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Summary Of Toni Morisson's The Bluest Eye

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turning point in the development of my psyche which would allow me to love her.” [The Bluest Eye p, 19]. Although she rejects the idea now, Claudia will recognize that whiteness is the standard of beauty at some point. Morrison layers another dimension into the story in the form of Maureen Peal, “a high-yellow dream child.” The rich, white child immediately becomes the hub of the entire school’s admiration, and the MacTeer children’s jealousy. They search for fault in her features, and find one: a dog tooth, which they utilize to secretly call Maureen names [62-63]. Peal’s verbal attacks toward Pecola and the MacTeer’s (“I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!”) lead Claudia to wondering, “What did we lack?” She concludes that, “The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful and not us.” [The Bluest Eye 73-74]. The reader can deduce that the “Thing” that …show more content…

This family consists of the mother Pauline, the father Cholly, the son Sammy, and the daughter Pecola. The novel’s focal point is the daughter, an eleven-year-old Black girl who is trying to conquer a bout with self-hatred. Everyday she encounters racism, not just from white people, but mostly from her own race. In their eyes she is much too dark, and the darkness of her skin somehow implies that she is inferior, and according to everyone else, 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. Morrison is able to use her critical eye to reveal to the reader the evil that is caused by a society that is indoctrinated by the inherent goodness and beauty of whiteness and the ugliness of blackness. She uses many different writing tools to depict how “white” beliefs have dominated American and African American

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