Self Discrimination In The Bluest Eye

beauty in her culture, Pecola must do the impossible: find white beauty. Toni Morrison shows

In the Autumn chapter, starting on page seventeen, Claudia describes her hatred for Shirley Temple. She continues to describes her hatred for a white babydoll, and explains how she dismembered the doll. This turns gruesome when Claudia describes not only taking apart of her white babydoll, but also taking apart little white girls. However Claudia is not an evil character, in the book she represents innocence, and the reader gets to see the book through that innocent lens through her perspective. How can Morrison have a character that describes such gruesome acts, like squeezing the eyeballs of little white girls, and still be lovable and innocent? What is Morrison saying about jealousy and rage, directed not at a specific person, but more at the concept of whiteness? Claudia then goes on to reflect that she was shameful of her violence, motivated by this shame she hid her hatred in love, thus bringing her one step closer to loving Shirley Temple. Can a shame for such an intense hatred for something really move someone to love that hated thing? Is that true in other areas of supremacy, including gender and class? What does this say about the socialization of young girls and beauty? More specifically is the hatred Claudia possess towards whiteness stemmed from

It is more plausible that Claudia is the embodiment of Morrison than say Pecola or Freida in that Claudia is the narrator; if Claudia is the narrator, then Claudia’s perspective was written to an extent, through the similar eyes of Morrison. It can also be argued that Claudia is the external projection of Morrison’s reaction towards racial beauty, with both having experiences of disdain with blue eyes. As a child where Morrison’s friend wanted to possess blue eyes: “She said she wanted blue eyes. I locked around to picture her with then and was violently repelled by what I imagined she would look life if she had her wish. The sorrow in her voice seemed to call for sympathy, and I faked it for her, but astonished by the desecration she proposed, I ‘got mad’ at her instead.”

Even though she can 't pinpoint where her ugliness is she can pinpoint what people find attractive. When we are first introduced to Pecola she is awe at the narrator’s(Claudia) sister (Frieda) Cup. The cup has a picture of Shirley Temple. The cute button noses girl with the curly blond hair that took all of our hearts with dancing and singing. I 'm the passage it states “... white Shirley temple cup. She was a long time with the milk and gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple’s dimpled face. Frieda and She had loving conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was.”(Bluest Eyes, Morris pg. 19) Pecola ready had it on her mind that Shirley Temple was beautiful, that Shirley Temple was the beauty standard and that she was not. At a young age Pecola realized that she might not be seen as pretty this a issue that can be seen quite often in the black community. In 2011 a young lady heard a small child declare herself hate a girl no older than 5 years old stated “mommy I want to be white; I don 't want to be brown anymore” (source 5, Courtney) as horrifying as it may seem most children don 't understand why they are black when white people seem to get more things in life. The media shows nothing but white people winning in life and black people be portrayed as thugs, killers and lazy. Even in movies and tv shows we are seen as villains while white people are given this essence

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).

Morrison uses the examples of Shirley Temple, a popular, white child actress during the time period, and popular dolls in the 1940s to show the effect that mass culture had on young black women. It is ironic when Claudia states that unlike older, young black girls around her, her hatred for whiteness has not yet turned to love. As a naive child, Claudia, who doesn’t see the beauty that others see in popular children’s dolls, takes apart her doll to find its beauty, thinking that its beauty must be physically inside of it. She has yet to learn that, in the society she lives in, beauty is dictated by cultural norms, meaning that the doll itself is only beautiful because popular culture views whiteness as superior to everything else. Claudia’s

“Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (Morrison, 1970, p. 39). Through the example of a child’s doll, it is clear that society favors certain physical traits that are associated with whiteness. These standards of beauty are so deeply ingrained in American culture, that even young children desire these physical qualities in their dolls. Throughout the novel, some characters idolize representations of white beauty standards, while others display signs of jealousy. For example, Claudia says, “Frieda and she had a long conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was.

Pecola's life away from her family is no better. She is often picked on and called ugly by those around her. Claudia and Frieda realize that the entire neighborhood agrees with Pecola that white features are beautiful.

In Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye, power is shown by race, beauty standards, and bullying./

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

When she examines their ugliness, Claudia states that one “could not find the source” and that “it came from conviction, their conviction… They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance” (Morrison 39). The Breedlove family is born and raised in a society that constantly defines and reinforces dark skin as ugly. They believe in this conception as they don’t know any different and therefore perceive themselves as ugly and undeserving due to their background and skin color, even though, and like Claudia mentions, there is not a specific reason as to why their features are unappealing. Due to her self-loathing, Mrs. Breedlove prefers to spend all her time as a servant for the Fishers instead of taking care of her own daughter. In this white household, she is able to imagine herself living as a white woman with a white daughter living in a nice house. Like her mother, Pecola also despises her own identity and appearance. She desperately longs for blue eyes, as

The reader can visualize the picturesque doll with blue eyes, blonde hair, and pink porcelain skin, sitting on the top shelf of everyone’s favorite store. The utilization of imagery to describe an individual’s physical appearance is Morrison's way of displaying the unequal treatment that Pecola encounters as a young black girl in a condemnatory society. The colors of one’s appearance is noted by Morrison throughout the novel, for physical appearance is highly significant in the imagery that Morrison depicts. Society casts its dark hatred upon those who do not conform to the standards of beauty that society sets, expediting self negativity to those who do not fit the perfect physical

Being born Black in the United States is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you according to Toni Morrison. In a country with a society and culture run by the evils of greed, racism and inequality, the lighter the complexion of your skin is and the greater your bank's savings account sums up to, the better you are. In other words, you will have better clothes, more respect, and privileges. In her book The Bluest Eye the message Morrison portrays is that the darker someone is, the more inferior they are to lighter skinned Americans, due to how they are treated, their socioeconomic class, and their own self hatred, all as a result of their skin color.

Claudia prays for blue eyes, symbols of typical white beauty, because she feels her own characteristics are not beautiful. Indeed, the word “fervent” reflects both Claudia’s burning desire to change and her unbearable disdain for her own racial features. With this in mind, the interplay between Claudia’s innocence and the damage she has sustained creates a sense of sympathy in the reader. By providing Claudia’s innermost desires and insecurities, Morrison paints the girl as a lost child in an unwelcoming

Claudia, unfortunately, is isolated in her rejection of white beauty. Claudia’s role models have been swept away, disregarding their own features and admiring white ones. After Claudia destroys the doll, Morrison shows the adult’s anger and admiration of these features: “Now-you-got-one-a-beautiful-[doll]-and-you-tear-it-up-what’s-the-matter-with-you?” (21). Morrison shows the adult’s anger, but this anger is exemplified because the doll is “a-beautiful-[doll]” (21). The adults are bewildered by Claudia’s action, not finding the reasoning behind Claudia’s actions. Morrison also shows the brain washing of adults when she shows Claudia’s reaction of Shirley Temple: “I hated Shirley…because she danced with Bojangles, who was my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me” (19). By Claudia symbolizing Bojangles as her friends and family, Morrison shows how the people around Claudia have been tainted with the belief