Term Paper on "Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison"

Term Paper 6 pages (2319 words) Sources: 5 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Specifically it will discuss the inside meaning of the novel. "The Bluest Eye" is a story about Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who is unhappy with her life and the way she looks. Throughout the book, Pecola strongly believes that if she can only have blue eyes, she will become beautiful and all her problems will go away. Pecola does not understand that she has to love herself the way she is to be loved by others. She also does not understand that it is hatred and prejudice that turn many people away from her, rather than her looks. Pecola needs to learn these lessons to be happy and content with her life, but she never does, and so, her story ends unhappily.

The narrator of the book is Claudia MacTeer. Her family takes in Pecola as a foster child, and they come to care for her. Claudia has an older sister named Frieda, and the three girls grow up together. Pecola is the main character of the story, even though she is not the narrator, because she is the one most affected by race, hatred, and her own idea of ugliness. Near the start of the book, Morrison writes about the Breedlove's "home," a bleak storefront, "They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly" (Morrison 28). Pecola believes from a very young age that she is ugly and white skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair is beautiful. That is why she wants blue eyes throughout the book. She is so certain that her ugliness is the cause of her problems that she can never see the real truth. This quotation shows that Pecola's family all thinks they are ugly (they are, but they are ugly inside), and because they believe they are ugly, their belief comes true. Morrison continues, "Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike. She was the only member of her class who sat alone at a double desk" (Morrison 34). This shows that Pecola does not understand what is happening around her. She sits "alone at a double desk" probably because she is black, not because she is ugly. Yet she blames everything on her looks, rather than who she is inside. Literary critic Harold Bloom continues, "Pecola, certainly, is expunged from human society even before she has awakened to a consciousness of self. Pecola stands for the triple indemnity of the female Black child: children, Blacks, and females are devalued in American culture" (Bloom 30). This quote shows that Pecola really does not understand herself or society. Her ugliness would not matter so much if she was white, but she is black, she is a woman, and she is young, and so she has little worth to anyone else. That is sad, but it is the truth. However, Pecola cannot face the truth, which is why she wants to be something she is not.

Claudia, the narrator of the story, is Pecola's opposite, which is why she is a character in the book. She is at home with how she looks and who she is. She secretly thinks the wonderful white dolls she gets for Christmas are ugly, and when the girls go to the movies, she likes the dark-haired Hollywood stars like Jane Withers and Heddy Lamarr. Critic Bloom says, "Claudia conceives of the world in terms of race alone when she deconstructs white dolls" (Bloom 119). Even at a young age, she rejects the white ideas of beauty, but she really does not understand this when she is a child, she just knows something is not right with the world and how society sees beauty and race. This quote shows that Claudia is much more aware than Pecola, and she has a better chance for happiness. Pecola, on the other hand, always lives in a world of dreams, and her ideals will always make her unhappy. Morrison continues, "She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen" (Morrison 95). This quote is about Pecola's mother, Pauline, and it shows where Pecola's ideas about beauty and whiteness originated. Pauline judges everyone according to how they look, and Pecola inherits this from her mother, and it will make her unhappy her entire life.

As the novel continues, it becomes clear that many of Pecola's problems come from her family. Her family is violent and unhappy. When they first met, Pecola's parents loved each other. Morrison says, "Pauline and Cholly loved each other. He seemed to relish her company and even to enjoy her country ways and lack of knowledge about city things. He talked with her about her foot and asked, when they walked through the town or in the fields, if she were tired" (Morrison 90). This quote shows that when they were young, they cared about each other. But life is hard, and they cannot keep their love when they grow older, have children, and have to support them. When they move to the city, they find poverty, difficulty, and unhappiness, and they cannot rise above these things and stay in love.

Cholly is a drunk and abusive, and eventually he rapes Pecola, his own daughter. Pauline is judgmental and thinks beauty is everything, and she passes this on to her daughter. Pecola is pregnant by her father, but her baby does not live, and Pecola goes mad. It is because of her family that she is so unhappy. Cholly's family has a history of madness, and it is passed down to Pecola. Pauline does not think enough of herself to think she can make it without Cholly, and so she stays with him. She is embarrassed by her "ugly" daughter and is not affectionate toward her. In fact, she even beats her when she finds out she is pregnant, which is yet another reason Pecola's family life is so bad. No one treats her well in her own home, and she has to go somewhere else to see a more normal family life. One critic believes that Pauline's skewed views of beauty contribute to Cholly's anger and their own unhappiness. She writes, "The same racism that underpins the standards of beauty under which Pecola and her mother, Pauline, suffer, is also at the root of Pecola's father's alcoholism and violence" (Stanford). This quote shows how much race and racial prejudice are a part of this novel. The women cannot accept themselves or their blackness. They make being white a standard of beauty, and it is a standard they can never meet, so they will always be ugly. Pecola's family is ugly inside, and they cannot combat it. They pass that ugliness on to their daughter, and she does not understand it either. She does not see herself for who she really is, and that is because her family cannot accept who they are and the prejudice that goes with it.

Pecola has the chance to see a more normal family when she lives with the MacTeers. Claudia and her sister are "comfortable in their skins" (Morrison 57), but as the white girl Maureen Peal shows them, they are missing something, and they do not understand what they are missing. Frieda and Claudia eventually learn this thing they need to know -- it is how the world views them. Pecola never does, and that is part of what makes her mad by the end of the book. The girls think to themselves after the argument with Maureen, "Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us" (Morrison 58). This quote shows how far away from reality Pecola really is, and how much she needs to learn about herself and the world around her. She cannot see things the way they really are, and that is why when her dreams do not come true, she goes crazy. Her world is too full of dreams and wishes and she does not understand the reality of the world and who she is. There is another quote in the book that shows how racism was so prevalent in the story, and still is today. Another character's mother tells him about the differences between, "colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud" (Morrison 67). Even black people cannot accept others like them, and this quote shows that. They are racist too, and they judge each other by how black they are, and how well they blend into white society. Another critic says, "Morrison explores both… READ MORE

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