... she can overcome this battle of self-hatred by obtaining blue eyes, but not just any blue. She wants the bluest eye. Much of the narration comes from Claudia MacTeer as a nine year old child, but Morrison also gives the reader the insight of Claudia reflecting on the story as an adult. some first person narration from Pecola's mother, and narration by Morrison herself as an ... for how long white ideas of family and home have been forced into black culture. Instead of conventional chapters and sections, The Bluest Eye is broken up into seasons, fall, winter, spring, and summer. This type...

• Word Count: 1112
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... is also narrated by a nine-year-old black girl, which is how old Morrison would've been in 1941, the year the novel takes place. Furthermore, Morrison's family struggled financially during the Great Depression, similarly to the MacTeer family in the novel. Through "The Bluest Eye", Morrison makes a statement about how vulnerable a young black girl, such as herself, is as she is exposed to ... that were stimulating. Morrison thought no one would realize that it wasn't always beautiful, how hurtful racism is. One reason why she wrote "The Bluest Eye" is because someone would actually be...

• Word Count: 1083
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... didn't do exactly what they were to do, they would be beaten, whipped, and sometimes killed. Toni Morrison describes the conditions under which African-Americans in general and Pecola in particular are forced to live. The characters in the Bluest Eye are faced both directly and indirectly by racism. The characters are issued to internal values that create their own set of discrimination within families and ... the neighborhood. Three characters from The Bluest Eye that I will be describing are Pecola , Claudia and Pauline. Pecola Breedlove is an eleven year old ... of her family. Pauli...

• Word Count: 971
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... women straightening their hair, or getting a weave to fit into a certain, white culture, or people in India and China, using a bleach based lotion to make their skin less pigmented. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison refers to these traits of nature as "funk". This "funk" that is wiped away are little things that a black woman is born with to try ... man's work". Here, they learn "in short, how to get rid of the funkiness... The funkiness of nature... They wipe it away (83)". The Bluest Eye examines the home life of these children in the stories as well. It juxtaposes how a homelife can relate...

• Word Count: 940
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... themselves, or figments of their imagination. (ibid.p.3) In the book, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison gets across very powerful ideas about American society of the day, these ideas have endured even until today giving the novel a timeless quality. She highlights the poverty and hardship suffered by black families who remain the poorest ethnic group in America today. The contention is raised as to how influential society is upon ... here you are, ladies and gentlemen, Sambo, The dancing doll."" (ibid. p.431) The narrator asks the question ""How on earth could he drop from the brotherhood to ...

• Word Count: 3381
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... Adults look away when they see her, and children laugh at her craziness. A young girl's life is destroyed as a result of society's defining the norms, and placing them on such a high standard. In The Bluest Eye, Claudia MacTeer provides a child's point of view-sometimes from an adult perspective while an omniscient voice relates information unknown by Claudia, like Pecola's thoughts ... Morrison also seems to use names as an important role to symbolize the conditions of society. For example, the name of the novel, The Bluest Eye, is meant to get the reader thinking about how the desire ...

• Word Count: 1724
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... worth as a human being. Morrison clearly portrays whiteness as a standard of beauty for the characters in her novel, while the outlier is Claudia MacTeer who constantly subverts this idea. Toni Morrison's portrayal of whiteness as the standard of beauty is readily apparent throughout The Bluest Eye. Many of the characters in the novel are described in a physical manner that emphasizes their "unattractive" African American features. ... their work partners; black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girls' toilet, and their eyes genuflected under sliding lids. She n...

• Word Count: 617
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye tells the sad story of Pecola Breedlove, a poor prepubescent black girl, who wants to be loved and cared for by her family and society. She is a very dark skinned black girl and ... family and doting over their blond, blue-eyed little girl, while at the same time completely ignoring her own little girl. After being raped and impregnated by her father she is asked to leave school. The child is stillborn and Pecola goes insane withdrawing into a fantasy world where she has the bluest eyes of all. Morrison makes strong social statements about race, ...

• Word Count: 1289
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye tells the sad story of Pecola Breedlove, a poor prepubescent black girl, who wants to be loved and cared for by her family and society. She is a very dark skinned black girl and ... family and doting over their blond, blue-eyed little girl, while at the same time completely ignoring her own little girl. After being raped and impregnated by her father she is asked to leave school. The child is stillborn and Pecola goes insane withdrawing into a fantasy world where she has the bluest eyes of all. Morrison makes strong social statements about race,...

• Word Count: 1291
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

The Bluest Eye novel concentrates on the life of three young girls: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The main character is Pecola. She is an 11-year old black girl who wants to have the eyes of a white girl, blue eyes. Pecola lives with her family in the town of Lorain, Ohio. The family consists of the mother Pauline, the father Cholly, the son Sammy, and the ... she is ugly, and if she looked beautiful, he would take her with him. Pecola also considers her ugliness to be the reason of the teachers' and classmates' hate towards her. She prays to God every day because she thinks t...

