Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Toni Morrison, in "The Bluest Eye", makes reference to the need to be accepted into the white social structure by a young black girl. It looks at how she presents a paradox in the fact that it is not possible and that, by wishing for something that she is not, she ignores the things of value that are part of her identity. It shows how Morrison, in her use of paradox, makes the point that blacks have had to re-define their own social community or go mad in the process; she does this through the adolescent protagonist, Pecola, and the symbolism of blue eyes as representing a more acceptable "other", both social and as an individual identity.

From the Paper:

"Without the support of identification with her own, Black, community, Pecola becomes extremely vulnerable to the traumas of being beaten and rejected by her mother, raped by her father and then losing the baby. Pecola, like her mother and the rest of the Black community, has internalized the standard of whiteness that defines the world in which they live: she plays with White dolls, she admires and attempts to emulate the White movie stars and even finds comfort in her belief in a White God with Blue Eyes. The disassociation with personal identity is eventually replaced with an identity associated with an inanimate object. There is a sense of repetition in the feeling of the familiar that Freud called 'doubling' and identified with the drive toward death or a desire to regain the past."

More papers on Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye":

• Analytical Essay # 40386 : "The Bluest Eye"
• Analytical Essay # 4028 : "Discrimination in "The Bluest Eye"
• Analytical Essay # 138419 : "Power and Impotence in "The Bluest Eye"

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