The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison: Scene Analysis

In the beginning of the book The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the readers are introduced to the main characters. The scene opens up to Claudia, an African-American girl living in the dark racism time of the United States. Being young, she describes her difficulty with understanding the adults, and the privileged lives of the same Caucasian girls. Claudia amoung with her sister, Frieda, collect coal for their family. During one of their trips, she catches a cold and her mother scolds her. This anger confuses Claudia, who later realizes it was not towards her, but towards the fact she was sick with a cold due to their financial instability and tough lifestyle. To make more money, the family allows people to board at their home. The newest boarders, Pecola Breedlove and …show more content…
The author suggests that even though it shows she is older, it could cause problems in the future. The scene changes and it shows the apartment that the Breedloves lived in before the separation. It is small, cold, and holds many bad memories from their time as a family. Pecola’s father was a drunk, which caused many fights between him and her mother. Morrison suggested even though the couple had things to work out, they needed each other for various reasons. Cholly, Pecola’s father, had experienced a traumatic event where as a young boy he was forced to watch two white man have sexual intercourse with a woman. This event not only caused him to become violent, but hate women. One day Pecola awakes to her brother, father, and mother violently fighting in the kitchen based on the previous night’s events. Due to this intense fighting, Pecola runs to meet her neighbors. The women living there are prostitutes , and tell her of their clients. Pecola is fascinated by them, and loves hearing their stories. She decides that if she had blue eyes like America’s standards of beauty, then she would be beautiful to everyone