• Word Count: 1329
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, is a novel about sexual commencement and maltreatment. The book begins in Lorain, Ohio at the end of the Great Depression during a time when many people's lives were meeting ends. For one family in particular, The Breedloves, it was a time of despair. Members of the Breedlove family included: Pecola, a neglected child, Pauline, an abused mother, and Cholly, a rootless man. Throughout ... abused so much sexually and emotionally, Pecola eventually ends up going insane and believing that she now has the bluest eyes and everyone is jealous of her. The novel ends w...

• Word Count: 759
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The Bluest Eye By: Toni Morrison Blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin was the envy of most young African American girls in the 1940's. In the tragic novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old black girl is a victim of racial self-loathing and also rape by her father which results in pregnancy. Described as submissive, ugly, and ignorant, she is labeled the outcast amongst ... the black community of Lorain, Ohio ... does have blue eyes and goes insane as a result. (p. 204) "She spent her days, her tendril, sap-green days, walking up and down, up and down, h...

• Word Count: 413
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... beauty is, however, some people think it's actually an essential part of life. The word beauty has many different definitions to different people. What may seem beautiful to one person may not necessarily seem beautiful to another. The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison, is about a fictional tragedy of a young black girl named ... Pecola Breedlove. Pecola was brought up as a poor and unwanted girl, which has made her desire the acceptance and love of society. The world has made her believe that she is ... -hatred. Her classmates also have an effect on her. They seem to think that beca...

• Word Count: 1066
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

The Bluest Eye is an inversion of fairy tales-the ugly duckling does not become the beautiful swan. Seasons do not presage growth; indeed summer is winter," (Harris, 11). Morrison shows that the emigration of black people to the North was not a story of easy success and comfort; these emigrants had to contend with their differences with white people as well as the black people of the North. "Through a process ... ). Mr. MacTeer, too is shown as a concerned parent. "Provider, loving parent, protector, Mr. MacTeer is justifiably angry when Mr. Henry fondles Frieda" (Harris, 41). The MacTeers ar...

• Word Count: 619
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... her long to look acceptable. Brown eyes are not acceptable. She must get the bluest eyes in order to have self-worth. Morrison also uses freedom to show the destructive consequences of the Americanization process. She deals with the issue of freedom as it relates to the African-American race in 1941 in the life of Cholly. Morrison describes his early existence as one full of disappointment ... his skin color, Cholly has nothing more to lose. Morrison shows us how the American idea of beauty and worth can lead to a sense of self-hate. When an aspect of ones being that is unchangeable is ...

• Word Count: 1694
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Beauty The book portrays the African American population as a culture fascinated by its internalization of a "blue-eyed, yellow haired, pink-skinned" beauty ideal. Women of color are judged according to white standards of beauty", and consequently they are always considered ugly. Hence blacks learn to hate themselves; and Pecola Breedlove, prays every night for blue eyes. As a result the ideal of beauty becomes a unsafe and racist ensnare into which African Americans are born, and from which they can never completely escape. In other words, blackness is associated to ugliness and therefore wea...

• Word Count: 577
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... and Frieda MacTeer, Morrison's goes through four seasons and traces the Pecola's descent into madness. Morrison provides readers with the context and history behind the Breedloves" misery and Pecola's obsessive desire to have the "bluest eyes". Throughout time, black males have always been at a disadvantage in whatever they wanted to do. In Toni Morrison's book the Bluest Eye we will see how Cholly demonstrates "that disadvantage" that he ... shame. "There was no place for Cholly's eyes to go. They slid about furtively searching for shelter, while his body remained paralyzed. The flashl...

• Word Count: 480
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Fight Against Oppression!!!! In the novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the evils inflicted upon blacks by a white society indoctrinated by the inherent beauty of whiteness and ugliness of blackness are thoroughly depicted. Morrison's novel illustrates the disastrous affects racism had on African-Americans during the late nineteen hundreds. The Bluest Eye is a bitter novel that vividly reflects the way in which blacks were treated unfairly, and more important, how ... -year-old girl who faced many tragic events at such a young age. She believes that if she can live up to the image of blue...

• Word Count: 1667
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... it was because Pecola was having her father's baby. Having her father's baby was not the only problem the twelve-year-old young girl had to face. In the novel "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove must learn what it is like to deal with racism (man versus man ... conflict). And how to deal with her father (man versus man), and herself (man versus himself). In 1941 there was not a white person in the south that gave the black people of the ... community equal rights. The ... her. Everyone that once had once known her had now disowned her. She had no friends. And no one she...

• Word Count: 791
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School