Theme Of Beauty In The Bluest Eye

In the course of The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove has shown signs of low self esteem. She would always be the one to compare herself to something she admires to be beautiful. Perhaps, sometimes problems surround her get a little too much, she has not yet realized the fog will clear up. For example in the autumn chapter, a quote has said “Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people.” There is no such thing as a “Pecola’s point of view”. She lives off of people's judgements and believe physical appearance is all there is to a person. Her desire to be beautiful is not having attractive long black hair and golden skin color, but blonde hair with a white pigmentation. Which causes her to dream and want even more.

The characters within The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, all attempt to conform to a standard of beauty in some way. This standard of beauty is established by the society in which they live, and then supported by members of the community. Beauty is also linked with respect and happiness. Both people who reach the standard of beauty, and those who try, are never really satisfied with who they are. This never-ending race to become beautiful has devastating effects on their relationships and their own self-esteem.

Topic: Discuss the issues of self-hatred and the aesthetics of beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. What role do they play in the novel and how do they relate to its theme?

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

Racist ideology is institutionalized when how people’s interactions reflects on an understanding that they share the same beliefs. However, in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the topic of racism is approached in a very unique way. The characters within the novel are subjected to internalizing a set of beliefs that are extremely fragmented. In accepting white standards of beauty, the community compromises their children’s upbringing, their economic means, and social standings. Proving furthermore that the novel has more to do with these factors than actual ethnicity at all.

Although written decades apart, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye both explore the trials and tribulations that young black girls must endure as they begin to step into womanhood. While the burdens that the protagonists in each of these texts differ in some key ways, one of the most interesting things that both Woodson and Morrison depicted was a sense of difficulty in coping with these changes, and rather than having any semblance of mastery over their circumstances, these young protagonists would instead project their emotions onto something else as they try to discover what causes their suffering.

Throughout history, beauty standards have been enforced on females. They are taught what the ideal beauty is by the media and current culture of that time. Society creates certain expectations that require women to look a certain way to be beautiful and if not they are considered ugly. They change their appearances in order to conform to the established beauty standard and often lose a part of their identity in the process. In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, she captures the struggle young girls and women face to meet the expectations that popular culture has on the ideal beauty in the early 1940s.

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 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.

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.

Even though Pecola feels admiration towards the plant, the pressure to conform eventually overwhelms her and she attempts to convince herself otherwise by thinking, “They are ugly. They are weeds,” (50). She rationalizes that if she is told dandelions are ugly then they must be ugly, just as she rationalizes that because she is black she is

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, depicts characters desperately seeking to attain love through a predetermined standard of beauty established and substantiated by society. Morrison intertwines the histories of several characters portraying the delusions of the ‘perfect’ family and what motivates their quest for love and beauty. Ultimately, this pursuit for love and beauty has overwhelming effects on their relationships and their identity.

Racial oppression, the definition of beauty, internalized racism, and sexual violence are a few of the recurring themes that women experience throughout Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and while some emerge from oppression, there is one character who remains a victim of various characters until the very end. Lois Tyson defines in “Critical Theory Today”, that a suspended woman is “the victim of men and society as a whole, with few or no options, ‘suspended’ because she can’t do anything about her situation” (390). Pecola Breedlove throughout the duration of the novel finds herself the victim of judgment from society, but the victim of male power both mentally and physically.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, presents the reader with some of the strong racial imbalances present in the African American communities in the United States. The novel, The Bluest Eye, addresses many themes such as, feminism, rape culture, repetition in rupture, abjection, oppression, racism and the innocence of youth (Morrison 1970). The evident issue in the novel is the way that the African American people oppress not only themselves but others, to the standards of the white American standards of things such as beauty. The characters, Pecola and Pauline, are the major characters in the novel and are, as written by Morrison (1970), the ciphers of the way African Americans treated each-other and themselves in a time of racial oppression

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison narrates the lives of two families, the MacTeer family and the Breedlove family. The novel digs into the themes of love, envy, and weakness, while maintaining a thick and interesting plotline. These themes are conveyed thoroughly through Morrison’s literary style. Toni Morrison’s powerful writing and structural techniques add depth to the novel, enhancing certain emotions while developing a riveting plot.