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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The thought of separating the lighter skinned blacks like herself from darker skinned blacks consumes Geraldine. All of it stems from letting others determine one's value. Morrison is using one atypical African-American family to demonstrate what the effects could be of this phenomenon. She has deliberately created an extreme situation to prove a point. Nevertheless all the building blocks of the story exist in reality. All of the characters are affected to some degree, but Pecola succumbs to the difficulties she is facing. This was deliberate. Morrison wanted to show how the most unprotected member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member; is a female. Blue eyes are a metaphor that is easily understood. When Pecola wants blue eyes, she is really saying that she wants to escape her life and herself. She has defined herself only by her degree of blackness. Pecola and her family regard being a dark skinned black as synonymous with being ugly.
             At only eleven years of age, the solution Pecola can find regarding the feeling of inferiority and worthlessness is acquiring the symbol of beauty in her community. Blue eyes are regarded as beautiful by all the characters, including mothers and children who unanimously admire Shirley Temple. Pecola is in a desperate situation. She is not appreciated and cared for by her family. Instead, she is subjected to neglect and sexual abuse. Furthermore Pecola has no other person or place where she is safe and valued. In the surrounding community she is subjected to considerable intra-racism both by grownups and her peers. All this adds up and Pecola is becoming more and more obsessed with her wish for blue eyes. The wish is made because she wants to escape her life and become something she is not. When Pecola is raped by her father and becomes pregnant by him, she goes insane and starts to imagine that she actually got blue eyes.
             Pecola Breedlove is the central figure in "The Bluest Eye.


Essays Related to The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

1. The Bluest Eye - Literary Analysis

... as an editor for Random House in 1968. Morrison became a senior editor eventually and was the only African American woman to have that job in the company. While serving as a publisher, she published books by several African American writers. She also enjoyed lecturing across the country, teaching part-time, and writing many novels ("Toni Morrison Biography"). The Bluest Eye was Morrison's first novel. Her novels are all carefully written ... by using the stylistic technique of repetition, we are able to see the passion that the people in the novel feel toward the word outdoors and we ex...

  • Word Count: 2626
  • Approx Pages: 11
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

2. Black is Beautiful - The Works of Toni Morrison

In the novel "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, Morrison provides an interpretation of how whiteness is the standard of beauty, which warps the lives of black women and children, through messages everywhere that whiteness is superior and beautiful. In the short story "Recitatif", Morrison removes all racial codes from the narrative, for which racial identity is crucial in order, to give out a message that race is not important to ... young children. "The Bluest Eye" has many elements that relate to Toni Morrison's own personal life. The story is set in Lorain, Ohio, the town where Morrison wa...

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

3. "The work must be political. I

... - 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 this in so short a time?" (ibid. p.434) The communist let down the Negro, ridiculed and humiliated them, reinforcing the white view that these pressure groups could not be relied upon or trusted. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place during a time many new opportunities were ... given to the growing and expanding group of African Americans living in the North. Almost 500,00 African Americans moved to the northern states ...

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

4. The Bluest Eye

... her skin makes her even "uglier." She feels 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 omniscient narrator. Pecola's experiences would have less meaning coming from Pecola herself because a ... ugly. They are weeds". She has transferred society's dislike ...

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

5. Toni Morrison

TONI MORRISON Toni Morrison was the first black woman to receive a Novel Prize award. In 1970 Toni Morrison wrote her first book called "The Bluest Eye" which soon after gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for epic power, unerring ear for dialogue and her poetically expressive depictions of Black America (www.nobel ). Toni was born on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, a steel town twenty-five miles west ... of New York in Albany. This is where she started writing her first play, Dreaming Emmett. The play was about a true story of Emmett Till who was a black teenager ki...

  • Word Count: 837
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Toni Morrison

... Blacks have to overcome in a world that doesn't accept them. While exploring these various emotions, Toni Morrison also changes the styles in each novel. In The Bluest Eye, the main character, Pecola Breedlove, feels as though she is not beautiful as society says she should be. "The American culture of the early 1940's defines beauty in terms of such actors as Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers, and Shirley Temple" (Magill ... experience" states Phyllis R. Klotman (Metzger 413). Racism is an everyday issue for Pecola. She faces the problem from whites, and blacks as well. Pecola assumes that by...

  • Word Count: 2522
  • Approx Pages: 10
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

7. Memory in toni morrison

... parallel meanings of these settings when they are thought of literally and also collectively with the thoughts of memories. In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the chapters are separated by the evolutions of seasons. These conjugate the moods that are brought about within the text of the characters, but a certain irony as well. John Kotre speaks of the remembrance of people's lives and what they remember best. His argument is that we remember ... to integrate ourselves into a future of our own devising or does it chain us to an unchangeable past? Morrison's use of the natural cycle of se...

  • Word Count: 1615
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Grade Level: High School

8. Bluest Eye

The Eyes of Society In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the central theme is society's negative influence on the individual. In the novel, which takes place in Ohio in the 1940's, cruelty towards blacks by society and the desire to be a Shirley Temple replica are prevalent. Unable to endure the viciousness towards her by society, Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist of the story, goes quietly insane, withdrawing into a fantasy world in which she is the most beloved little girl ... . By society ... ...

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

9. The Bluest Eye Summary

In the Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses abuse and hardship to show the tragic consequences that come from racism. In the videos we had seen in class showed how the blacks were treated horribly. The white people were superior. The Bluest Eye shows ways in which white beauty standards hurt the lives of black girls and women. From the movies we saw the South had millions of slaves. Slaves would usually work nonstop from sunrise ... clothes. If a slave didn't do exactly what they were to do, they would be beaten, whipped, and sometimes killed. Toni Morrison describes the conditions under which Afr...

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

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