The Bluest Eye

Seeing is Believing Appearance is everything; a common phrase used in marketing, fashion, and even politics because the public believes only what they can see. Aware of this, Toni Morrison considered varying points of views in her novel, The Bluest Eye, which provided a world unknown to most of her readers. By using this strategy, it proved Morrison understands the diversity of her audience, and this element equipped her novel for success. Through Pecola’s perspective, the readers meet three…

creates a long pattern of self hatred. For example, in the Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison exemplifies how a community of African Americans struggle with equating being white as beautiful, which is all because of caucasians historically suppressing African Americans and forcing them to believe that black is ugly. To add, various black characters in Morrison’s novel, lives are misused because of the influential white persona. Furthermore, the Bluest Eye takes place in the early 1940’s. Around this…

Bluest Eye" "The Bluest Eye" (1970) is Toni Morrison's first novel. Morrison is one of the well-known Afro-American female writers. Along with the prestigious Pulitzer prize, she also received Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. "Morrison's work at random house helped to define two decades of African American literary history"(Wall 139). Her novels have received wide recognition not only from the common readers but from the critics and reviewers as…

The Color of Misperception Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is an exceptional piece of literature that explores the African-American community and the American society as a whole. The setting of the novel dates back to 1941 in the town of Lorain, Ohio, and Claudia MacTeer tells the story as an adult. She interacts with a character named Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl who longs to have blonde hair and blue eyes just like Shirley Temple. It is her belief that if she were to become…

In The Bluest Eye, Morrison writes about how black individuals in a color-prejudiced society are negatively influenced by the inferiority imposed on them by white individuals, especially focusing on how this inferiority affects a young black girl named Pecola. Upon analyzing the novel, it is evident that the prejudiced social dynamics within the society result in the worthlessness of black individuals being determined by white individuals who claim to be superior due to their white skin color.…

From the very beginning of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison two points of view are established. The first is Claudia Macteer a strong willed girl with a mature world view. She tells of life as a young strong black girl while the other narrator tells of many. The seconds narrator is an omniscient third person who tells of the racism in the South. It tells of the racism through the thoughts of all different types of people. From the racism of Cholly Breedlove to the troubled soul of Pecola. The…

The novels “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “Brown Girl, Brownstones” by Paule Marshall and “Citizen An American Lyric” by Claudia all are different books that tell different stories and written by different people, but one thing all 3 of these book share in common is a very old but important social issue which is Race and Racism. The way these authors use their topics as a subdivision of the theme or a social issue so that their main point becomes more clear and understandable is very…

natural? Should I conform to society? Should I stand my ground and show my pride? Am I good enough? These are the things that black women asked themselves in the 1960s and 1970s. In “The Bluest Eye”, written by Toni Morrison, there is an underlying theme: the faces of black women. To use in comparison with “The Bluest Eye”, the chapter “Contexts for the Emergence of ‘Black is Beautiful.’” in Maxine Leeds Craig’s book “Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race”…

The initiation story is a recurring theme within the Bluest Eyes. Not only the initiations of the children characters, such as Pecola and Frieda, are explored, but also the past initiations of complex adult characters, such as Cholly and Pauline Breedlove. With these stories, Toni Morrison explores how childhood experiences and epiphanies could make a heavy impact on a person’s life. This theme first became apparent in the prelude of the novel, when Claudia described the un-sprouting marigold…

beautiful. In The Bluest Eye, the standard of being beautiful and respected is being white. In the society of African Americans, they all believe in the need to be more white in order to be wanted, loved, or respected. Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl, find herself wishing for blue eyes with an obsession with Shirley Temple. In class, we discuss many topics relating to generalizations of race and class, and how different cultures view and approach these topics. The Bluest Eye by…