The Search for Beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Essay

Besides the inherent self-confident issue, the outside voice from community is also affecting Pecola’s view. For example, in the “accident” when Pecola went into Junior’s house, Junior killed the cat and impute to Pecola. His mother, Geraldine, saw Pecola was holding the dead cat. Without any thought and didn’t even ask for the truth, Geraldine simply called Pecola a “nastylittle black bitch.” This event, again, reinforces Pecola’s view of what beauty means.

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

No matter how ugly, mean, pitiful one can be, the family is always meant to support, raise, guide, nurture and be a means of inspiration in anyone’s life. In the novel, this isn’t the case for Pecola, which is why she gets mentally unstable as she couldn’t bear the torture of ugliness of not having blue eyes. Blue eyes are the one and only reason she could blame as per to her ability and thought process. In fact, she doesn’t get the real ugliness of how her father rapes her, the ugliness of how the mother choose the white girl over her, the ugliness of the fights between her parents is coming from their unpleasant past. After all, she doesn’t have that mentor in her life to explain what was happening. Everybody in her family is occupied with their own mindset. She is very young to understand and analyze on her own. The narrator Claudia even gets to compare between her and Pecola and starts accepting life and feel blessed for having a supportive family, which she doesn’t feel until Pecola enters in her life. So, this shows how young kids psychology is totally built upon the type of family environment she/he gets. There is a saying that young kids are like a raw clay ready to be shaped into the different form of objects by the potter. Undoubtedly, it stands so true. Indeed, kids shape themselves according to the type of environment they grow up with. By all means, Pecola’s family is the

If Pecola acquired blue eyes she believes she would no longer be an outcast. She believes her peers will accept her. After seeing how the new girl, Maureen Peal, with “sloe green eyes” and white skin “enchanted the entire school,” Pecola makes the hypothesis that having blue eyes would make her popular amongst her classmates (62). She believes that to have blue-green eyes and white skin earns her acceptance. Pecola wants everyone to look at her the same way they look at Maureen. She desires to be the girl that enchants the school. Though Pecola seeks admiration from all of her peers, Pecola ultimately seeks Maureen’s approval and acceptance. Pecola wants the prettiest girl in the class to view her as beautiful. However, after a dispute with Pecola, Maureen exclaims, “I am cute! And you are ugly! Black and ugly e mos. I am cute!” (73). Pecola, after hearing this proclamation, comes to the realization that the most beautiful girl in school believes that being black means being ugly. Therefore, Maureen proclaims that being white must be what leads to beauty and popularity. In fact, at the end of the novel when Pecola is conversing with herself she asks, “What does Maureen think about your eyes?” (196). This question further proves that if Maureen admired Pecola in the same manner everyone admired her, Pecola would feel beautiful. She would be beautiful like Maureen, and everyone will accept her.

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,

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 -

In Toni Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye”, a character named Pecola Breedlove had always been wishing to have blue eyes, because it was considered as pretty in the novel’s world. Also, a lighter skins African American, Maureen Peal, bullied the Pecola, who have darker skin, because Maureen Peal thinks herself is cute while Pecola is ugly. Similarly, Pecola always thought of herself in a negative way, in which, she calls herself ugly. On the other hand, Maureen Peal, think highly of herself, because she came from a wealthier family and more people like her. Furthermore, Pecola did not have an easy life due to all those hardships that she had to come across through her life. Morrison’s novel shows a contrast between the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant world and the world the characters of the novel live in by showing us how the characters in the novel are not living a good life and they get treated differently because of their skin color, and they are in a lower class than the others. Also, the kids are being neglected by their parents and there are child molestation in the family. I think today’s world is slowing changing but still has some similar divisions, because there is still racism out there. However, people are starting to stand up for themselves and appreciate their own culture and ethnicity more in today’s world.

In the novel, Claudia Macleer, the narrator and childhood friend of Pecola is given white baby dolls, which she dismembers. As Claudia reflects on the fact that she occasionally feels the impulse to do the same to little white girls, she asks: “what made people look at them and say, ‘awwwww,’ but not for me” (22)? While the circumstances in which she has this revelation are a bit extreme, it shows that in her society, there is an implicit message that being white is equal to being beautiful and that if you’re a young white girl, you’re beautiful but, if you’re a young black girl, you’re a monster. At the age of eleven, Pecola detests everything about herself. She thinks that because she’s black she’s ugly and doesn’t deserve to be loved.

Pecola is a subject to characteristics of society that were responsible for classifying her as an “other.” Entities within this society are prone to being ostracized by uncontrolled external factors. “Black” individuals are treated poorly due to their color of skin being considered a “degradation;” meanwhile the “whites” are worshiped as though they portray mere perfection—Rosemary Villanucci. Rosemary

Pecola says it’s because her mother did not believe her the first time Cholly raped her. This shows how society is failing Pecola, which is what drives her to this mad state. Tori Morrison write s“We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we has a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent.

Pecola is first introduced as a foster child coming to live with McTeer family after her father burned down the Breedlove house. She arrives with nothing but the clothes on her back, exhibiting a shy demeanor. The effects of years of abuse and neglect are immediately evident through her interactions with Claudia and Frieda. She is compliant with whatever they do, trying her best not to draw attention to herself: “When we discovered that she clearly did not want to dominate us, we liked her. She laughed when I clowned for her, and smiled and gracefully accepted the food gifts my sister gave her” (Morrison 19). As the three girls stay together, Pecola’s insecurities are unveiled. She is aware that others dub her as ‘ugly’, and believes she is

Pecola Breedlove, is an eleven-year-old black girl whom the story revolves around. She is abused by almost everyone in the novel and eventually suffers being raped by her father, Cholly Breedlove. Pecola's experiences, however, are not typical of all black girls who have to grow up in a hostile society. But who is to blame? One could easily argue that it was Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove. But who is to blame for how they treat their child? The white supremacy is the main cause of Cholly’s past, Pecola’s rape and the psychological mindset the mother is in. Pauline is Pecola's mother, and her character allows the reader to see how cultural conceptions of beauty can play themselves out in a more affectionate, but still unfortunate, form than Pecola's

The Bluest Eye is a story written by Toni Morrison in 1970. The Bluest Eye gives readers a deep descriptions of the ways white beauty standards deformed the lives of blacks girls and women.provides an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards deform the lives of black girls and women. Pecola let white beauty standards deform her life. People believe that having the “ bluest “ eyes would change the way people viewed her and her view of others. Whiteness being superior is shown throughout the entire text through implicit messages.

Pecola, the protagonist is a dark skinned person who believes that she is ugly living in the world that white skin and blue eyes were classified as beauty. Pecola experiences shame because of the standard beauty and desire to racism but she doesn’t desire to be beautiful she desires to be the most beautiful human being living. Her desire was to be beyond the most beautiful girl the town has ever seen.

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