The Bluest Eye Symbolism

Claudia, another character who goes through a similar situation compared to Pecola. She is a young girl who came out from a loving family and is intrusive, yet sensitive.

For instance, symbolism is represented through the blue eyes that is repeatedly mentioned in the novel. The blue eyes represent the idealistic white middle class life that Pecola dreams of having since white people commonly have blue eyes. The reader can infer this suggestion because whenever Pecola is experiencing bad things she wishes to have blue eyes. Morrison writes, "If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too…Each night, without fail, she prayed for the blue eyes…To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time"(46) This line from the text indicates that to Pecola this white feature represents beauty and the end of her problems. Furthermore, symbolism can also be found in the homes of the characters. In the novel, homes are a symbol of economic status. The reader can infer that the nicer the home is, the richer the character. Take the example of Mrs. Breedlove's employers house compared to her own home. Mrs. Breedlove's employer's home is described asx "the large white house with the wheelbarrow full of flowers…We circled the proud house and went to the back"(Morrison 105,106). Based on this description of the house the reader can assume that Mrs. Breedlove's employer is wealthy. However, the Breedloves' living situation is described

After she meets Pecola, her concerns go to Pecola. She explains about each and every incident that occurs to Pecola and the reasons behind leading to those incidents. According to Claudia, the narrator of the story, not just Pecola but it was the Breedlove family members who treated themselves the uglier rather than the society. Only the difference is that they make a different mindset deal with it. The narrator vividly mentions by saying, “Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction/And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it” (Morrison 39). This explains more of what they were dealing with. It is impossible to make them believe that they aren’t relentlessly and aggressively ugly (38). Being young, vulnerable and more importantly, female, Pecola is the one who gets abused frequently and endures the damage in greater

From the very beginning of Pecola’s life, her mother ingrains in her the idea that she is ugly—a concept that Mrs. Breedlove herself is viewed as due to her missing front tooth and her skin color. After her birth, she refers to Pecola as being “a right smart baby” but “a cross between a puppy and a dying man. But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (Morrison 126). Mrs. Breedlove acknowledges that Pecola is a smart girl, but doesn’t view it as an impressive quality. Instead, she focuses on the fact that her daughter is unattractive. As Spies mentions, “even by her own mother, Pecola has been denied the slightest notion of being valuable or worthy of love” (Spies 15). By denying value and love to her daughter, Mrs. Breedlove is instilling in Pecola the same self-hatred that Cholly and society has instilled in herself. Mrs. Breedlove’s unhappiness is unquestionably the reason for Pecola’s own dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

As stated before, it is based or should one say inspired by the life of the slave Margaret Garner, who was an African American slave . She attempts to escape in 1856 Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, which was a free state. A mob of slave owners, planters and overseers arrived to repossess her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue

These books talk about a white family that has a dog and lives in a house with their friends and neighbors. Morrison would allude to this book as it describes Pecola’s desires to be white with blue eyes in order to become beautiful and have a loving family. As the paragraph progresses, Morrison violates the rules of syntax, removing punctuation, grammar, and spacing, leading to a jumbled mess of letters and words. This describes Pecola’s loss of innocence, which is an event that happens at the end of the book.

     Although there are many different characters in this novel that are affected by the great advertisement of the beauty of a female in society, Pecola is the one to end up being insane due to the images- the image that she couldn’t possibly attain. Pecola grew up believing that she was born into an ugly family, making her ugly also. The ugliness wasn’t just from the window signs and newspapers, it was from her family and her neighbors. Therefore, she seeks the next best thing in her life, to have those blue eyes of a white girl, thinking

By contrasting the homes of Claudia and Pecola throughout the entire novel, Morrison stresses the importance of home in defending against a predatory, racist society. In Claudia’s home, her parents truly care for her and her sister. In one instance, her father took out a gun to fend off a tenant that touched Freida’s breast. This completely contrasts with Pecola’s home, where her parents are both hateful and self-hating, and her father actually raped her. Even though both households are

To better understand the mindset of the characters and society as a whole during the early 1940s, one must first analyze the setting of the novel. This allows for the reader to understand what causes the characters to think and act the way they do throughout the novel. For instance, the story is set in the rural south of Lorain, Ohio, during the fall of 1941 to the summer of 1942. During this time period, the Great Depression was coming to an end and World War II was breaking out throughout the world. People, especially African Americans, were seeking economic security and opportunities for mobility. This can be seen with the MacTeers, a poor African American family, who all collect coal at Zick’s Coal Company to earn more money. It can also be seen when Pecola Breedlove’s parents, Pauline and Cholly, move up north to Ohio in search of better

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.

Because "The Bluest Eye" crystallizes the negative affect society can have on people, specifically African American girls in this novel, it is a teachable book for kids to determine the difference between what society wants and what is right. In the novel, Claudia says “We looked hard for flaws to restore equilibrium” (Morrison 68.) Claudia was referring to a white girl in her school. This is significant because society lead these African American girls to drool over white girls because they are supposedly perfect or worthier then them. It teaches kids the effects of society’s actions, and makes them realize self-worth does not come from the way you look. On page 22 of the novel Claudia states, “I try to discover what eludes me” (Morrison

In the afterword of “The Bluest Eye”, Morrison describes the narrator of the story as “the sayer, the one who knows…a child speaking, mimicking the adult black women on the porch or in the backyard” (Morrison 213), in essence, a child acting as the narrator and imitating black women when speaking, possessing intimate secrets waiting to be divulged to the reader. By having a child act as the narrator and introduce emotionally taxing topics to the reader, the weight of these topics would be cushioned by creating skepticism about the truth behind a child’s statements in providing lots of seemingly “trivial information” (Morrison 213) and thereby “altering the priority an adult would assign the information” (Morrison 213). But rather than just being an arbitrary character in the story, Claudia can be justified as being the very embodiment

This can be seen toward the end of the novel, on page 199, where, in a conversation between Pecola and a figure of her thoughts, Morrison reveals that Pecola may have been raped twice. “You said he tried to do it to you when you were sleeping on the couch. ‘See there! You don’t even know what you’re talking about. It was when I was washing dishes,’” reads the exchange. These lines also tell the reader that even with this information, Pecola is still internally unsure of what happened herself. Through internal dialogue, her personal insecurities are projected. Dialogue is key in presenting major ideas in the novel.

Have you ever felt that you must be destined for something greater than what; you are currently doing? Many individuals often suffer from this fear, and that they missed something earlier in their life, and that they are meant to be doing something more productive with their lives. This internal struggle is shared with many characters in The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison. They believe that once they obtain certain spiritual, mental, or physical characteristics that they will be able to depart from their current, nauseating living conditions.

Have you ever felt that you are destined for something greater than what you are currently doing? Many individuals often suffer from this fear that they missed something earlier in their life, and that they are truly meant to be doing something more productive. This internal struggle is shared with many characters in The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison. They believe that once they obtain certain physical, mental or spiritual characteristics, that they will be able to depart from the current living conditions.