Pecola wanted to have blue eyes because things may have been easy for her and her life may be better. Pauline messed up foot and fallen teeth made her feel so ugly and she did not wanted to fit in with society was of beauty she didn’t love herself. Cholly had always been neglected by her parents society and he had never learned how to love it affected him in the long run and a traumatic event in his life had scared him as a result. It is why beauty is undeserved for those who are called ugly according to
Pecola envies the white race because they are treated well while she is treated badly. For example, she gets bully by a group of boys and calls her “Black e mo”(Morrison 65)She gets bully just because the other people thinks that the Blacks are inferior and can be bullied. In reality, she gets bully just because no one stands up for her. Most importantly, her teachers don't stand for her because she is black and her family is torn so no one can care for her. The idea of double-consciousness that W.E.B. Dubois introduced in "The Souls of Black Folk" and that is continued in the writings of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates is the feeling that it’s difficult or impossible to have one unified identity when you have more than one identity.
The world is filled with labels, some negative and some positive. When it comes to negative labeling, a person’s sense of beauty in themselves and in the world is impacted. In The Bluest Eye, author Toni Morrison uses her characters such as Pecola to illustrate how another’s labeling can alter the way one internalizes his or her own beauty; Morrison poses an overall negative storyline filled with labels and discrimination that in turn allows the reader to identify the highlighted and deeper beauty that is not always visible to the naked eye. Pecola, a young girl during a time of extreme racism and discrimination, is raised in an abusive and unstable home. The effects of the abuse on Pecola has a large impact on her views of the world and
To continue the bullying in Pecola’s life, at a point in the story, she saw Claudia’s baby doll which was a replica of glamorous Marilyn Monroe, a superstar at the time that was identified as beautiful and someone most kids wanted to imitate.. Most kids including Pecola studied that piece of plastic. Little did she realize that this “superstar” was going to agonize her. After seeing Monroe’s fame and success, she thought that having blue eyes would make her beautiful and would magically change all the evil in her life to good. For “it had occurred to Pecola some time ago that is her eyes...were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different”, the colors of her eye were thought to “change” her (Morrison 46).
After years and years of isolation at school and racial contempt, Pecola “pray[s] for blue eyes” each night for a year, without fail (61). For Pecola to be driven to such extreme measures and to the point where she is praying to look different, shows how far her self-hatred has gone and how detrimental the effects of conformity are. Not only that, but when her wish is not granted, she goes to a miracle worker for help, who responds with “a surge of love and understanding” because “an ugly little girl was asking for beauty” (189). Rather than preaching to the child that beauty is more than white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, Church feels sympathy and agrees with her, demonstrating how devoured that society has become by society’s notion of beauty. That devoured society has misbegotten and impressed upon Pecola the idea that beauty is restricted to white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, all of which Pecola does not have.
She is ugly for being black and cast aside for being poor. These traits do not make actually cause her to be ugly in and of the term itself, but the way her society views these traits does. The prostitutes draw Pecola to them as not only are they are the few people who do not view her as ugly, but they do not view themselves as ugly. Instead they accept Pecola as she is. They draw her in and speak to her as their equal, a luxury that Pecola has yet to experience.
Pecola and her mother, Pauline, see themselves as ugly because they hold themselves to beauty standards in which light-skinned people are the ideal. Pecola and her mother have a brutal home life due to the drunken violence of Cholly Breedlove, and the constant pressure of beauty standards only adds to their misfortune. Morrison explains this pressure by asserting that “[i]t was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they
Likewise, Morrison also uses symbolism for the duration of the novel to establish how people can judge a person based on their economic standing. For instance, symbolism is represented through the blue eyes that is repeatedly mentioned in the novel. The blue eyes represent the idealistic white middle class life that Pecola dreams of having since white people commonly have blue eyes. The reader can infer this suggestion because whenever Pecola is experiencing bad things she wishes to have blue eyes. Morrison writes, "If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too…Each night, without fail, she prayed for the blue eyes…
But it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be
Jonathan Hernandez Mrs. Franklin English 11 September 9, 2014 The Male Overcast Widely renowned Toni Morrison, is an award winning author and a Nobel recipient; within her novel A Mercy (2008), reveals the effects of hierarchy from a physiological standpoint. She supports her revealing by first introducing a female character that comes to power in a male dominant world, then the character (Rebekka) strikes tragedy as her only male support dies leaving the female with a mantle solely made for men which causes Rebekka to lose a place in her mentality of social hierchy; as such she turns to God as a replacement which can only be seen as a replacement for the vast hole in her heart for a male representative. Morrison’s purpose is to give her readers of a new perspective based on the social stratifiction so heavily influenced by the difference in gender during the late 1600’s in order to educate the minds of those that predominantly view the gender social order as a petty argument for the wealthy. She adapts the reading to revolve around a general tone of consequence and repentance.
Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, examines the tragic effects of imposing white, middle-class American ideals of beauty on the developing female identity of a young African American girl during the early 1940s. Inspired by a conversation Morrison once had with an elementary school classmate who wished for blue eyes, the novel poignantly shows the psychological devastation of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who searches for love and acceptance in a world that denies and devalues people of her own race. As her mental state slowly unravels, Pecola hopelessly longs to possess the conventional American standards of feminine beauty—namely, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes—as presented to her by the popular icons and traditions of white culture. Written as a fragmented narrative from multiple perspectives and with significant typographical deviations, The Bluest Eye juxtaposes passages from the Dick-and-Jane grammar school primer with memories and stories of Pecola 's life alternately told in retrospect by one of Pecola 's now-grown childhood friends and by an omniscient narrator. Published in the midst of the Black Arts movement that flourished during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Bluest Eye has attracted
The Seer is something of an enigma. No one is quite sure of her motivations or her methods: some think she has some manner of true sight into the future whereas others merely think she must be some sort of mad genius. Her manner is refined and deliberate, though never obtuse: her actions can be seemingly nonsensical at first, though they have a strange habit of turning out in her favor. Her relationship with her Champion is one of deep, quiet affection even if they play all manner of 'roles ' in the public and this is characteristic of her: to the casual eye, she cares about nothing, her hand moving chess pieces as she likes seemingly to her whims but if pressed it 's very clear that her caring runs as hot as it is deep and the well-being
It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the
1) Society has change the way Pecola perceives herself and she has the idea in her mind that her life would be less miserable if she has blue eyes. She is always thinking that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). Pecola has gotten the impression of her life being complete if only she has blue eyes. She would see the eyes of others and become envious of their blue eyes. The boys at school would always pick on her and call her an ugly black girl.
Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, has no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.
