that in her society, there is an implicit message that being white is equal to being beautiful and that if you’re a young white girl, you’re beautiful but, if you’re a young black girl, you’re a monster. At the age of eleven, Pecola detests everything about herself. She thinks that because she’s black she’s ugly and doesn’t deserve to be loved.

Pecola's parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline always felt like an outsider in her family and constantly suffers through feelings of loneliness and ugliness. She wants to love her daughter but finds Pecola unattractive. Pauline works for a wealthy white family and finds her comfort in their house. Cholly was abandoned by his parents and brought up by his aunt. He was often humiliated by white people and built up a great rage toward whites and women. When he met and married Pauline, things were good for a time, but he soon felt trapped and unhappy. The marriage is dull, except for those moments when they are fighting.

Pecola is first introduced as a foster child coming to live with McTeer family after her father burned down the Breedlove house. She arrives with nothing but the clothes on her back, exhibiting a shy demeanor. The effects of years of abuse and neglect are immediately evident through her interactions with Claudia and Frieda. She is compliant with whatever they do, trying her best not to draw attention to herself: “When we discovered that she clearly did not want to dominate us, we liked her. She laughed when I clowned for her, and smiled and gracefully accepted the food gifts my sister gave her” (Morrison 19). As the three girls stay together, Pecola’s insecurities are unveiled. She is aware that others dub her as ‘ugly’, and believes she is

“Her writing demands participatory reading” (Bump). But do critics or even readers themselves feel comfortable enough to discuss this experience? Did Morrison tell too much of the truth about society that it exposed their own ugliness? Some critics have remarked on the emotional impact of The Bluest Eye but can feelings about beauty and ugliness enable white readers to become more conscious of the impact of racism? We can use this novel as a template as an ethical emotive criticism that connects feelings to thought - psychological models of racism, stigmatism, judging by appear-ance, and hierarchies of emotions (Bump). Using Claudia as the narrator, Morrison uses her feel-ings of anger to express how she herself feels; Pecola is too vulnerable to be angry at what she goes through but it is Morrison who is angry at the dissolution of African-Americans and their appearance. The novel itself intensifies rather than deflects the reader’s sense of Morrison’s an-ger. Morrison’s scale of anger about racism parallels with the characters and what happens to them in the book, meaning that as Claudia gets angry or upset with Pecola at times, us as readers should too. Morrison’s anger does not just come about to write a good story but out of frustra-tion, she wants readers to understand that race is an ideologically

Cholly rapes Pecola in an attempt to understand his feelings, which stem from his youth. He grows up with no mother or father and as a result “he could not even comprehend what [a parent-child] relationship should be” (160). Cholly even fails to understand the role of a child in and of itself. “The aspect of marriage that…rendered him totally disfunctional was the appearance of children” (160). The absence of family relations in Cholly’s youth leaves him with a lack of knowledge on how those relationships should work. When Cholly faces paternal concern for his daughter, he interprets it in the only way he knows how. In an attempt to feel worthy of the love Pecola feels for him, Cholly rapes Pecola.

Cholly was abandoned when he was only four days old, and was raised up by his great Aunt Jimmy. When he was young, he had his first sexual encounter with a girl and was caught by two white men when he was in the middle of the sexual act. Instead of getting angry at him, the two men urged Cholly to keep going. Cholly felt powerless when the white men came and told him to keep going, so he took his anger out on the girl because she was more vulnerable than him. “Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him. They were big, white armed me. He was small, black, helpless.” (p. 150) Cholly had little control in his life because of the society he lives in, and he tries to take his anger out on anyone he can who is weaker than him. Cholly also never had actual parents because his father left before he was born and his mother abandoned him when he was only a baby. Society’s white standards of having a stable nuclear family never happened in Cholly’s family. “Having no idea of how to raise children, and having never watched any parent raise himself, he could not even comprehend what such a relationship should be.” (p. 160) Cholly never felt the affections of a parent so he did not know how to show affection to his children. As a

Her son, forbidden from befriending children deemed too black and uncultured, initially longed for a connection with the boys whose “hardness… and wild blackness” (87) he admires. However, he eventually internalizes the message that the shade of his skin renders him superior to his peers and he decides to avoid contact with them. Geraldine’s obsession with pedantic distinctions between different groups of black residents in Lorain leads her son and the whole next generation to preserve the biases of their parents. The maltreatment practiced by those of mixed race has a real impact on those they perceive as inferior. Maureen Peal is a wealthy mixed race girl that moves to Pecola’s school. She enters Pecola’s narrative by holding some boys intent on harrassing Pecola at bay and starts a friendly conversation with her. Soon after, she turns on Pecola and feeling her image being threatened yells “I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!” (73). Pecola, who had idolized Maureen for her cute looks and popularity, is devastated. The repetition in Maureen’s declaration mirrors the constancy of society’s message to young black girls like Pecola: she is not valuable, and it is because of her race. Maureen, as a person of mixed race, is hardly the model most white children would aspire to. She possesses only an increment of superiority over girls like Pecola, but that slight advantage allows her to show disdain to the lesser

Since childhood, we all have been taught that “racism is bad” and should be avoided at all costs. We have been told that “everyone is a child of God and we are all created equal.” In fact, Americans are praised for the so called equality they possess. However, Toni Morrison sheds light on the sheltered and unspoken truth that everyone to some extent is racist. “In Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, instead of establishing a home where race doesn't matter a home which she dreams of, she creates just the opposite” (koachar 1). The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In “The Bluest Eye” , Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. In “The Bluest Eye” , Toni Morrison uses symbols and conflicts to portray self hatred & show how standards of society oppress people of color .

In his essay “When Home Fails to Nurture the Self: Tragedy of Being Homeless at Home”, Leester Thomas argues that, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, is split into four sections; the first section Thomas titles “Outdoors: The Meaning of Such Wretchedness” (53), which is followed by “The First Eviction: Rejection of Self by Mainstream Society” (53), “ The Second Eviction: Rejection of Self by the Black Community” (54) and lastly, “The Final Eviction Notice: Rejection of self by the biological family” (55). I agree with Thomas’ analysis of The Bluest Eye and Morrison herself, along with the more direct analysis of Pecola herself, I will argue that much like the conditions for marigolds to grow, the conditions that Pecola was immersed in didn’t allow for her to grow, and ultimately lead to her destruction.