The Bluest Eye Racial Oppression Essay

“The Bluest Eye” is taking place around 1940 in Lorain, Ohio. During the year of 1940, discrimination, especially toward African Americans, was still a serious problem. People believe that whiteness is the standard of beauty. The main character, Pecola, who was a nine-years-old African-American, was influenced by how people view beauty. Pecola suffered and felt that she is inferior to others. Pecola believed that having a pair of blue eyes would made people think she is pretty, and would be the key resolving all the problems.

Society continues to rape Pecola through its refusal to acknowledge her as a human being. Since society thinks she is “ugly”, no one needs to care for or love her. For example, one of the biggest insults that her peers use for teasing boys is using Pecola as the insult.

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).

Pecola obsesses over all things white because the town makes fun of her blackness. Pecola is alone due to her lack of beauty. In one scene Pecola is laughed at called “e mo” and other names as other black children make fun of her blackness. Morrisons uses collective voice to show the racial segregation at the time was not only white people, but it was the different shades of black. Something that someone cannot control. The boy bullying Pecola “had extemporized a verse made up of two insults about matters over which the victim had no control: the color of her skin”(Morrison, check page#). Pecola, only a young girl begins to become outcasted from society especially after

Morrison wrote “His mother did not like him to play with the niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. The colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud”. When writing this quote Morrison pointed out that the problem with racism in society is also the hypocritical and racist views that some African Americans see each other. A young black boy messes with the a girl named Pecola and thinks of her as someone who is lower than in him in status because she is looked as a “dirty nigger” to other people in the black community, despite being the same race as them. This boy is taught seeing her that way because his mother and also because of the way society looked at black people. Morrison also wrote, “The line between colored and niggers was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant” . In the story, there are different ways to extinguish the difference between the “good” and the “bad” black people. If you were someone from the black community and were “bad” you would have been labeled as a nigger. The only reason some people were labeled as bad was because they were poorer and didn’t have the same education as the others. They were living in an world where everything was a cycle. Whites would be racist towards the African American community, treat them like they are second class citizens and keep them

After she meets Pecola, her concerns go to Pecola. She explains about each and every incident that occurs to Pecola and the reasons behind leading to those incidents. According to Claudia, the narrator of the story, not just Pecola but it was the Breedlove family members who treated themselves the uglier rather than the society. Only the difference is that they make a different mindset deal with it. The narrator vividly mentions by saying, “Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction/And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it” (Morrison 39). This explains more of what they were dealing with. It is impossible to make them believe that they aren’t relentlessly and aggressively ugly (38). Being young, vulnerable and more importantly, female, Pecola is the one who gets abused frequently and endures the damage in greater

“White kids; his mother did not like him playing with niggers, they were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet, niggers were dirty and loud” (Morrison, 87). This racial slur stated in the book The Bluest Eye gives a great view on how racism took place all around the world, it explains how white people choose who them or there kids could play with etc in the 1940’s. “I think that this quote shows how her mother was racist and didn’t like her communicating with “different” people” (Felicia Wright, www.Blogspot.com). One would Agree with Felicia, its obvious that her mother was very racist, she choose who her kids could play with based on there race and the color of there

The plot in The Bluest Eye is the tragedy of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl whose fondest wish is to miraculously awaken one day with blue eyes, thinking that perhaps it will make her mother attentive and her father loving:

     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 addition, of all characters, Pecola has been most damaged by her circumstances in life, beginning with having a family incapable of normal expressions of love and protection. Nearly every event in her life leaves her a victim, "Although their poverty was traditional and stultifying, it was not unique. Their ugliness was unique" (Morrison 53 ). The novel examines what influences led to her fate and what influences kept her from being helped. She believes she deserves the abuse and neglect she experiences at home based on her self-perceived ugliness.

Because "The Bluest Eye" crystallizes the negative affect society can have on people, specifically African American girls in this novel, it is a teachable book for kids to determine the difference between what society wants and what is right. In the novel, Claudia says “We looked hard for flaws to restore equilibrium” (Morrison 68.) Claudia was referring to a white girl in her school. This is significant because society lead these African American girls to drool over white girls because they are supposedly perfect or worthier then them. It teaches kids the effects of society’s actions, and makes them realize self-worth does not come from the way you look. On page 22 of the novel Claudia states, “I try to discover what eludes me” (Morrison

When she hears that Pecola has killed her cat, she calls her a “nasty little black bitch” (92) and throws her out of the house. Geraldine never bothers to get the whole story, so does not know that Junior killed the cat and Pecola was innocent. Despite the injustice, Geraldine does not care about what actually happen, but rather jumps at the opportunity to abuse Pecola. As an ugly, poor, black girl. Pecola epitomizes everything that Geraldine hates about herself. Like Soaphead, Geraldine hates everything about being black and she constantly tries to make herself feel more white. Because of this, she “cleans” herself on Pecola by screaming at her and throwing her out. Geraldine divides the population into people like herself and people like Pecola, then, by putting people like Pecola down, she boosts her ego and feels less like a black person.

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).

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

Pecola is a subject to characteristics of society that were responsible for classifying her as an “other.” Entities within this society are prone to being ostracized by uncontrolled external factors. “Black” individuals are treated poorly due to their color of skin being considered a “degradation;” meanwhile the “whites” are worshiped as though they portray mere perfection—Rosemary Villanucci. Rosemary