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 weakness, while beauty is seen as a characteristic found only among whites. In addition, white beauty becomes equivalent with goodness and wholesomeness and even Pecola's father Cholly imagines God as "a nice old white man, with long white hair, flowing with beard, and little blues eyes"(pg 134).
By toleranting the ideal of white beauty, blacks denounce themselves as its exact opposite. Given that the legend of white beauty is restricted from the outset and denies the worth of black beauty, blacks accordingly lock themselves into a self-destructive cycle in which their only triumph lies in their ability to encourage whiteness. Pecola's family, the ultimate victims of this destructive cycle, have deserted their search for beauty, preferring to accept their ugliness in an act of hopeless fatalism: "You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and couldn't find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance"(pg 39).
Some instances that deal with beauty in the book are as follows: Claudia is constantly faced with ideals of beauty. For Christmas on e year, she receives a blue-eyed, blonde -haired, pink-skinned doll.
Her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," was published in 1970. ... In 1965 she started writing 'The Bluest Eye." ... " The characters in the bluest eye show exactly why such a movement was needed. ... Pecola Breedlove is the central figure in "The Bluest Eye." ... "The Bluest Eye" focuses on Pecola Breedlove, a lonely adolescent black girl in the late 1940's. ...
Beauty and Ugly: The Major Patterns in The Bluest Eye " Smiling white face. ... In The Bluest Eye beauty/ugly constantly shows up through both internal thoughts and narration or spoken through conversations. ... (Morrison 46-7) This lack of beauty even intruded upon her family life. ... (Morrison 11) The Bluest Eye is the story of a young girl so consumed with wanting to be noticed, wanting to be loved in a time and place that didn't want to do either, that she prays for the impossible..blue eyes. ... Beauty was a powerful thing to use as a pattern and symbol in the novel...
Whiteness as pure and ethereal symbol plays a very large role in The Bluest Eye. Whiteness as a standard of beauty creates devastating internal racism. ... Toni Morrison's portrayal of whiteness as the standard of beauty is readily apparent throughout The Bluest Eye. ... While there were black movie stars at the time, he chose to use white women to depict beauty. ... She never had to search for anybody to eat with in the cafeteria--they flocked to the table of her choice- (62-3) While the overall majority of The Bluest Eye is centered on white as a standard of beauty, Claudia constan...
Toni Morisson's novel The Bluest Eye is about the life of the Breedlove family who resides in Lorain, Ohio, in the late 1930s. ... She wants the bluest eye. ... The narrative structure of The Bluest Eye is important in revealing just how pervasive and destructive social racism is. ... Instead of conventional chapters and sections, The Bluest Eye is broken up into seasons, fall, winter, spring, and summer. ... The name of the novel, "The Bluest Eye," is meant to get the reader thinking about how much value is placed on blue-eyed little girls. ...
Bluest Eye Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye is about the life of the Breedlove family who resides in Lorain, Ohio, in the late 1930s. ... She wants the bluest eye. ... Instead of conventional chapters and sections, The Bluest Eye is broken up into seasons, fall, winter, spring, and summer. ... The name of the novel, "The Bluest Eye," is meant to get the reader thinking about how much value is placed on blue-eyed little girls. ... There are two major metaphors in The Bluest Eye, one of marigolds and one of dandelions. ...
The Bluest Eye, written in 1940 by Toni Morrison, is constructed to reveal a very powerful point that applies not only to the book, but also to many societies of the present day. ... The ideas and views present in The Bluest Eye are related to beauty and what makes one beautiful. ... In the opening of The Bluest Eye, the passage from the Dick and Jane story, becomes a representation of an ideal white person's life. ... By drawing this connection, Morrison fixes the American standard of beauty with connotations of violence and genocide, because these skin and eye colors, on dolls and lit...
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 idolizes images of blond haired, blue-eyed white girls like Shirley Temple. ... The child is stillborn and Pecola goes insane withdrawing into a fantasy world where she has the bluest eyes of all. ... While no one would argue this isn't true, she is also placing blame on society for forcing a fixed image of beauty on an individual. ... She found beauty, order and cleanliness with this ...
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 idolizes images of blond haired, blue-eyed white girls like Shirley Temple. ... The child is stillborn and Pecola goes insane withdrawing into a fantasy world where she has the bluest eyes of all. ... While no one would argue this isn't true, she is also placing blame on society for forcing a fixed image of beauty on an individual. ... She found beauty, order and cleanliness with this fa...
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. ... The Bluest Eye is a bitter novel that vividly reflects the way in which blacks were treated unfairly, and more important, how most blacks were unable to resist oppression from whites during the late nineteenth century. ... Maybe they'd say, "Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. ... In an effort to be accepted by whites, and furthermore by her family, Pecola longs to conform to Western ideal...
Beauty plays a highly influential role through Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. ... In The Bluest Eye, Morrison refers to these traits of nature as "funk". ... All of these women practice these methods of care to fit into the glorified version of white beauty. ... The Bluest Eye examines the home life of these children in the stories as well. ... Pecola's wish is to have blue eyes, the bluest of eyes, with this she will achieve beauty and happiness, her family will no longer fight, and everything wrong with her world will be okay. ...
