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.

Some people will argue with you that there is always an ugly duckling somewhere in a family. I see it different, I see these people as unique. In Toni Morrison's book, The Bluest Eye there is the issue of being beautiful and ugly. In this essay I will discuss how Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye initiates that during 1941 white was beautiful and black was ugly in the surrounding of two families.

Pecola Breedlove is one of the main characters in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes. Pecola is a young black girl growing up in the 1940s, in northern Ohio, a dominantly white world. She idolizes the young, white movie actress Shirley Temple and wants to be like her. Pecola never realizes how unattainable this dream is and the hardships she faces makes it even more impossible. Some of the hardships Pecola faces in her life include being bullied at school, an unstable home life, and the feeling of ugliness. Pecola is constantly called ugly by classmates, strangers, and even her own mother. She has been called ugly so much she believes that she is truly ugly but, Pecola thinks if she had blue eyes then all of her problems would be solved. She would be pretty if she had blue eyes. People would not make fun of her and call her ugly if she had blue eyes. Blue eyes may even be able to prevent her parents from fighting so vigorously. She believes blue eyes are the solution to all of her problems. However, blue eyes are metaphor for something much more powerful than a genetic trait, love.

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

In Toni Morrison’s “From the Bluest Eye,” she writes about a girl who is in conflict with the societal norms of the time period. The girl was given dolls to play with, but she does not understand why she has to play with them and what makes the dolls beautiful. It is made clear that the girl never wanted dolls and nobody ever asked her what she wanted as a toy, yet the society she lives in tells her that girls play with dolls and nothing else. This story raises several interesting ideas, such as why were dolls made and why does society want girls to play with dolls? A larger question that the story raises is whether or not there is negative or positive effects on girls who play with dolls.

As Ama H.Vanniarachchy once said: “She is the creature of life, the giver of life, and the giver of abundant love, care and protection. Such are the great qualities of a mother. The bond between a mother and her child is the only real and pure bond in the world, the only true love we can ever find in our lifetime.” In other words, a mother’s love is irreplaceable. Love received from a mother makes one feel complete and accepted. In the novel Beloved and The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison, the respective characters Sethe and Pauline both have different heartbreaking experiences with a mother’s love and the way they express their love to their own children. At first, both characters reminisce about times that they lacked parental love, and how they felt because of the poor choices their parents made. Later, they both make life changing decisions in which they decide if they value their loved ones more, or the life they have always dreamed of that is full of success and money. In the end, it is shown that the choices that both characters make, negatively affect their children. Mothers are known for the love and support they provide their children. At crucial times, they make decisions they believe are right. However, they never truly think of the the impact that decision will have on their children 's well-being and self esteem in the long run.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison weaves stories of violation and hardship to examine the ugliness that racism produces. In this novel, the childhood icons of white culture are negative representations instrumental in engendering internalized racism. For the black child in a racist, white culture, these icons are never innocent. Embodying the ideals of white beauty, they expose the basis for Claudia's bewilderment at why she is not attractive and Pecola's desperate desire for beauty. They nourish neither innocent desire, nor the need for acceptance, but denigrate the very idea of blackness. The worship of ideal white beauty, by adults as well as by children, coalesces into a

Steve Maraboli- a speaker, bestselling author, and Behavioral Science Academic- wrote “there is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.” This is true, however, it exists very rarely in our society. Women are not accepting of their imperfections and glorify them, instead they hide them to unify under society’s standards of beauty. Over the course of our history, women have been victims of society’s ideals. Society forces false images of beauty and love onto women, forcing them to have fictitious notions of what happiness is and how to be happy. This can be seen in both Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Beloved is one of the most beautifully written books and Toni Morrison is one of the best authors in the world. After reading the Bluest Eye and seeing how captivating it is, it is not highly expectant to think that Beloved to be just as enchanting. Anyone who has read Beloved would read it again and those of us who have not should be dying to read it. Beloved is a historical fiction novel based on a true historical incident. Beloved is set during the time period of the Civil War . The American Civil War to be exact , which took place between the years of 1861 and 1865. According to Bonnie Angelo, “Beloved is dedicated to "Sixty Million and more," dedicated to the Africans and their descendants who died as a result of the Atlantic slave trade.” 1

