Discrimination In The Bluest Eye

beauty in her culture, Pecola must do the impossible: find white beauty. Toni Morrison shows

Despite knowing that they are "nicer, brighter," they cannot ignore "the honey voices of parents and aunts and the obedience in the eyes of [their] peers, the slippery light in the eyes of [their] teachers" when Maureen is around or the topic of conversation (74). The way Maureen dresses and behaves in front of adults is not the only way she affects Claudia and Frieda. With racist comments such as, "What do I care about her old black daddy...[and] you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute," she infuriates the girls, for in their eyes Maureen is black too. Racist attitudes like Maureen's affect the poorer, darker blacks and can eventually lead them to think racist thoughts of their own.

The first white character majorly presented is the neighbor Rosemary, who is depicted as being a beautiful little white girl on the outside, but spiteful, petty, and childish on the inside as she repeatedly attempts to get Freida, Claudia, and Pecola in trouble (Morrison 30). This theme of beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside persists as the novel progresses. One of the character that represents this most clearly is Maureen, a light-skinned black girl who comes to school with girls in the Winter (Morrison 62). Because of her pale skin, she is treated better than the other African American girls at the school, like Frieda, Pecola, and Claudia, and it is clear that she internalizes this superiority (Morrison 63). The internalized superiority becomes clear as she spends time with the girls, teasing and taunting them all the while, and ultimately saying, “‘I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos! I am cute (Morrison 73)!’” In saying this, Maureen is stating that to be black is to be ugly, and, by that same measure, denying the reality of her own blackness. This shows the subjective and fluid nature of standards of beauty resting in whiteness, and also how, within the novel, being beautiful by mainstream white standards leads to flaws in

...Morrison explores in the novel [and] centers upon the standard of beauty by which white women are judged in this country. They are taught that their blonde hair, blue eyes, and creamy skins are not only wonderful, but

The fourth chapter of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”is about the identity development in adolescence. It is said that when black children are growing up, they engage in many of the white culture’s beliefs and values as it is all around them. It is not until a little later where they begin to recognize the impact of racism. This can happen around the early stages of adulthood. It might even happen around the junior high age. Gender also comes into play around this time as well. A black girl wouldn't be acknowledged for her beauty in a white setting as she is not in the society's standard for beautiful. Since the black girls aren’t considered beautiful, they begin to feel devalued. The black youth are beginning

While Morrison paint the picture of a highly disfunctional family, in which the son is a bully and the mother is unable to

As you read, you notice that Morrison never really just states the race of the girls for a reason: to allow the readers to form their own opinion. The story starts off with Twyla being dropped off at the orphanage by her mother. This is where she met Roberta, who became a close friend, the two girls started bonding because no one wanted to play with them, and the reason for that, as Twyla states is that, “we weren’t real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky” (pg 201). The two girls of the opposite race were just two abandoned girls whose mother’s did not have the ability to raise them right. Although the girls didn’t have many friends, they made their time at St.Bonnys very adventurous. The last time the girls saw each other at St.Bonnys was at the picnic, which shortly Robertas mother came and took her home. This event made the first mall breakage in their friendship.

She recalls her mother’s comments, “Could you imagine if she had light skin at all? [With her features] she’d be gorgeous” (Dark Girls). This shows the extent to which the color complex affected the minds of most people including mothers- the way they viewed their children. Both the book and the film show how colorism affected notions of beauty within the African American

Pecola Breedlove is one of the characters who constantly tries to consume whiteness. She first exhibits this behavior when she drinks three quarts of milk (Morrison 19). By drinking a large quantity of milk, Pecola attempts to absorb the whiteness of the milk, expressing her inner desire to be white. Moreover, she drinks the milk out of a Shirley Temple cup. During the 20th century, Shirley Temple epitomizes the cute, little white girl of the era. Hence, when Pecola drinks milk out of the Shirley Temple cup, Pecola attempts to be like Shirley Temple, a white girl adored by society. Another situation Pecola tries to consume whiteness is when she buys the Mary Jane candies (49). The wrapper of the Mary Jane candy depicts a girl with a “Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle

In this novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the author depicts a culture in which white people and white lifestyles are idealized and the standards for beauty are very generalized around whites. In this novel, the author questions the truths by which white standards of beauty are held and depicts the impact and growth it has on her characters and the long-term effects of these “beauty standards”. Claudia was much better able to handle rejecting the white, middle class America’s standards of beauty. Claudia and Pecola are similar in the sense that they both suffered from racist beauty standards and abuse growing up. However, Claudia was always the stronger of the two and did not feed into the standards of beauty set in her society.

Through an internal conflict Logic and Morrison both display the theme that race shouldn't be the standard that determines beauty. Logic is looking back into his past and is commenting on what has happened in the past, "You know, he grew up, her callin' him a nigger / the kids at school callin' him a cracker

Toni Morrison introduces us to Claudia, a young African American girl, in her book The Bluest Eye. Claudia displays a mature voice—showing awareness of her environment’s social constructions and how the people around her interact with them. Claudia is gifted a doll for Christmas. Morrison uses this doll to symbolize the standard of beauty that Claudia is growing up with—blue eyes and blond hair. Right away the doll causes Claudia distress and confusion, not understanding why she was given the doll. Claudia’s responses to the doll display her viewpoint of society’s standard. She ends up “dismembering” the doll, stating that her initial intention was to “discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability” of the doll (Morrison 20). However,

Fulfillment of a wish may be even more tragic than the wish impulse itself, the wish to see things as differently as one wants to be seen. The connection between how one is seen and what one sees has a uniquely tragic outcome for Pecola. She is a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in their own ugliness. Because she is black she may have a chance at being loved, but because she is a scapegoat and must carry all of their problems, she destroys herself and can redeem no chance at being loved. Her ugliness makes them feel beautiful. Her suffering makes them feel lucky. Her internalization of their self-hatred being forced upon her pushes her to the brink of insanity. Forced furthur and furthur into her fantasy world, which is her only defense against the pain, Pecola uses that pain to escape reality and make herself disappear. She goes mad believing that her wish has been granted and she has blue eyes, but her fate is far worse than death as she is offered no release. Pecola’s wandering at the edge of town haunts the community, reminding them of the ugliness and hatred they’ve tried to

Therefore Morrison's novel must be viewed not only as a retelling of a former slave who committed infanticide and what becomes of her but, as a history of an actual event and the parameters under which it occurred.

Toni Morrison offers a means for a little black girl to feel worthy of love even if the world tells her differently. She uses Claudia MacTeer to illustrate this idea. Claudia feels worthy of love because of her family. For example, Claudia tells us “I had only one desire: to dismember it… to find the beauty… all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink- skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (22). She mentions later I destroyed white baby dolls” (22). White baby dolls are symbols of beauty. Claudia dismembers the white baby dolls to find out what is inside of them. She finds nothing inside of the dolls to justify their beauty, only the white skin on the outside. She learns that being black means you are not beautiful and unworthy of love. In order to be beautiful according to society, you must be white. Claudia destroys white baby dolls because she wants to destroy the idea that you have to be physically white to be beautiful. Despite society considering Claudia not being beautiful, she still feels that she is unworthy of love. For Christmas, Claudia wishes she could be with her grandmother and grandfather in the kitchen. This shows that