The Bluest Eye Character Analysis

Great Essays
Samuel Polanco
AP English
Mr. Alan
January 29, 2015 Facing Your Truth When it comes to the aspect of reality in life, several people find it a challenge to adapt or deal with. Philosopher and writer Plato “When we start facing the truth, the process may be frightening and many people run back to their old lives. But, if you continue to seek the truth, you will eventually be able to handle it.” Reality mirrors the element of the truth, and the truth sometimes isn’t what people want to hear. Both positive, and negative outcomes can emerge from the grasp of the truth. Sometimes hiding from a frightening truth seems ideal, which is what the characters like Pecola and Claudia did in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Occasionally, after discovering
…show more content…
What was similar to Pecola was how she tries to handle the mistreatment of her skin color with curiosity. Claudia would receive the same doll every christmas. According to morrison “the gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll.”(Morrison 20). Claudia received the same present every year, which can show the idealistic reputation that the specific gift had. According to Morrison, “i fingered the face, wondering at the single-stroke eyebrows; picked at the pearly white teeth stuck like two piano keys between red bowline lips. Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy blue eyeballs, twisted the yellow hair.” (Morrison 21). Claudia was searching for the reason that dolls image is so popularly favored. The authors use of imagery was shown when the dolls teeth were explained to look ‘pearly white’ and ‘like two piano keys’. The authors use of words made it seem that the doll was given an attractive image in Claudia’s eyes. Instead of accepting that she was different from this image, Claudia chose to try to become like someone who she wasn’t. According to Morrison “But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable.”(Morrison 21). Claudia was described to search for something the doll has, that she is missing in the aspect of appearance. This relates to Plato's statement because it shows how another character in The Bluest Eye …show more content…
The authors mentioning of ‘I would not have come here’ proves Plato’s statement to be false because Oedipus is not able to handle the truth. As a result of the gaining of the truth about his life, Oedipus stabbed his eyes out, which shows that he definitely did not handle the truth. The irony was present, because Oedipus believed and searched for the truth in hopes for a better outcome, and the outcome was exactly the opposite. As a reader, it was expected, which revealed that the protagonist did not know what he was going to face from the discovery of the truth. He wanted to escape the sight of his truth, and made a painful mistake in order to try his best to avoid the truth. Plato's statement is therefore false because of Sophocles’ ironic story of Oedipus and the self-realization of his

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Uncanny Pestel Analysis

    • 1417 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Doll is used as a cliché representation of the uncanny because of the form eliciting a sense of anxiety due to its familiarity and its evident use from Jentsch and Freud as well as the dolls use in memorable media. The doll image is a particular structure, which resembles the human as inhuman. This structure is only successful when, in imitating the human form, aesthetic beauty is subjective, not inherent. Psychoanalytic aesthetics endeavours for the viewer to associate the doll image with the effect of anxiety, or the uncanny, upon the position of the viewer. Nonetheless, due to this repetition from the times of Freud, the doll and the seeing f the double simultaneously has become less prevailing in creating the uncanny moment within the viewer, as it not the embodiment of the uncanny which creates such a sensation but the sequential building to the moment of embodiment which creates the…

    • 1417 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In which Morrison provocatively creates an uncomfortable read making the novel take a much greater meaning than the reader anticipated. Pecola’s character is truly the most pathetic. However, she is a representation of the entire African American culture who even after slavery are mislead by the notion of white superiority and as a result are left with the plague of self…

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In response to the assigned reading from the Bluest Eye, the young girl Claudia expresses her feelings toward the most adored blue eyed doll. Claudia was a black girl; the blue eyed doll was a white doll. It was not only the world that found it pretty but her sister Frieda too. Claudia could not comprehend what everyone saw in that doll. In my perspective the reason Claudia felt so much hate against that doll was due to many reasons.…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The narrator is so captivated by Barbie that she pays special attention to every detail about each doll outfit, “Mine, ‘solo in the Spotlight,’ evening elegance in black glitter strapless gown with a puffy skirt at the bottom like a mermaid tail, formal-length gloves, pink-chiffon scarf, and mike included,” (Cisneros 1). In her own mind, Barbie is the narrator’s vision of a perfect girl: one who has a petite figure, expensive clothes, lots of friends and is always the center of attention. Coming from a middle class family, Barbie’s lifestyle is not realistic for the narrator, so she immerses herself into studying each aspect of her beloved doll’s clothes because she fully appreciates what Barbie means to her and uses the doll as a distraction from her own insecurities. Furthermore, Barbie symbolizes how the narrator has an increased sense of self-worth when talking about her because she is insecure about her own appearance and does not believe she is as beautiful as Barbie is. In addition to being insecure about her appearance, the narrator is insecure about how society perceives her, “The other, ‘Sweet Dreams,’ dreamy pink-and-white plaid nightgown and matching robe, lace-trimmed slippers, hairbrush and hand-mirror included.…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Megan DeRock Plato 2A 4/25/17 Bluest Eye Essay The Bluest Eye tells the stories of rape, incest, and pain through the innocent eyes of a young black girl during the great depression. This perspective, seldom seen in literature, brings light to the hardships of being black in 1930s america. Race plays a crucial role in why the women in this novel struggle to find happiness in a world constantly telling them they are ugly. To them the pigment of their skin and eyes are more than just a trait.…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pecola had a tough life from the moment she was born. Her family was poor and ugly and the town they lived in looked down upon them. She experienced more than what she was supposed to experience at a young age such as her parents’ sexual encounters and her father raping her and impregnating her. This is totally different from Peola who grew up with a loving mother who always put her first. Her main problem was that she was a black girl that could pass as a white girl, and that weighed heavy on her.…

