"The Bluest Eye"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the novel "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison. It explores the ways that Morrison vividly and starkly develops the theme of racism against African-Americans in America in the 1940s, within the novel. It discusses the interactions between three Black girls and the ways that they contend with White-dominated American standards of beauty, femininity and worth.

From the Paper:

"The culture in which Pecola and the other girls live values everything whites do, but nothing blacks do. As a result, the girls dislike whites, but they envy the beauty of whites, not because it is objectively better than their own looks, but because the society they live in thinks it is, and therefore devalues their own culture. Pecola hates white dolls, and white girls, for example, yet she would still love to have blue eyes. Pecola, therefore, longs to have something she never can naturally have, and at the same time, as a result of the prejudice of the society she lives in, rejects her own natural self. Further, the more crazy Pecola becomes within the novel, the more she talks about, and yearns to have, blue eyes, to the point where she insists she wants the bluest eyes in the world and even kills a dog to try to get them. In this way, then, Toni Morrison, within her novel The Bluest Eye (1970), depicts, poignantly and powerful, the theme of racial prejudice and discrimination against blacks in the 1940's, and the negative impact(s) of it on three similarly-aged black girls and especially on one in particular, Pecola Breedlove."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. In The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. (Eds. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar). New York: Norton, 1985, pp. 2068-2184.

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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