Isolation In The Bluest Eye

The contents of a book are often used to move the readers to action or at the very least, to inform. However, some these books may contain undesirable and inappropriate contents such that, the messages are not ascertained, but instead, overlooked. As a result to some of these criteria, Tony Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” was often challenged because of its content. Morrison’s novel centers on a young black girl, living in rural Ohio during the 1940s between the post-Depression era and the beginning of color segregation of public places all over America. Aside from the white supremacy complex that arose, the black community also had its own superior complex; the “light-skinned” superiority. Morrison interprets this through Pecola and the unfair …show more content…
A time when it is hard enough to deal with self-image without having to be forced to deal with the issues of a racially segregated country and heightening tensions stemming from it. In Morrison’s novel, “Pecola’s adolescent experience with the issue of race takes place within a community that has internalized the dominant culture’s racist ideas of a superior goodness associated with “whiteness” and a physical and mental ugliness associated with ‘blackness’ (158). Whether consciously or not, the members of the black community around Pecola have accepted the overtones associated with the ideals of whiteness and blackness. As a member of the darker variety, Pecola experiences the great misfortune of being one of the lower classed. This has a negative impact on her self-worth and also her self-image in general. Pecola has internalized the Eurocentric beauty standards of this country to her own detriment and self-hatred. As a result, the readers watch as Pecola transform from a girl longing to have blue eyes to the internalization of her trauma by thinking she has blue eyes, as she walks around town contemplating the confusion she has that people look at her with horror and