THE BLUEST EYES BY TONI MORRISON.

The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison.

The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison.

“The Bluest Eyes” is written by Toni Morrison. In which Morrison demonstrate the standards of beauty of the West and the concept of beauty which is socially constructed. The positive image of being black is not portrayed by the writer in this novel. She focuses instead on the sufferings of the black women because of a racist society.

In the novel, white color is associated with beauty and happiness. This imagery is used by Morrison to emphasize the destructiveness of the black community. The blacks hate their natural color and their culture. The black characters reject their own racial individuality and end up self-loathing and hatred.

This novel is the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven year old black girl. She is regarded by all the characters in the novel as ugly. She is also a target for racial self-hatred throughout the book. The beauty standard, as the Americans believed, was represented by Shirley Temple, who had beautiful blue eyes. Pecola, after being treated badly by everyone around her, yearns to have blue eyes so that people will start loving her.

Pecola thinks that blue eyes represent beauty and joy which she connects with the white world. Those eyes become the symbol of her own blindness as she gets them at the cost of her sanity.

Her life intersects with Claudia and Frieda MacTeer at the beginning of the novel when she is temporarily adopted by their family. Through Claudia, readers experience the African-American culture in the 1940s. Self- hatred was common in African- American which was a result of racial jealousy.

“The Blue Eyes” portrays how the black characters react to the dominant racial culture differently. Some black women characters conform to a forced ideal of femininity and because of that they despise their blackness. While some of the black characters are aware of the risk in adopting the western beauty standards.

The young narrator, Claudia, is indifferent to the white dolls and the beauty idol Shirley Temple. She understands that it's the ideology of white color which makes white people appear beautiful. Claudia learns to fear the 'thing' that makes the American society favor 'high-yellow' people and degrade the 'black and ugly' Pecola Breedlove.

The African-American people saw themselves through the eyes of the white people which led to destructive effects on their own population. They didn't understand that this standard of beauty was described externally through the culture, not internally. The 1940s society radicalized status symbolized blackness to be despised.

Through this novel, Morrison showcases how the society can influence an individual and how strongly the views can be forced upon the individual. The conformity of the 1940's was that the standard of beauty was set as white skin and blue eyes. The Shirley temple of the society were admired and appreciated. The black people were oppressed.

Pecola was badly treated even by the black characters of the ...