The Bluest Eye

In 1970, Toni Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye. Set towards the conclusion of the Great Depression, The Bluest Eye follows a year in the life of 11-year old Pecola Breedlove, seen through the eyes of 9-year old Claudia MacTeer, Pecola’s peer, and an omniscient third party. Pecola longs for love and acceptance that she believes her black ethnicity deprives her of, and believes that “beauty” (blond hair and the “bluest” eyes) will abolish her invisibility in white society. Harboring dark themes such as incest, rape, racism, physical abuse, harassment, and neglect, Morrison’s narrative deviates from typical novels of its day. As the characters of The Bluest Eye, particularly Pecola, experience these listed horrors, one may…

Toni Morrison is known for using vastly descriptive details throughout her writing, she does this to make descriptive comparisons in order for the reader to connect with her work. In The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison uses description to make comparisons about beauty. In Recitatif Morrison uses details to describe Twyla and Roberta’s life. She uses detail to portray to her readers the hardship and struggles each and everyone of her characters face throughout the story. This use of description draws…

and ancestry. Other children around the world are being placed in studies which explore this effect of society on their minds. In America, some children participated in the doll experiment, in which two toys were placed in front of them; one black and one white. When asked which doll was more beautiful, most of the kindergarteners pointed to the white one. Through this study, it was evident how a society that glorifies whiteness and puts down color manifests itself into the minds of youth.…

The Bluest Eye is a long poetic journey of broken spirits. The setting of this novel takes place in a time where black and white people recently began to reside amongst one another in the 1940s. Throughout this heartrending story, ideas of racism, irretrievable confidence, and mere self-pity loom in this interracial community; however, one can raise the question, if there is not any direct oppression of black people by the white people, how does racism function in The Bluest Eye? The…

Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, is about the Problem of middle-class people ideas of beauty on a female of an African American girls. Her novel came about after Morrison talked with someone who wanted to have blue eyes, the novel shows a girl, Pecola Breedlove, who wanted love and to be taken into a world that doesn’t care about people of her race. Author Shelley Wong’s in her Article Transgression as Poesis in The Bluest Eye talks about the different ways in which Morrison wrote her novels…

“The Bluest Eyes”, written by Toni Morrison, is a novel about young African American girls as they struggle with self identification and self love. This story talks about their constant battles with society's standards, and how they must overcome different forms of adversity. Throughout the novel there is the constant theme of beauty, and how beauty plays a major role on the lives of those young girls. Beauty, and its many different effects on people's’ lives can be seen through literary…

and girls ages 13-19. Over the years, one of the major issues linking different generations is beauty. Everyone strives to be beautiful, older people strive to look younger and teenagers/young girls strive to look older, it is a vicious cycle. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, young Pecola Breedlove strives to become what she was told is beauty, white skin and blue eyes. In the 1940’s and today, young girls are expected to aspire to be beautiful so much they change their appearance even if it…

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison, Published 1970 The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison focusing on how black children grew up in the early 1940s after the Great Depression. It contains a number of autobiographical elements. It is set in the town where Morrison grew up, and it is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old, the age Morrison would have been the year the novel takes place (1941). Like the MacTeer family, Morrison’s family struggled to make ends meet during the Great…

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…

The Bluest Eye was published in 1970 and was the first book that Toni Morrison published. The genre of The Bluest Eye is African American literature and the intended audience for this book is mostly for adolescent and adults. Now the author Toni Morrison was born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio and she was born with the name of Chloe Anthony Wofford. Toni Morrison’s father George Wofford had a job as a welder and had side jobs while her mother Ramah, was a domestic worker. She had…