    • 1861 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The symbol of the doll comes to life as the “girlchild” (line 1) strives to fit into society’s ideas of perfection that are modeled in her toys. Even though the girl is “healthy” (line 7) with “strong arms and back” (line 8) she feels she must become as thin, tall, and beautiful as her dolls are depicted to be. The symbolism of the doll is carried on further with the accessories that come with the…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Where he lies, face up. Then I kill them all” (Sophocles 506). This shows how Oedipus was not thinking clear because he was angry. Oedipus had an ignorant mindset which was shown in his…

    • 621 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ashalee Noble LBST-2212-002 Prof. A. Teasdell September 13,2017 The Bluest Eye Guide The social commentary that is implicit in Morrison's superimposing these bland banalities describing a white family and its activities upon the tragic story of the destruction of a young black girl is that this is what Pecola wants her family to be like. The opening was Pecola was repeating this phrase over and over like she wanted this to be her family so bad as the phrase was like the dream family during that time.…

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Early in the novel Pecola and Frieda spoke about Shirley Temple’s beauty “Frieda and she had a long conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was. I couldn’t join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley” (Morison 1.1.35). Claudia uses the example of Shirley Temple to show the difference between her and the other girls. Unlike Pecola and Frieda, Claudia tries to resist popular beauty icons, to the extent that when she receives a white baby doll for charismas she completely resists taking it, something very admirable about her. Pocola however is very dissimilar, she as other Americans had agreed to the idea that whiteness should be desired “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window sings-all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (Morrison 1.1.39).…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to the girl the doll was to represent her “fondest wish.”. Here Morrison is pointing out that girls liking dolls is a social construct. This is even more evident when the little girls claim “that…

    • 1098 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Georgia Art Museum Report

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Then I began to give it more thought that the word doll could be referred to how you talk to people or as a doll that you play with. The doll seems to have a sense of innocents but in the art piece seems to be grouped together and work off each other. A people I began to think that we learn from others and that could be a message that the artist was trying to give. The dolls themselves seems to be made of…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tragic Destiny In Oedipus

    • 1201 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It is very ironic that Oedipus wanted to know the truth but did not see the truth in any advice he was offered for his own good; for example when Teiresias told him indirectly who the murderer was and that it would be best for Oedipus to stop questioning and leave this topic alone, but Oedipus did not listen. When Jocasta realized that the prophecy of her son had indeed been carried out, she tries to save him but Oedipus insensibly called her prideful and dismissed her warnings. Also another example is when Oedipus completely disregards Teiresias advice that “[his] enemy is [him]-self” (Sophocles 36), and takes pride in the fact that he “stopped the riddler 's mouth, guessing the truth...” (Sophocles 37).…

    • 1201 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout The Bluest Eye, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (page 20). The characters live in an the mid-1900s where only girls with blonde-hair, blue-eyes, and white skin are considered beautiful. Throughout The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison explains that beauty is on the inside. In the novel, the influence of popular media is unveiled through the effect of advertisements on the standards of beauty that appear in the text, which are based on one’s skin color, eye color and hair color. The effect of advertisement on girls in the story is negative, because of their reactions to what society deems beautiful.…

    • 1086 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    (176). Pecola faces the most trauma out of anyone in this story from her rape to her damaged family life, her desire to be beautiful, and finally this pivotal situation with the Soaphead Church and his dog. This has distorted her perception of reality. She believes that having blue eyes could somehow fix what has gone wrong in her life. After this she is convinced that she has blue eyes and is able to suppress and overlook her traumatic past.…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays