The Power Of Stories In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

have white beauty is so strong that she eats Mary Jane candies, fantasizing that the candies will

Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's mother, experiences racism within the black community when she moves to Lorain, Ohio. Being a dark-skinned black woman from the south, she does not understand why "northern colored folk was different... [and why they were] no better than whites for meanness" (117). She recognizes the hierarchy, or the "difference between colored people and niggers" within the black community, especially from the light-skinned women she encounters (87). One of these light-skinned black women is Geraldine, Junior's mother, who believes "colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud" (87). She even tells her son

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

The affiliation between beauty and whiteness limits the concept of beauty only to the person’s exterior. The characters are constantly subjected to images and symbols of whiteness through movies, books, candy, magazines, baby dolls and advertisements. Another example of the images and symbols in the novel is when the black protagonist, Pecola, feasts on a ‘Mary Jane’ candy.

“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.

The narration of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is actually a compilation of many different voices. The novel shifts between Claudia MacTeer's first person narrative and an omniscient narrator. At the end of the novel, the omniscient voice and Claudia's narrative merge, and the reader realizes this is an older Claudia looking back on her childhood (Peach 25). Morrison uses multiple narrators in order to gain greater validity for her story. According to Philip Page, even though the voices are divided, they combine to make a whole, and "this broader perspective also encompasses past and present... as well as the future of the grown-up Claudia" (55).

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explores the impact of home on childhood, the formative years of any human. Throughout the book, she describes the childhoods of both adults, namely Polly Breedlove and Cholly Breedlove, and children, specifically Pecola, Claudia, and “Junior,” and leaves the reader to figure out how their childhoods shaped who they are. In the novel. Morrison argues that the totality of one’s childhood, including one’s home and experiences, is key in forming one’s disposition and character later in life. In doing so, Morrison wants the reader to see that the best defense against a predatory, racist society is the home.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison shows that anger is healthy and that it is not something to be feared; those who are not able to get angry are the ones who suffer the most.  She criticizes Cholly, Polly, Claudia, Soaphead Church, the Mobile Girls, and Pecola because these blacks in her story wrongly place their anger on themselves, their own race, their family, or even God, instead of being angry at those they should have been angry at: whites.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison strongly ties the contents of her novel to its structure and style through the presentation of chapter titles, dialogue, and the use of changing narrators. These structural assets highlight details and themes of the novel while eliciting strong responses and interpretations from readers. The structure of the novel also allows for creative and powerful presentations of information. Morrison is clever in her style, forcing readers to think deeply about the novel’s heavy content without using the structure to allow for vagueness.

There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given

The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison that reveals many lessons and conflicts between young and adult characters of color. The setting takes place during the 1940s in Lorain, Ohio. The dominant speaker of this book is a nine year old girl named Claudia MacTeer who gets to know many of her neighbors. As a result of this, Claudia learns numerous lessons from her experience with the citizens of Lorain. Besides Claudia, The Bluest Eye is also told through many characters for readers to understand the connection between each of the adults and children. Many parents in the novel like Geraldine and Pauline Breedlove clearly show readers how adults change their own children. Furthermore, other adult characters like Cholly Breedlove

Since childhood, we all have been taught that “racism is bad” and should be avoided at all costs. We have been told that “everyone is a child of God and we are all created equal.” In fact, Americans are praised for the so called equality they possess. However, Toni Morrison sheds light on the sheltered and unspoken truth that everyone to some extent is racist. “In Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, instead of establishing a home where race doesn't matter a home which she dreams of, she creates just the opposite” (koachar 1). The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In “The Bluest Eye” , Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. In “The Bluest Eye” , Toni Morrison uses symbols and conflicts to portray self hatred & show how standards of society oppress people of color .

Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye in order to discuss race, gender, and class. She does a careful and intentional dance along the axis of oppression she is speaking on. Her pointed stories of abuse, self loathing, and rape are juxtaposed to the soft imagery of nature. The book is separated into four sections named after the seasons. Rarely does a page go by where Morrison does not wax poetic about marigolds, or set a scene with forsythia. And yet, though she uses these images to soften the setting in which atrocities take place, they are often used in such a manner that the harshness of the events bleed into the imagery. Creating the malevolent force that is nature in the novel, and the streak of ironic imagery that runs through Morrisons writing.