"The Bluest Eye"

Paper Summary:

Toni Morrison's literature, especially in her novel, "The Bluest Eye" is considered 'angry'. Even in its quiet moments, we see the agonies of black people forced to come to terms with the fact that whites, even their neighbors and the children they play with, see them as being inferior. The paper takes a look at some of the themes relating to this novel, including interracial hatred, the symbol of the color blue, segregation and society's view of beauty.

From the Paper:

"Why, really, did Pecola want those blue eyes so much? It was not just to be "beautiful", and have eyes bluer than all the rest of the girls, black, half-white, or white. The reason, as Toni Morrison points out in her afterword, was the beginnings of what she calls "racial beauty", It was just a generation or more ahead of the right time. Had she lived in the 1960s when the idea of "black is beautiful" first made its meaningful appearance, perhaps the search would have been to bring out inner beauty, regardless of the color of her eyes. It would have been the beauty of her soul, of her dreams, of her opportunities to be equal to all the whites and half-whites who oppressed the blacks in the 1940s."

More papers on "The Bluest Eye":

• Analytical Essay # 138419 : "Power and Impotence in "The Bluest Eye"
• Book Review # 95825 : "The Bluest Eye"--A Review"
• Book Review # 67487 : "The Bluest Eye" and Racism in America"
• Analytical Essay # 4028 : "Discrimination in "The Bluest Eye"

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