Themes Of The Bluest Eye

Women. When hearing that word alone, you think of weakness, their insignificance, and how lowly they are viewed in society. Females can be seen as unworthy or nothing without a man if they are not advocating them and are constantly being treated differently from men. However, in the book, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, they live up to their reputations for how they view themselves. Specifically, being focused on women like Pecola, and Claudia. They are often questioning their worth from society’s judgement of beauty. Though one character, Frieda embraces it despite being black. With having everything temporary, the desire of grasping and having something permanent increases. The women desires to be of

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about

In The Bluest Eye, Pecola the protagonist is taken under the Macteer family’s wing much like “The African family is community-based and the nurturing quality is not contained within the nuclear family, but is rather the responsibility of the entire community” (Ranström). In traditional Africa each child has a place and is welcome in the community. The act of parenting another child was not odd because every adult that lived in each community believed that any child is welcome in anyone’s home. This, however, is not the case for Pecola. Although traditional African culture was integrated into The Bluest Eye, it was not fully combined. Pecola lives in a very abusive household and always wonders to herself, what if she were white, what if she had blue eyes? Would it change things, hopefully for the better?

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

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.

How does classism within a community affect how people see themselves and their situation? The use of classism in The Bluest Eye, is a great way that Morrison shows her readers the separation of her characters and how the importance of class influences characters. Toni Morrison shows the issues of classism through the children, the adults, and the concepts of beauty within the story.

In the book The Bluest Eye Mrs. Breedlove talks about who was her motivation, who gave her drive to start dressing up nice and refashioning herself. She started using celebrities as role models or a mirror to help her find ways for her to get the same physical attractiveness they have. In the book Mrs. Breedlove mentions that,”I went to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. I fixed my hair up like I’d seen hers on a magazine. A part on the side, with one little curl on my forehead. It looked just like her… There I was, five months pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. Everything went then. Look like I just didn 't care no more after that. I let my hair go, plaited it

A standard of beauty is established by the society in which a person lives and then supported by its members in the community. In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, we are given an extensive understanding of how whiteness is the standard of beauty through messages throughout the novel that whiteness is superior. Morrison emphasizes how this ideality distorts the minds and lives of African-American women and children. He emphasizes that in order for African-American women to survive in a white racist society, they must love their own race. The theme of race and that white skin is more beautiful is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters in the novel, especially the three girls Claudia, Pecola and Frieda. Through the struggles these characters have endured, Morrison shows us the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and on society.

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.

The boys shout slurs at her about her father and her skin tone, completely disregarding “that they themselves were black, or that their father had similarly relaxed habits” (65) In regards to internalized racism, Morrison states that “they seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds.” (65) Maureen stands idly by while Claudia and Frieda help in saving Pecola from the ruthlessness of the African American boys who hate her for something they all have in common, but the boys finish their taunting because of the stigma surrounding Maureen and her light skin. Maureen takes this time to console Pecola, walking the girls towards the ice cream parlor, and pretending to be anything but sinister. The gears switch, Maureen starts bombarding Pecola with questions of her naked father, and in the end regards Pecola as black and ugly while regarding herself as light and cute. Exposing the African American community of a deep seeded hatred in their community towards the “blackest sheep.”

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye the main conflict of the story is about an African American girl that believes her life would be better if she had blue eyes, or in other words being white. The setting takes place in Ohio during the 1940’s, also their is a lot of racism in The Bluest Eye although it is not directly brought out. Instead Toni Morrison addresses racism in this story by having people look at themselves with a form of self hatred rather than a race with privilege judging them.

In “The Bluest Eye”, by Toni Morrison, one of the main purposes is to highlight the discrimination of