The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

Food and appetite is a relatable experience for everyone. Many believe food is strictly just for enjoying while you eat, however within Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eyes” she makes many distinct references to food. Through these means, she creates each individual personality of the characters. She goes on to use this association for most food references within her novel. The result enables the reader to have a more relatable experience with each of her characters regardless of color. Overall, these food and appetites references allow the reader to have a more hands-on approach and bring about a greater understanding of her character 's mentality while helping to disregard racial associations.

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.

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

“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.

Russell M. Nelson once said, “We were born to die and we die to live.” Toni Morrison correlates to Nelson’s quote in her Nobel Lecture of 1993, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, she uses language to examine the concepts of racism, lack of self-identity, gender roles, and socioeconomic hardships as they factor into a misinterpretation of the American Dream. Morrison illustrates problems that these issues provoke through the struggles of an African American community during the1940s. Through the characters’ challenges of being accepted by society, the reader can blatantly see corruption not only in America, but also throughout the entire world. Morrison uniquely applies multiple points of view to tell the story of a young black girl who desires blue eyes in order to be socially “beautiful”. The reason the book is so effective is that Morrison bases the themes on personal experiences. By the end of the novel, we do not directly gain a sense of hope, change and progress for the future, but instead raises awareness of racism, sexism and self-identity. To convey the importance of personal experiences vis á vis social issues, Morrison parallels crucial times in history to the novel. The author demonstrates how history affects her characters and how the characters’ lives in microcosm represent what was occurring globally at the time. The Bluest Eye offers the possibility for

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) takes place in Ohio towards the tail end of the depression. The story focuses on the character of Pecola Breedlove who wants to have blue eyes. Pecola becomes convinced that if she had blue eyes her life would be different. Through the eyes of our narrator, Claudia, and her sister Frieda we see the pervasive racism and abuse Pecola is subjected to. Claudia and Frieda act as witnesses to Pecola’s disintegration and as a result, they will spend the rest of their lives grappling with what happened to Pecola.

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.

Pecola 's admiration of Shirley Temple is an example of internalized racialism. "She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple 's dimpled face"(19). Freida and Pecola admired Shirley Temple. They had a loving conversation about how cute Shirley Temple was. Pecola is obsessed with the white girl 's physical beauty. This is obvious by the fact that she would drink a lot of milk from the Shirley Temple cup. Her drinking the milk signifies her wanting to consume whiteness. Pecola feels that she would be pretty if she possessed what the racist society considers pretty -

Social class is a major theme in the book The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is saying that there are dysfunctional families in every social class, though people only think of it in the lower class. Toni Morrison was also stating that people also use social class to separate themselves from others and apart from race; social class is one thing Pauline and Geraldine admire.Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda are affected by not only their own social status, but others social status too - for example Geraldine and Maureen Peal. Characters in the book use their social class as another reason for being ugly. Readers are reminded of the theme every time a new character enters into the book.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrision deals with the struggle of colored women in the 1930 's dealing with the ideals of beauty. The standard of beauty can be described as a community standard that if the women of this story do not live up too, they will be deemed ugly. This standard of beauty can be perpetuated through the treatment of certain characters based on how they look. There are three main symbols that the book and author convey. The first is the standard of beauty. The second is the concept of self-image that is warped to fit white standard of beauty, instead of cultivating a woman 's individuality. Self-image describes how a person perceives themselves through their own actions and internalized emotions. Many things can contribute to a person 's self-image such as, how they are treated by others, how their parents treat them, and how do they treat themselves through life experiences. The third concept of self worth and it is related to self-image. Self-worth is an understanding of personal satisfaction with who you are and the choices you make. For example, as we are first introduced to Pecola. We find that she moves into the Macteer 's house hold because her father is in jail for setting her house on fire. As she lives in this house hold, she falls in love with Shirley temple. This was the standard of beauty for young girls at the time. Pecola love to drink milk out of her Shirley Temple mug. I believe that Morrison added this detail to the story to symbolize her

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

Pecola Breedlove is young black girl who believes she is ugly and longs for blue eyes. She believes the blue eyes that she adores on Shirley Temple are central to attaining beauty which will bring love and joy to her life. She believes this beauty and love will end the incessant fighting between

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.

Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl who immersed in poverty and categorized as “ugly” by society. Her abusive parents beat her at home and she is a subject to never-ending discrimination and racism.