Essay about The Bluest Eyes

Claudia, another character who goes through a similar situation compared to Pecola. She is a young girl who came out from a loving family and is intrusive, yet sensitive.

Pecola evaluated herself ugly, and wanted to have a pair of blue eyes so that every problem could be solved. Pecola was an African-American and lived in a family with problems. Her father ran away because of crime, her brother left because of their fighting parents, and was discriminated simply because she has dark-skin. Pecola is a passive person. She is almost destroyed because of her violent father, Cholly Breedlove, who raped her own daughter after drinking. Because of this, Pecola kept thinking about her goal- to reach the standard of beauty. However, she was never satisfied with it. Pecola believed once she become beautiful, fighting between her parents would no longer happen, her brother would come back, and her father would no long be a rapist. No problem would exist anymore.

As a child, he was not loved by his mother. She prefered her cat to her own son. Junior saw this at an early age and “spent some happy moments watching it suffer” (86). Junior locked Pecola in a room, becoming the perpetrator with the same turn of attitude as Cholly. When he saw that the cat liked Pecola, he threw the cat, killing it, because the thing his mother loved more than himself loved her. Pecola’s wish could be paralleled to the cat. It had blue eyes, and was loved dearly by someone, which could explain the attention she gave to the cat. Junior even said, “Gimme my cat! (90). Up to this point, he wanted nothing to do with the cat and even tortured it, but with it being the only connection to his mother, he called it his own. Pecola’s dream, or having the same attention as the cat, was killed when the cat was killed. Junior was not loved by his mother, only taken care of to live. She did not “allow her baby, Junior, to cry…[she] did not talk to him, coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts” (86). This unlove for her family caused Junior to be victimized, and then alter his ways, and become the perpetrator. Pecola is the victim in the rage of Junior, only because his mother did not love him. She wanted someone to be kind to her, and love her, but that was only met with

“Again, the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover her.” [This quote represents the emotions that flood through Pecola’s father’s head after he rapes her. Prior to and during raping Pecola, Pecola’s father is enraged with many emotions. These emotions include anger, tenderness and l0ve towards Pecola. This is a significant quote in the novel because this is one of the few parts of where Pecola’s father, Cholly’s, character is shown. This quote reveals Cholly’s character because it shows that the events that happened in his

In the third chapter of The Bluest Eye, entitled "Autumn", Toni Morrison focuses on Pecola's family, the Breedloves. Morrison goes in depth about the family dynamic of the Breedloves and how it affects Pecola and her self-image. The passage starts after one of many arguments between Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola's parents, turns violent. Mrs. Breedlove wants Cholly to fetch some coal from the outside shed. Cholly spent the last night drinking and does not want to get out of bed. The passage begins with the children becoming aware of the argument. Mrs. Breedlove starts to hit him with cooking pans while Cholly mostly used his feet and teeth. After the fight is over Mrs. Breedlove just lets Cholly lie on the ground and she goes about her

A Search For A Self Finding a self-identity is often a sign of maturing and growing up. This becomes the main issue in novel The Bluest Eyes. Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove are the characters that search for their identity through others that has influenced them and by the lifestyles that they have. First, Pecola Breedlove struggles to get accepted into society dued to the beauty factor that the normal people have. Cholly Breedlove, her father, is a drunk who has problems that he takes out of Pecola sexually and Pauline physically. Pauline is Cholly’s wife that is never there for her daughters.

That healthy relationship didn’t last forever, however. When Cholly and Polly move to Ohio, Polly learns that she doesn’t exactly fit in. Polly discovers that she needs to dress and look like the other woman. Polly starts to bug Cholly for money so she can buy new clothes and make up. This angered Cholly. Polly was giving more attention to her looks than to her husband and all Cholly’s hard earned money was paying for her obsession to look perfect. She soon learns that she is pregnant with a baby, Pecola. After Pecola is born, Cholly learns fast that he is not ready to become a father and does not possess the traits to become one. Looking back on his past, we know that he never had a father figure or even a role model to reach him how to be a parent. The failure of Cholly to be father causes him to turn to alcohol and he becomes a drunk.

Throughout Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, many characters, including Soaphead Church and Geraldine, use Pecola Breedlove to make themselves feel better. Using Pecola as a scapegoat, the other characters justify their shortcomings by comparing themselves to her. When they think about Pecola, the other characters in the book feel superior and thus boost their egos.

This can be seen toward the end of the novel, on page 199, where, in a conversation between Pecola and a figure of her thoughts, Morrison reveals that Pecola may have been raped twice. “You said he tried to do it to you when you were sleeping on the couch. ‘See there! You don’t even know what you’re talking about. It was when I was washing dishes,’” reads the exchange. These lines also tell the reader that even with this information, Pecola is still internally unsure of what happened herself. Through internal dialogue, her personal insecurities are projected. Dialogue is key in presenting major ideas in the novel.

Cholly held on to this trauma for years. He was not able to cope with the humiliation of the interruption of his first sexual enter course. He felt powerless in the situation. Vickroy states that, “Traumatized children themselves, they continue the trauma by denying their own weakness in their abuse of parental power, by installing their own fears of impotence, and by calling upon their children to fulfill their own unmet needs” (Vickroy 2). Cholly reflects how he feels on Pecola and ends up abusing her and then raping her. The trauma he faced made him weak in certain situations where he doesn’t have any self-control. Vickroy explains that, “Pecola’s sadness and helplessness and his own inability to make her happy provoke a repetition of the

Pauline eventually meets Cholly, who is Pecola’s biological father, and they fall in love. "He seemed to relish her company and even to enjoy her country ways and lack of knowledge about city things. He talked with her about her foot and asked, when they walked through the town or in the fields, if she were tired. Instead of ignoring her infirmity, pretending it was not there, he made it seem like something special and endearing. For the first time Pauline felt that her bad foot was an asset. And he did touch her, firmly but gently, just as she had dreamed. But minus the gloom of setting suns and lonely river banks. She was secure and grateful; he was kind and lively. She had not known there was so much laughter in the world." (Morrison, p. 115)

Pecola’s ultimate goal is to find someone to love and care for her. This idea is demonstrated in the book when Pauline, who “regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit” expresses her values with Pecola (122). She convinces her that she must desire love and introduces her to “probably the most destructive idea in the history of human thought”, physical beauty (122). Feeling as though she cannot fulfill society’s standard of female beauty, Pecola feels hopeless in her search for love. Even the toys she plays with do not resemble her making her feel so much less than adequate or even worthwhile - she clearly believes that valuing the majority culture’s view is best. This is why Pecola becomes infatuated with the adoration the young television star Shirley Temple receives because of her beauty. Unlike Pecola, Claudia rejects the girls adoration for Shirley Temple valuing her own looks and feelings over what she represents. Her self esteem is clearly not as damaged as

There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given

Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl who immersed in poverty and categorized as “ugly” by society. Her abusive parents beat her at home and she is a subject to never-ending discrimination and racism.

"The Bluest Eyes." is one of the most prevalent concerns role appearance novel in society, Pecola Breedlove is described herself as ugly not because she necessarily is, but because all the Breedloves see themselves as ugly; this is the role they see themselves playing in society because they have darker skin.