Pecola is very lonely and ordinary black girl and the most important reason for her desire for blue eyes is that she wants to treated differently from her family and friends. Pecola believes and feels that she can overcome this battle and thoughts of self-hatred by obtaining blues eyes. The choice of blue eyes is due to the racial society she has grown up in. "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window sign, all the world had agreed that a blue eyed yellow, haired, pink, skinned doll was what every girl child treasured"(The Bluest Eye p.20.21). Any community views that the blue eyes are synonyms of
In addition, Morrison went even further and pointed out that this idea was blindly, without question, accepted in both worlds of the racially divided society. It appears that Claudia, probably the alter ego of the author herself is to some extent staying in opposition to the admiration of Temple. The question is, whether Claudia as one of the characters, was able to recognize intuitively that her identity as an African-American person was based on the color of her skin and labelled as the less pretty one or Morrison used her as a tool to illustrate how white privileged society was keeping the feelings of inferiority among the suppressed. The contrast between Claudia’s rebellion and Pecola’s obsession with Temple is a strong device supporting the idea of pushing unconscious sense of lower class status. Within the book, there is a significant growth of Pecola’s obsession with Temple and the blue eyes, which became the centre of her dreams.
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).
Pecola stands for binary opposition ugliness, unworthiness, invisibility and lack of self-esteem. In fact Pecola prays to have blue eyes so that she could be considered beautiful. Since being white is associated with aesthetics, moral superiority, and power,
The novel contains a message that white people are superior everywhere and every era, including the white baby doll given to Claudia. The person who suffers most from white beauty standards is pecola. She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she gets blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be removed. Morrison suggests that pecola's family accepts this enforced feeling of ugliness and lack of self-worth without asking its source and it is this accepting of self-hatred, a hatred that comes from outside the family is one of the biggest problem faced the family. This novel reflects the society by presenting characters who hate themselves because of what they are told they are, which sustains anger.
There is no doubt the scourge of racism is a black eye for the beacon of hope and light, which the US is supposed to represent. For far too long most of our citizens have been complacent with the status quo. Racism has grown as part of the very fabric of this country. Ideas of race and ideologies of superiority were state sponsored and fundamental to history and structure of the United States. From the slave trade, voter suppression, lynching, segregation, and human rights violations, the list is long and dirty of the atrocities minorities have endured while under the thumb of the US government.
This is, she is not aware that she does not need to have the white beauty attributes in order to be somebody due to she is an individual by herself. In this case, she is not aware that she is beautiful; but the problem is that the rest of society understands beauty according to a determinate ideal; and anything that does not follow this pattern falls off from being considered beautiful. Consequently, not being conscious of her existence as an individual, Pecola rejects her physical appearance because she desires to be beautiful according to the white beauty; and by this act, she also rejects her psyche, her soul and her identity. The repulsion for her physical appearance, her blackness, can be considered, in a larger scale, the renunciation to her African traces, her origin, and by this, the denial of her community too. Tragically, she presents a double personality that does not allow her the realization of any true self.
She experienced a lot of racial oppression and receives a confirmation of her own sense of ugliness. Pauline Breedlove, Pecola’s mother is also one of the people who made her feel that she is ugly. Pauline wanted a white child more because she thinks that being black is ugly. She encourages her husband’s behavior to be able to bring back her own role as a martyr. The father of Pecola, Cholly, felt like he was trapped in his marriage and has lost his interest in life.
We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes’” (46), Morrison suggests that Pecola believes that her identity is based on her eyes and that attaining beauty would be the solution for gaining acceptance from others. The “pictures” and the “sights” the narrator refers to are her memories or experiences. “Those eyes” are what allow people to see the world and are often referred to as symbols of truth and “the windows to the soul.” Pecola’s desire to change her eyes means that she wants to alter the truth: her race, her self-imposed “ugliness,” her experiences, her identity—everything that makes her who she is. In this quote, Pecola believes that the word “different” means to be “beautiful.” When Pecola believes that “if those eyes of her” were “different,” she believes that altering
Views On Colonialism In the speech “Effects Of Colonialism On Africa’s Past And Present”, Dr. Motsoko Pheko believes that the colonization of Africa was negative for the entire continent because it brought looting, slavery, and violence. Pheko uses pathos to advance this view. For example, Pheko states that colonised Africans were treated not only as sub-humans, they were denied basic rights such as education and the right to land for decent housing, farming, mining, and fishing. This example of pathos demonstrates that colonization of Africa was negative for the entire continent. The use of the phrase “denied basic rights” appeals to emotion by describing how the colonised Africans were denied basic rights and treated as less than human.