Family Relationships in Morrison's The Bluest Eye Essays

Toni Morrison is a nobel prize winning novelist, professor, and editor. Her work is centralized and known for its themes. Her storylines are recognized for surrounding various obstacles african americans had to deal with in the early 1900s. One of her most popular novels is The Bluest Eye. Throughout this novel, Toni Morrison introduces characters whom suffered with various problems. Some of these which include feelings of being inferior, ugly, dirty, etc due to white standards. In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, she portrays how African Americans suffered with self hatred. Alongside questioning their beauty this caused a disturbance in their childhood which lead to: alcoholism, domestic violence, incest, and finally insanity.

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

CORNERSTONE OVERVIEW PRIOR KNOWLEDGE (Before the Unit) Before beginning the Cornerstone, students should have an understanding of the essential end-of-unit essay question: how does Toni Morrison use contrasts to introduce and develop central ideas about truth and beauty in the novel, "The Bluest Eye? " Students should have previewed other texts, media and mediums related to this topic such as: Esther Honig’s “Beauty Around the World” photography and the “I Will What I Want” campaign. Additionally, to build adequate connections, students should: closely read at least five (5) teacher selected excerpts from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, collect textual evidence that illustrates how Toni Morrison uses juxtaposition to explore what is true

In the novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison in 1970, she stated that romantic love and physical beauty are “probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.” During the time period of when this book was written there was a lot of racism and segregation and the beauty standards just has stated in this novel is blond hair and blue eyes.The narrator at this point will be Pauline Breedlove. This statement is related to Pauline because of how she struggled with her romantic love with Cholly and also how she struggled with the idea of beauty. Romantic love and physical beauty are the most destructive ideas in human history because it can have a huge effect on anyone and the idea of beauty and the idea of love can drive

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.

In order to fulfill her greatest desire of having blue eyes, Pecola decided to seek out Soaphead Church for help. Growing up “ugly” resulted in Pecola having internalized self-hatred. She often sat wondering and “trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored and despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike.” To Pecola, eyes were everything; “everything was there, in them” (Morrison 45). Because her eyes were so important, she thought that if her eyes were different– she would be different, too. Pecola thought that this was the key to obtaining the respect that her peers had. Although she did not understand that she was pressured into believing her non-white features, her low self-esteem resulted from these predominantly white beauty standards. Being surrounded by the idealization of white girls with blond hair and blue eyes as the definition of beauty, Pecola began to pray for those blue eyes that were often idolized by whites and blacks alike. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, through a marxist point of view, Pecola’s wish for blue eyes depicts beauty as unattainable as long as European beauty standards continue to be idealized.

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye the main conflict of the story is about an African American girl that believes her life would be better if she had blue eyes, or in other words being white. The setting takes place in Ohio during the 1940’s, also their is a lot of racism in The Bluest Eye although it is not directly brought out. Instead Toni Morrison addresses racism in this story by having people look at themselves with a form of self hatred rather than a race with privilege judging them.

A standard of beauty is established by the society in which a person lives and then supported by its members in the community. In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, we are given an extensive understanding of how whiteness is the standard of beauty through messages throughout the novel that whiteness is superior. Morrison emphasizes how this ideality distorts the minds and lives of African-American women and children. He emphasizes that in order for African-American women to survive in a white racist society, they must love their own race. The theme of race and that white skin is more beautiful is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters in the novel, especially the three girls Claudia, Pecola and Frieda. Through the struggles these characters have endured, Morrison shows us the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and on society.

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.

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,

In every pocket of society, there is some sort of food chain. There are the people at the top, those between, and those at the bottom. This systematic power structure is destroying communities from within. The book, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, is a story about young black girl - Pecola Breedlove - who dreams for her eyes to turn blue. Chunks of the book are written through the eyes of Claudia MacTeer, another young black girl in the Loraine, Ohio.

In Toni Morrison “The Bluest Eye” she examines the terrible outcomes of impressive white, middle-class American standards of attractiveness on the evolving female characteristics of a young African American girl for the period of the early 1940s. Morrison novel touchingly shows the psychological damage of a young black girl perception. Pecola Breedlove was a young girl who searches for love and approval in a world that rejects and undervalues people of her own race and culture. The title of the story bears great significance to Pecola obsession. Quite often Pecola mentions the conservative American values of womanlike beauty such as; white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. These are presented to her by the common icons and ethnicities of the

When people are growing up they are considered as being the most vulnerable. This is the part of life where they absorb negativity like sponges, if exposed to it, and the seeds of how they will react to it are planted. The Bluest Eye is a book by Toni Morrison, which attacks what and who is considered beautiful and “good”. Therefore, it is a book that opens a conversation about the effects white people have had on the United States on black Americans. Through examining the relationships black characters have with white ones, the audience is exposed to how much of an effect the white population has had on black Americans.

Set in the 1940s, during the Great Depression, the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, illustrates in the inner struggles of African-American criticism. The Breedloves, the family the story revolves around a poor, black and ugly family. They live in a two-room store front, which is open, showing that they have nothing. In the family there is a girl named Pecola Breedlove, she is a black and thinks that she is ugly because she is not white. Pecola’s father, Cholly Breedlove, goes through humiliated experiences that shape his future negatively. Claudia MacTeer, Pecola’s friend, thinks differently and is content of her color. The Bluest Eye demonstrates many types of racism and the struggles of embracing the beauty of race.

The plight of the weak against the powerful is one of the oldest and compelling stories that can be told, and it has always been the story of race in the United States. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is a candid look into the lives of African Americans in the early 1940’s, focusing on the drama surrounding the coming of age of young girls. The debilitating effects of racism, sexism, and classism on children and adults of different social statuses are explored through the stories of a number of families. By illustrating a society in which each class elevates itself by oppressing those below them, Morrison demonstrates how the cyclical nature of oppression can cripple a community and family for generations.