Celie and Pecola are both victims of their father’s sexual abuse as young girls. These recurring events of their childhoods are catalysts that push them into emotional solitude. Pecola’s relationship with her dad is already somewhat unusual; there is no real connection between father and daughter due to Cholly’s selfish tendencies and complete lack of parenting skills. In a drunken stupor one Saturday afternoon, Cholly comes home to find Pecola washing dishes and then proceeds to “tenderly” rape his own daughter. This disgusting act of “love” in the eyes of Cholly is his personal attempt to fix Pecola’s “young, helpless, hopeless presence” (Morrison 161). Sadly, Pecola’s first and only child is a result of incest. In the words of Debra Werrlein, …show more content…
Pecola Breedlove is conditioned to believe that she is ugly by her parents from a young age and “[hides] behind [her ugliness]” because she does not know any better (Morrison 38). She closes herself off to the world, thinking that her “ugliness” is a burden to those around her. Pecola’s brokenness forces her to idolize the images of something that she will never be; a Shirley Temple duplicate with curly blonde hair and rosy red cheeks. But, what Pecola yearns for the most is for Temple’s blue eyes—more specifically, she yearns for the bluest eye. In the words of Jacqueline de Weever, Pecola’s dream for blue eyes shows that “[she] wants, in fact to be white” (de Weever 5). In other words, Pecola longs to be white so that she will get a second chance at living a better life with a better family, with one that is not ugly. She thinks that if she had the bluest eyes, “maybe Cholly would be different” and “Mrs. Breedlove too” (Morrison 46). Pecola goes through great lengths to transform herself into a girl with the bluest eye—she eats the Mary Jane candies, worships the image of Shirley Temple on a cup, dreams to dissapear—but none of this works. Pecola turns to Soaphead Church, who “did what [God] did not, could not, would not do”. Soaphead “looked at that ugly little black girl” and “loved her”, even though what Pecola needed was more than love (Morrison 181). Pecola’s obsession with being beautiful is what eventually causes her downfall. Celie, on the other hand, does not worship the images of women out of desire to look like them. She does it because their beauty fascinates her. To clarify, Celie spends “all night long” staring at the picture of Shug Avery, “the most beautiful [woman she has] ever seen” who “be dressed to kill, whirling and
A person’s fundamental beliefs and attitudes can be greatly influenced by the people in their lives. As an illustration, the presence of parents in a child 's life can influence them greatly. Parenting goes far beyond the care of the child, as parents also have a significant influence on the child’s personality, emotional development, and behavioral habits. Like in Karen Thompson Walker dystopian novel The Age of Miracles, the protagonist 's parents also have a crucial impact on her self-discovery. The novel is an inventive story, combining classic coming-of-age themes with the horror of a natural disaster of apocalyptic proportions.
Families “Crumbling” Down: Allusions to a Classic Fairytale Families are fragile and without the proper stability, they can easily fall apart. Two flawed families are portrayed in “The Farmer’s Children” and “Hansel and Gretel”. Hansel and Gretel have a wicked stepmother, and a father who obeys her selfish orders. Similarly, Emerson and Cato have a careless stepmother, and a clueless father. In both tales, this leads to families falling apart.
The Children's Bureau publicized in their last pole that every year 754,000 children are abused or neglected by a parent. This consists of abuses such as physical, mental, and neglect. The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, tells stories that Jeannette remembers as a normality. However, it truly opens the reader’s eyes to a new standard for parental neglect.
T.C. Boyle’s short essay, “Caviar”, follows the story of couple, Nathaniel, and his wife, Marie, who attempt to procreate, but are left resort to surrogacy through Dr. Ziss’ recommendation after Marie’s infertility is discovered. As told from the perspective of the fisherman, Nathaniel, explores his sexual urges through an extramarital affair with his son’s surrogate mother, Wendy, as she boards with them during the early stages of pregnancy. The reading ends with Nathaniel assaulting Dr. Ziss after finding him to be in a romantic relationship with Wendy, thus arrested and kicked out of his own household by his wife (Boyle 80-92). At face value, this story could be simply interpreted to being about loyalty as it relates to relationships and
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
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…
They constantly encounter the problem of not living up to society’s beauty standards, which results in feelings of self-hatred based on race. These feelings perpetuate racism, as society, and even black people, tend to favor white beauty since it is held up as superior. The problems that Pecola, Pauline, and Claudia face in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are not just figments of the past. Today, millions of women across the country feel some sort of self-loathing stemming from dissatisfaction over how they look. It is important that society tries to free itself from these nonsensical standards and celebrate the unique beauty of each individual
The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the Fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads Pecola to struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything.
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.
Garcia Girls Essay Rough Draft For the Garcia girls, like many children of first-generation immigrants to the United States, sexuality is a complicated and far-reaching issue involving tradition, family, class, and identity. The Garcia Girls are coming of age in the United States during a period in which classic American values are constantly being called into question by American youth; this is the 1960s, a time that will stand witness to the blossoming of the sexual revolution. The traditional ideas about sex and independence found in their Dominican homeland come under repeated assault, as the family begins the assimilation process in their new homeland of New York City.
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
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
Destructive Nature of Racialised Beauty Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. In this novel, Toni Morrison shows how societies racist and false beliefs on beauty can be seriously destructive if believed and taken to heart. Toni Morrison displays the destructive nature of racialised beauty through the character in the novel named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola lacks self esteem and believes that she is the blackest and ugliest girl, and she believes that white is the only beautiful race.
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
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.