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Every time one must look upon her, one realizes what ugly means and may even see a bit of that ugly in him or herself. This inability to deal with what society has laid upon them simply reinforces how very deep the issue runs. It is not something that easily be wiped away. Then notion of beauty is buried deep in the human mind and it is impossible to turn a blind eye in this day and age. In short, Pecola represents imperfection and all the ugliness the world can offer.
It is also important to realize that Morrison felt obligated to protect Pecola's identity. By leaving some aspects of her character somewhat mysterious, she creates a distance between the reader and the character. Pecola is no doubt victim of violence and that is all we need to know to understand the novel. She is important because we learn from her. We know that she is a victim by no fault of her own. The narrator confirms this assertion by admitting that she avoided Pecola and that she "had failed her" (204-5)....
Pecola was victimized by her own kind. The others dumped on Pecola because they could not stand the truth. She admits, "All of us -- all who knew her -- felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were beautiful when we stood inside her ugliness" (205). In a sense, the others needed Pecola if only to make themselves look better - if only for a little while.
Morrison chooses not to dehumanize the characters that dehumanize Pecola because it allows us to see the humanity in them. There is nothing artificial about them; in fact, they are too real. They are real people that have good and bad flaws and they allow the bad flaws to get the best of them. Because they are human, we can related to them and empathize to a certain extent. Morrison also allows Pecola to remain somewhat of a mystery to us. As stated earlier, we know all we need to know about Pecola - it is those around her with whom we should be more concerned. Because Pecola represented the ugliness they could not face, she became their victim. It was simply easier to hate her than anything else. In the end, there might have been pity for the girl but all of it too late to mean anything.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Books. 1970.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Books. 1970.
She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people. So. The distaste must be for her, her blackness.... Phlegm and impatience mingle in his voice. (Morrison 49) but Pecola endures this discomfort and rejection, not so she can establish her empowered Blackness as a consumer, but so she can purchase candy. The candy is not to satisfy her bodily, physical sexual or even stomach's appetite. Rather,
Many scholars and scientists truly believed that physical beauty and grace were indicative of other "internal" traits, and that the "less beautiful" races (i.e. all non-whites, though there were gradients established in this regard) were of poorer moral quality and intelligence, and had other undesirable internal characteristics as well (Gibson 1990). This means that the concepts of beauty that are expressed in the book have both direct and symbolic
Eichelberger states that Morrison's work shows that the novel "in its particular cultural setting portrays domineering aggression as the true motivation for many cultural conditions that are commonly regarded as agents of freedom" (2). This ideology (i.e. The dominant mindset) is what characters use to destroy other characters' sense of self. Both the Bluest Eye and When the Legends Die have a resounding theme of homelessness and this relates to
Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye is deals with the historical and psychological effects of defining beauty according to race. The Bluest Eye is essentially about how concepts of beauty are instilled from a very young age. It is about the life of the Breedlove family who resides in Lorain, Ohio. The novels focal point is the daughter, an eleven-year-old Black girl who is trying to conquer a bout with
On the evening of her first menstruation, for example, she asks, 'How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you.' And, after a visit to Marie, Poland, and China, Pecola ponders, 'What did love feel like?... How do grownups act when they love each other? Eat fish together?' " (Bloom, 26) The question of how to get somebody to love you is significant for
Her mother, like her daughter, is said to be filled with a sense of self-hatred and rejection. "She [Pecola's mother] was confronted by prejudice on a daily basis, both classism and racism, and for the first time, the white standard of beauty. These experiences worked to transform Pauline into a product of hatred and ignorance, leading her to hold herself up to standards that she didn't fully understand nor