In the novel The Bluest Eye, authored by Toni Morrison, Morrison brings up many social conflicts that occur throughout the novel. One of the biggest conflicts she brings up within the novel is racism. There are many offsets of racism that occur to many of the characters within the novel. One of the most significant issues or conflicts that branch off from racism is how racism affects and limits the opportunities that minorities have. In Morrison’s novel this type of racism that affects opportunity is directed towards African Americans. Even Tonya Cornileus stated in an article she wrote in the year 2013 that, “Today, African American men are the least likely hired or promoted” (Cornileus 136). This racial discrimination towards African Americans has a major impact on the opportunity they have in the world, just as Morrison portrayed in her novel The Bluest Eye.

One of the significant themes that Morrison 's, The Bluest Eye scrutinizes is the relationship between race and beauty. The novel examines how white society 's view of beauty serves to degrade, ignore, and criticize African Americans. The Bluest Eye depicts the story of an eleven-year-old black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who desires have blue eyes on the grounds that she sees herself and is viewed by most of the characters in the novel as “ugly.” The standard of “beauty” that her peers aspire to is personified by the young white child actress, Shirley Temple, who has desirable blue eyes. White standards of beauty, an affection of the “blue-eyed, blonde haired" look, are forced upon the black individuals who personalize such social standards, tolerating rejection as real and undeniable, and being not able to meet such standards. They are degraded in their own eyes, producing self-hatred and internalized racial disgust. This perception of their own inadequacy and the mediocrity of their race, when all is said, is strengthened every day through their connections with white individuals and the admired white culture in their general surroundings. Morrison reveals insight into the shielded and implicit truth that everybody to some degree is racist. In The Bluest Eye, by utilizing direct portrayals, symbolic imagery, and racial tension in a black society, Morrison exhibits the darkness of undeniable racism in American society.

Racism was a huge controversy back in the 1900s.People who were whites were either classified as colored or black,and The Bluest Eye portrays racism.Racism was discussed worldwide but specifically in the United States since many ethnicities are widespread among this country.This injustice is a huge topic that was very big in the 1900s.Many people were treated unfairly because they looked different than others causing a mass fight between them.This novel was written by Toni Morrison,and has mostly black characters in it,however they like to believe that they themselves are white too or have a “white attitude” in their nature.Whites are considered the gods of race being clean,wealthy,and smart.While black people are considered

How does one define beauty? The term white is often associated with synonyms like purity, godly and innocence. In comparison, the color black is typically associated with ugliness, darkness and evil. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye illustrates the struggles many black women faced in a patriarchal society, as they struggled to meet an impossible standard of beauty. “Black females were double oppressed. First, they have been sexually oppressed by white masters under the institutionalized slavery. Second, they have been victimized by family members and social institutions” (Tahir 3). From a feminist perspective, I will examine how The Bluest Eye depicts a standard of white beauty that led to the oppression and self-destruction of black women

Racism is a social construct that has plagued America since its conception and is something that continues to do so to this day. In America’s earliest times racism presented itself in the concept of slavery. When that was abolished it presented itself in the Jim Crow Laws and separate but equal. Today racism presents itself in more discreet, sinister ways like mass incarceration, or the recent rash of police shooting of unarmed black teenagers. However, the most sinister way that racism affects us today and the way it infects those in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye is the importance that is placed on the all-American family and how this excludes African Americans. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye details how American ideals often contradict with the reality of what goes on in America and how vast the difference is between the two especially when it comes to race.

Unlike so many pieces of American literature that involve and examine the history of slavery and the years of intensely-entrenched racism that ensued, the overall plot of the novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, does not necessarily involve slavery directly, but rather examines the aftermath by delving into African-American self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in The Bluest Eye who are African American are dominated with the endless culturally-imposed concepts of white beauty and cleanness to an extent where the characters have a destructive way of latently acting out their own feelings of self-hatred on others, especially other African-Americans.