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The Bluest Eye, By Toni Morrison

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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, presents the reader with some of the strong racial imbalances present in the African American communities in the United States. The novel, The Bluest Eye, addresses many themes such as, feminism, rape culture, repetition in rupture, abjection, oppression, racism and the innocence of youth (Morrison 1970). The evident issue in the novel is the way that the African American people oppress not only themselves but others, to the standards of the white American standards of things such as beauty. The characters, Pecola and Pauline, are the major characters in the novel and are, as written by Morrison (1970), the ciphers of the way African Americans treated each-other and themselves in a time of racial oppression…show more content…
Cholly is the perfect example of such a concept being put into action when he rapes Pecola (Morrison 1970). It is important in this instance, taking repetition in rupture into account, to understand the mentality of why Pecola’s father would do such a thing to her. Cholly grew up in a non-nurturing environment, also rejected by his parents by abandonment, and left to be raised by his aunt. Cholly in this instance did not share a typical mother-son relationship as any child would. His sharing of his bed with his aunt did not make him feel any connection of parental-love and therefore cannot show it to his own daughter. Cholly, taking his past into consideration, never learnt how to be an adult and does not know how to express love and nurture healthfully. For Cholly, his only experience of love is sex and his experience with it is not sufficient either to be able to feel real love (Morrison 1970). In the novel, Cholly has a reaction of disgust towards his daughter because of her hopelessness. Cholly’s hatred for his own past and the experiences that he has gone through develops into an unhealthy hatred towards his own daughter. Rape causes psychological defects in its victims causing them to retract from society. It is worse in…show more content…
For the community in which the Breedloves find themselves, light skin is better and blue eyes makes you beautiful (So also thought and believed by Pecola). In their society, the Black women who look the most beautiful have an almost white skin (Inggris 2009:10). According to Inggris, the character Maureen Peel is envied less for her wealth than for her skin colour. Just as Pecola tries to conform and assimilates values of self-worth from the white world, Pauline receives her education in self-hatred from the films that she watches, where she is introduced to White physical beauty. Pauline works for the Fishers, a white family, where she adopts their lifestyle and values because for her they are more meaningful than her
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