How Does Rosemary I Pecola Contribute To The Alienation Of Beauty

The setting and imagery are all based around hate,cruelty and irresponsibility of black people among themselves. These people feel no sort of compassion for Pecola’s plight, there is no love for the black baby in contrast to the love and care that is being bestowed on the “White baby dolls.” The writer Toni Morrison uses words like “the flared nose, kissing-thick lips, and the living, breathing silk of black skin,” to describe the baby, although the baby shares the same features with the same people who surround it without any form of pity or positive emotion for it and it’s mother. This shows that it is not the white community that destroys pecola but her parents and the black people around her.

Instead of comforting her child or trying to make sure she isn’t hurt Mrs. Breedlove begins attacking Pecola. She is more concerned with her crying charge as she calls her baby and comforts her. She tells Pecola to take the laundry and get out. Pecola is further showed that because of the color of her skin even her mother does not deem her more important than a blonde haired, blue eyed white child. The uncaring and harsh attitude of her mother and father only lower her self-esteem and her poor

Morrison portrays Pecola as an ugly, little, rejected, black girl '' who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes'' (Morriison,174), for she is mistreated by her society and even her family. Even though wishing for blue eyes might seem awkward and meaningless, it actually makes sense when one looks at Pecola's circumstances.

When Pecola was born, her mother even recollects, “Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (128). The person who was to love Pecola unconditionally was biased against her just because she was not as pleasant to look at as other people. One of the other issues Pecola faced was that she was an African-American living in America at a time when people were still extremely biased against anyone who was not white. The store owner, Mr. Yacobowski, seemed to look through Pecola because she was not the same color. Pecola notices the distaste as “She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people.

     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

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.

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

Through the character of Pecola Breedlove, Toni Morrison illustrates that society has caused black people to lose their self-esteem and feel inferior to white people. All her life, Pecola is vulnerable to the messages society carries about black people because of who she is: a black girl in her youth. The narrator, Claudia (as an adult) described Pecola as the person that everyone compared themselves to in order to feel better about themselves. “Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor.” (p. 205) Society had made black people feel less superior than white people, and as a result, the people in Pecola’s life used Pecola as a scapegoat. And

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,

The character most affected by racism is Pecola Breedlove. Pecola Breedlove’s character is defined by several different types of racism. It is present in her family, especially

And as a black girl/little woman living in this society where “blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned” beauty is what “the world said was lovable” (Morrion, 21), Pecola has always been told that she is ugly, with her visit to Yacobowski’s store being the most telling example, during which she detects in the way he saw her a complete “absence of human recognition—the glazed separateness” (Morrison, 48). And in this environment, Pecola grows up drinking from a Shirley Temple and eating Mary Jane candies, because she believes that “to eat the candy is somehow to . . . eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane” (Morrison, 50). As far as this little girl is concerned, she is not truly human until she has blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. This belief is a result of being birthed into and then living in destructive dominant culture that marks “blackness” as contemptible, as entirely “other”, as less than human. So, convinced in her unworthiness, Pecola prays “fervently” (Morrison, 47) for blue eyes, so that not only she would feel more human, the world around

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.

Besides the inherent self-confident issue, the outside voice from community is also affecting Pecola’s view. For example, in the “accident” when Pecola went into Junior’s house, Junior killed the cat and impute to Pecola. His mother, Geraldine, saw Pecola was holding the dead cat. Without any thought and didn’t even ask for the truth, Geraldine simply called Pecola a “nastylittle black bitch.” This event, again, reinforces Pecola’s view of what beauty means.

In the novel The Bluest Eye, author Toni Morrison uses the internalization of beauty standards and its effect on characters’ social interactions with the community to reveal society’s assumption that appearance is the decisive factor in determining one’s status and critique its detrimental effect on one’s personal identity.

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by