The Bluest Eye Identity Essay

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Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye provides insight on an alienated portion of American society during the 1940s. The central character, Pecola Breedlove, is a young black girl who desperately wants to feel beautiful and gain the “bluest eyes” as the title references. Pecola attributes her ugliness as the center focus for identity. She partakes on the journey of self-actualization to discover that beauty doesn’t lie within blue eyes or blonde hair. Beauty was with her the entire time, she just failed to recognize it within herself, and once she acquires the bluest eyes she becomes consumed in the belief that her confidence originates only from her newfound appearance. The book seeks to express identity through beauty and love in this twisted …show more content…
It’s the sheer fact that she unconsciously allows to be this symbol of ugliness. By allowing others to promote themselves off her appearance makes her personality ugly because she has lost all sense of worth. She has been worn down so much by the word ugly that it has consumed her. Inside and out. She allowed her community to twist her mind, not only into believing, but better yet becoming this icon of ugliness. Pecola accepts this sentence instilled upon her. Having been exposed to the peer influence of a society that idolized over the perfection of young white girls. Pecola always knew she was ugly but never accepted her ugliness willingly. She recognized that she didn’t meet the media’s criteria of true beauty. So she understood why she was an outcast by society. But she only believed that because she wasn’t white. She grew up looking at whites to be superior over herself and her race. The notion that people grow up to be prejudice over other races due to evolutionary supremacy reaches the same conclusion why Pecola views herself to be ugly. It was something that was instilled at birth and reinforced through

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