Racism In The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

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

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place in Ohio in the 1940s. The novel is written from the perspective of African Americans and how they view themselves. Focusing on identity, Morrison uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, dictation, and symbolism to help stress her point of view on identity. In the novel the author argues that society influences an individual's perception on beauty, which she supports through characters like Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove. Furthermore, the novel explains how society shapes an individual's character by instilling beauty expectations. Morrison is effective in relaying her message about the various impacts that society has on an individual's character through imagery, diction, and symbolism by showing that

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

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 Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is a story about the life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who is growing up during post World War I. She prays for the bluest eyes, which will “make her beautiful” and in turn make her accepted by her family and peers. The major issue in the book, the idea of ugliness, was the belief that “blackness” was not valuable or beautiful. This view, handed down to them at birth, was a cultural hindrance to the black race.

The desire to feel beautiful has never been more in demand, yet so impossible to achieve. In the book “The Bluest Eye”, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the story of two black families that live during the mid-1900’s. Even though slavery is a thing of the past, discrimination and racism are still a big issue at this time. Through the whole book, characters struggle to feel beautiful and battle the curse of being ugly because of their skin color. Throughout the book Pecola feels ugly and does not like who she is because of her back skin. She believes the only thing that can ever make her beautiful is if she got blue eyes. Frieda, Pecola, Claudia, and other black characters have been taught that the key to being beautiful is by having white skin. So by being black, this makes them automatically ugly. In the final chapter of the book, the need to feel beautiful drives Pecola so crazy that she imagines that she has blue eyes. She thinks that people don’t want to look at her because they are jealous of her beauty, but the truth is they don’t look at her because she is pregnant. From the time these black girls are little, the belief that beauty comes from the color of their skin has been hammered into their mind. Mrs. Breedlove and Geraldine are also affected by the standards of beauty and the impossible goal to look and be accepted by white people. Throughout “The Bluest Eye” Toni Morrison uses the motif of beauty to portray its negative effect on characters.

Toni Morrison is America’s most prominent contemporary authors, that published her first breathtaking novel “The Bluest Eye” in 1970’s, right after the peak of the African-American movement in the late 1960’s. The mass popular movement was indeed a poignant reminder of the passing of time. As the novel has gained increasing attention from literary critics around the world, it has set the very definition of black standard beauty and its conformity to white standards. Morrison gives the audience an insight of how Pecola Breedlove, a passive and impressionable 11- year old, views her own standard of beauty amongst the cruelty of the white society. For Pecola, there are two things in this world; beauty and ugliness. Beauty is varied through different

Unlike so many works in the American literature that deal directly with the legacy of slavery and the years of deeply-embedded racism that followed, the general storyline of Toni Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye”, does not engage directly with such events but rather explores the lingering effects by exploring and commenting on black self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in ”The Bluest Eye”, by Toni Morrison who are African American are consumed with the constant culturally-imposed notions of white beauty, cleanliness, and sanitation to the point where they have disengaged with themselves and have a disastrous tendency to subconsciously act out their feelings of self-loathing on other members of the black community. This is accomplished by offering readers multiple examples of this through the viewpoint-shifting narration of events and revelations that led to tremendous character complexity, as suggested in this literary analysis of “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison is ultimately engaging her readers in a dialogue about how these characters (not to mention readers themselves) can overcome these hindrances to having a healthy relationship with self-images and interpersonal relationships. In presenting the various modes of escape and retreat into hollow notions of whiteness, Morrison demonstrates how this is a damaging way to work through so many years of being abject and objectified. However, as suggested in this

The novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison is subjected on a young girl, Pecola Breedlove and her experiences growing up in a poor black family. The life depicted is one of poverty, ridicule, and dissatisfaction of self. Pecola feels ugly because of her social status as a poor young black girl and longs to have blue eyes, the pinnacle of beauty and worth. Throughout the book, Morrison touches on controversial subjects, such as the depicting of Pecola's father raping her, Mrs. Breedlove's sexual feelings toward her husband, and Pecola's menstruation. The book's content is controversial on many levels and it has bred conflict among its readers.

In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison confirms the existence of racism within the African American community. Unbelievably, many African Americans suffer from what is termed internalized racism. Internalized racism produces the same feelings as racial racism: worthlessness, inferiority, and unattractiveness. However, internalized racism can also produce opposite feelings: superiority, hatred, and self-worth. Pecola, an 11-year-old black girl, desires to have the physical characteristics of a white person, namely blue eyes. Polly, Pecola’s mother, prefers the white society’s way of living, rather than her own. African Americans’ feelings of inferiority stem from the programming of a racist society to think that the white race is better.

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye writes the book while she was teaching at Howard University. She decided to center the book around an eleven year old African American who is coming of age and accepting one’s beauty. Pecola’s family does not show her the love and affection that an eleven year old needs in a community full of people who are racist. In the world that Pecola grows up in she believes that she is ugly because she is not classified as a beautiful white girl with blue eyes. The racism that is shown in the book can affect the way she sees herself because the more Pecola hears what people are saying about her the more she is going to believe them. Throughout Pecola’s experiences she has taken her bad experience making them

The novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, reveals thetragedy of beauty in society and its role in African-American segregation from white culture. Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist of the novel, is an eleven-year-old girl who, like the rest of her black community, has adopted the belief the whiteness was the standard of beauty. In this world contaminated ofdamagingwhite values, Pecola desiresblue eyes, believing that they would bring her beauty, love and social acceptance, and thereby allowing her to transcend her miserable situation of abuse from her family and community. However, Pecola’shopes of achieving this aspiration fall apart when her fatherrapes and impregnates her. This calamity forces her further into an imaginary world that shields

Racial oppression, the definition of beauty, internalized racism, and sexual violence are a few of the recurring themes that women experience throughout Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and while some emerge from oppression, there is one character who remains a victim of various characters until the very end. Lois Tyson defines in “Critical Theory Today”, that a suspended woman is “the victim of men and society as a whole, with few or no options, ‘suspended’ because she can’t do anything about her situation” (390). Pecola Breedlove throughout the duration of the novel finds herself the victim of judgment from society, but the victim of male power both mentally and physically.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye possesses a level of violence, depravity, and anger of almost every character introduced. The main narrator of the story, Claudia, will be the topic of this essay. Throughout the story it is revealed that Claudia has some underlying anger, towards the Eurocentric view of beauty, and white girls in general. This essay will explore the repressed anger of Claudia in Toni Morrison’s

“The Bluest Eyes” by Toni Morrison centers on a character name Pecola Breedlove. Pecola is an eleven year old black girl whom the story revolves. Pecola role is the protagonist. she is abused by almost everyone in the novel and eventually suffers two traumatic rapes.Pecola is a fragile and delicate child when the novel begins, and by the novel’s end, she has been almost completely destroyed by violence. I pick Pecola because I can relate to her. Through Pecola Breedlove’s lonely,sensitive,and imaginative she is a symbol of the black community’s self- hatred and belief in its own ugliness.